‘I felt numb for two years’: How James Sicily lost his edge

James Sicily knew he needed to rein his emotions in, but now feels he went too far. For two years he’s felt numb on the field, and now he wants to feel alive again.

He was so focused on trying to control his emotions that he found himself playing without any. It was not that he played poorly as a result, but he thinks he plays better when he is strung tight. But with maturity, he believes he can strike a better balance between numbness and playing without restraint. It’s a thought that will make his coach both nervous and excited.

In a wide-ranging interview, Sicily also revealed that after playing all last season with a banged up shoulder, he hurt it so badly in the last game of the season that he played the finals with a broken bone and ragged ligaments. He needed a full reconstruction immediately after finals.

He also carried a hip injury last year that left him struggling to kick, which explains his drop in form.

Sicily has been joined as captain this year by Jai Newcombe in a move that is a first for the Hawks, and one that Sicily enthusiastically embraced.

Getting the passion back

As a young player Sicily was as known for his combustibility as his talent. Playing so emotionally became so self-destructive it was unsustainable. So he reined it in. But it left him feeling nothing at all.

“I’m trying to get a bit better balance between getting more passion back into my game because, obviously, it was a big deal early on, and I needed to get it right... From 23 to 26 [years of age] I needed to fix it, to rein it in.

“But then there was a period of like from 26 to 28 where I was just numb out there. I was not feeling anything, I was just doing it. And I was playing alright, I was playing well, but I wasn’t feeling anything, or loving it because I was continuously trying to keep myself in check and play things down.

“It was a couple of years of just numbness. I still enjoyed playing footy and coming to the club, it’s an amazing place to work, but out on the field I was just so conscious of, ‘Don’t show any emotion, don’t f--- up, don’t f--- up’.

“I do enjoy my footy more, and it makes me feel alive when I am playing right on the edge. I play well, and it makes me feel good. But sometimes when I am getting too highly strung I am good defensively, but I can start to not process things fast offensively, so it might take me longer to make a decision, or I might not see the game as clearly as I would if I was calmer.

“But, in terms of competitiveness and playing in defence, it is awesome when I am highly strung and right on the edge.”

The idea that the mature Sicily is placid and controlled shouldn’t be overstated. He recalls a moment in the finals when he found himself clashing with a teammate.

“Usually, I can catch myself and I just try to take a deep breath and smile, or try to take the piss,” he said.

“And then there’s times where... I didn’t even know I did it at the time, but I pushed Meeky [Lloyd Meek] in one of the finals where he came over and said, ‘Calm down’, and I was [saying], ‘Just f--- off,’ and pushed him away. I didn’t have the time or the brain capacity to not do it and I look back now and go, ‘Oh geez I look like the biggest dill there’. For the most part, the last three years I have been able to regulate my emotions far better.”

The full extent of his injuries

For Sicily, part of getting the passion back is tied in with getting back to playing at his best. Last year was tough.

He injured his shoulder about this time last pre-season and had to carry it all year. That meant that it was constantly agitated and knocked about during the year. Then, at the end of the season, he hurt it badly.

Compounding matters, his shoulder injury only added to a debilitating hip and abdomen problem. He received treatment at one point to deaden the nerve receptors to relieve the pain. It worked for a couple of weeks, but then the pain returned.

“The hip was a pain in the arse,” he said.

“I couldn’t get it right. I tried to take some time off, and that did help, but it just needed this full off-season to get fully right – [and] it is feeling really good now.

“That was a bit of a frustrating injury because when your form is bad, you want to do more, and you want to train more and get some confidence out of training. But I couldn’t really train.

“In particular it was mainly around my kicking. My kicking is one of my strengths so when it’s going badly you want to just get reps in and get confidence back, and kick your way out of it. But I couldn’t do that because I was trying to manage the load.

“Deep down all year, I knew the shoulder was stuffed. I hurt it for the first time in Geelong this time last year when we went over there to play a practice game. And then throughout the year I kept getting innocuous knocks, and it got worse and worse. And then I hurt it really badly in the last game against Brisbane. It was pretty rooted. It had a few tears and a fracture. It was a bit debilitating.”

The injuries then had an impact on Sicily’s leadership. He is of the walk the talk attitude to leading, and walking is harder with a crook hip.

“That was the biggest challenge because, all right, you can talk and do this stuff that the captain does during the week around training standards – what does ‘Mitch’ [Sam Mitchell] want us to do this week? What are we trying to execute? [I’m] talking out on the track about what I’m seeing, giving feedback, everything like that, but that stuff’s a lot easier when you’re playing well. It didn’t fall away because I wasn’t playing well, but you’d sort of rather play well than lead well.”

Twelve months ago, Sicily was coming off having his other shoulder reconstructed. This year has been the same rehab process, but not the same time frame. They have learnt from that experience.

“Last time we went too quick, and I reckon I paid the price for it – not having enough work done and taking it too fast, where I feel like it’s been more gradual this off season, and now I’m like, ‘Hurry up. Get me involved. I want to play’.”

Sicily expects to play in opening round against the Giants.

The evolution of leadership

In his first year as captain, Sicily remembers yelling at one of the first- or second-year Hawks on the training track and coming to a realisation.

“Oh, they’re not ready for that. The group’s not ready for that,” he said.

“Whereas now, if no one yells at me or someone doesn’t yell at someone [else], then I’m like, ‘What are we doing? We are going too easy on each other’.”

The idea of co-captains didn’t come about because of Sicily’s form last year. A change had been coming for a while. As a coach, Mitchell liked the idea of empowering more players. As a defender, Sicily welcomed the idea of having another strong voice up the field.

“Mitch, in particular, has really driven since early days... We want everyone in here to lead in some way. And we all believe that now and that’s the best way to approach it,” Sicily explained.

“At the start of the pre-season [general manager of football] Rob [McCartney], Mitch, [and] Jenni [Screen, head of leadership and development, and a silver and bronze Olympic medallist with the Opals] all met and discussed the leadership and said how do we want it to look? It can be anything: one captain, two captains? Three? Do we do 12 in the leadership group? We can do anything. And we fell on the co-captaincy as the best method and best way leadership for this year.”

It was not a process that landed on Sicily and Newcombe because they couldn’t be split, but started with the idea of joint captains and arrived at them as the best people.

“What we were thinking was I can control the back end, and Jai can control the midfield and the front end. And it makes it a bit easier,” Sicily said.

“We have so many players on the field, and even at training things can get missed because I don’t see them, or I don’t have a complete grasp on what the mids are doing, or what they’re trying to work on, so I can’t drive that standard, and I don’t have enough opportunity to give input.

“So being able to broaden it out and have two of us as captains just makes it easier on game day, or training.”

The one who got away

The story of the summer at Hawthorn was actually what didn’t happen. The Hawks didn’t get Zach Merrett. They wanted and expected to have a changed midfield this year, but now they have seen James Worpel leave as a free agent, while Merrett stayed put and Will Day is injured again.

Even Sicily had a moment to think, ‘Gee that didn’t go to plan’.

How, or where, then, do they get better?

“I mean, that’s the obvious question everyone will be asking,” Sicily said.

“I can’t recall myself thinking it, but there would have been like a moment of like, ‘Oh shit, OK’ [when the Merrett deal fell over]. But I think being around this place now in the upgraded facilities [at Dingley], it feels like we’re here all the time because we want to be all here all the time. So there’s going to be a sort of organic growth from the existing playing group, but there’s always a diamond in a rough when things like this happen.

“Connor Macdonald’s been looking really good, dynamic in the midfield. Wardie [Josh Ward] has been awesome. Wiz [Nick Watson] has been awesome. Those three guys have probably been our best trainers for the pre-season, and that’s all probably based off opportunity and a little window of, ‘OK, such and such is gone. Why can’t it be me?’ And that could be even be Ollie Greeves; he’s come in and been training really well.

“He’s the funny one in the draft that people [recruiters] were focusing on what he’s not good at, and forgetting what he is good at. He looks good.”

As captain, Sicily said he was not troubled by the idea of another club’s captain being prepared to walk out on that playing group.

“I’m not in his shoes,” he said of Merrett.

“I don’t know what he sees day to day, or what feedback he’s given to the club, and I don’t really know Zach that well, I only ever met him at the Brownlow, so I don’t know what type of person he is.”

Sicily is not gnashing his teeth over trades that didn’t happen. He says what he thinks, and he acts on it. It’s the passion in him that doesn’t want to be silenced. This year he will embrace it.

Keep up to date with the best AFL coverage in the country. Sign up for the Real Footy newsletter.