Just last week, Joel and I were together at the MCG for a celebration of all 18 AFL clubs fielding an AFLW team for the first time in league history. During the day, and particularly while looking afterwards at the iconic photo taken at the event, I caught myself reflecting not only on how special it is to be captain at that moment in time, but to be captain alongside Joel Selwood.

How fortunate I am that my short time as captain has overlapped with the tenure of the greatest captain in our Club’s 163-year history, and quite possibly, in the whole league’s.

I’m not alone in my gratitude that our paths have crossed. This week I’ve seen 300 game teammates and employees at the local grocery store be equal in their reverence for Joel as they tell of their love and thanks for the person and player he is.

I can offer no further insight into his extraordinary on-field feats, his toughness and his tenacity. Like any other Cats fan, I’d give anything to be part of a huddle to experience one of his pre-game speeches.

What I feel moved to convey is some insight into what captaincy of the Cats entails, and how from the vantage point of my comparatively little experience in my own role, his success, longevity, and impact seem all the more remarkable.

350 games is unfathomable to me.

When I think of what makes it all the more extraordinary, I don’t think of the endless hours of training, preparation, performance and recovery.

I think instead of the sheer enormity of knowledge he’s carried with him during his time, the incredible mental load he’d have shouldered.

I think of the number of players he would have taken for coffee, of families he’d have asked after. The number of staff he’d have built relationships with, the stakeholders he’s taken the time to engage. I think of the failures he’d have felt responsible for, the inspiration he’d have provided, the knowledge he’d have taken the time to instil, the action he’d have incited in others. The hours spent in meetings ploughing ever-deeper in investigation into every possible avenue for improvement within his team, the football department, and the Club as a whole.

I think of times like that AFL/AFLW photoshoot, when he’s taken the time to turn up. When he’s been responsible for something greater than himself when he’s represented something that means so much to so many.

We speak about honouring heritage, having a service mindset, of being a humble custodian of everything that’s gone before. That’s Joel. Always passing on and raising up and living that thing we call ‘culture’.

It seems that everyone knows Joel, and Joel knows everyone. He takes the time to make people feel as though they are as important to him as he is to them.

At the conclusion of our first AFLW Season at the Cats in 2019, I required foot surgery on a stress-fractured navicular bone. I was walking through the football department around the time of the surgery and crossed paths with Joel along the way. He stopped and asked how I was going. He knew the nature of my injury, which surgeon I was seeing and spoke about his own experiences with him.

Now, by no means is that an extraordinary act of kindness. But at the same, and at that time, it was by no means commonplace among the experiences of the AFLW players that I knew from across the league. It was five minutes of Joel’s time, and it may sound now like simple common courtesy, but it stuck with me. It was the specificity of his knowledge and attention that meant something to me, and that demonstrated Joel’s extraordinary capacity for care.

A little while later, I ran into Joel while he was having a coffee at Geelong West Social Club with a first-year Jordan Clark. Joel and I exchanged hellos, but 18-year-old Jordan failed to say anything. Joel immediately turned and admonished him, “Say hello Jordan! Sorry Meg, we’ve gotta teach him some manners.” That’s not a head-over-the-ball, carry-the-team-on-my-back moment of greatness, but that’s leadership. It’s inducting someone into a way of treating other people, the Geelong way, that drives standards – not only of on-field performance, but of care and connection. It told both me and Jordan that we were one and the same, members of a team of all.

It can be easy to equate greatness with grandness. But to my eye and in my experience, it’s those small everyday moments, repeated over years and throughout all levels of the Club, and all the relationships he has within it, that together amount to greatness.

Those are the building blocks of culture. A famous culture, a felt experience.

Everything that’s great about the Geelong Football Club, is everything that’s great about Joel Selwood. Uncompromising performance, connection to community, warmth, and humility. He and the Club are a reflection of one another.

The sense of pride that we all get from pulling on the Hoops and representing the Cats is as deep as it is because of what Joel has made it represent. A standard of performance on the field, inside the four walls, and in the community, that we all aspire to emulate.

I wish him the greatest of congratulations and deepest of thanks for using his games and his time at Geelong to make ours all the better.