The Callum Sinclair story: From Mad Monday trades to grand final lament and a storied rivalry

His phone started ringing the Mad Monday after the Eagles 46-point loss to Hawthorn, a trade with the Swans Lewis Jetta in motion before he had a chance to catch his breath.

Sinclair’s first clash with the Eagles loomed large the following year. He walked into the SCG nervous, having never played against Nic Naitanui, but now with the chance to step out of his sizeable shadow.

“It’s probably the first time I’ve ever rucked against Nic Nat and my old team,” Sinclair recalls. “I go to my locker with my bag, as I arrive at the ground, and I open my locker and there is a playing card of Nic Naitanui signed by him sitting there.”

“I don’t think it was Nic who had put it in there, it had a quote on it. ‘I’m gonna put my knee into your throat today’.
“Not the best thing to see when you open your locker in your first clash against your old team. To this day I still don’t know who put that in my locker.”

Sinclair’s AFL story has never followed a typical script. It continues this weekend, with the 32-year-old named as an emergency for this weekend’s clash with the Eagles, though he’s unlikely to take the field.
He isn’t the largest figure in the storied rivalry between the two clubs.

But he and fellow ruckman Dean Cox have veered off script time and again from one end of Australia to the other in one of the game’s more remarkable relationships.

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For so much of his career, Sinclair has had to fight.

Overlooked in multiple AFL drafts, he was eventually rookie listed by West Coast in 2013 after stints with Port Melbourne in the VFL and Subiaco in the WAFL. Sinclair’s spot on a list or selection on game day has never been guaranteed, “Always looking for my magnet” is how he describes most team meetings of his AFL career.

He’s battled more ruckmen for a regular spot than most, and it’s an impressive list of big men he’s played with and battled across the journey. Cox, Naitanui, Scott Lycett, Toby Nankervis, Tom Hickey, Kurt Tippet, Sam Naismith and Peter Ladhams – just to name a few.

“I’m probably a lot better at it now than what I used to be,” Sinclair says.

“It could be really difficult in the earlier part of my career, you’re on one year deals, so you kind of feel like every single contest you lose that they’re going to kick you out of the footy club. That’s the kind of mentality that I’ve had.”

“I remember to get my first game at West Coast, John Worsfold (coach of West Coast at the time) sat both Scott Lycett and I down before training, two days out from the game and said, ‘Put your shin guards on boys, you guys are going to ruck against each other at training.’

“It was a ruck off.”

Within two years of arriving as an Eagles rookie, Sinclair found himself lining up at the MCG on grand final day. That 2015 campaign was Cox’s first in transitioning into a full-time assistants role with West Coast, his influence as both a teammate and sounding board instrumental in Sinclair keeping a rising Lycett at bay.

Yet despite playing 20 games that season, Sinclair’s recollections of the decider are that he wasn’t worthy of his spot in a grand final line-up.

“I haven’t really spoken about it too much,” he says.

“I probably didn’t believe that I was good enough to be out there. I was kind of in disbelief that I was playing in an AFL grand final because 12 months before I’m fighting to stay on a list.

“Unfortunately the day didn’t go down too well and when I look back it’s not the greatest memory. But at least you can say to people that you’ve played in a grand final and you know what that experience is like. It would have been fantastic to have won.

“I’ve never watched the game, I’ve never looked at any stats from that game, and I’ve never looked at any articles. If it ever comes up on TV I just turn it off. It’s clearly a little bit scarring.

“If there’s anything that I would change, probably just my mindset. Just trying to be a bit more relaxed going into that week, I was severely stressed, hardly slept. I was really worried about not contributing to the team.”

Then came Mad Monday and those career-changing calls.

“Within a couple of days there’s a trade to Sydney on the table. So my mind was scattered.

“I just didn’t know what was going on, dealing with the emotion of a grand final loss, having no impact on the game and feeling a bit embarrassed about how I played.

“Then being provided with an opportunity to move to Sydney in a trade with Lewis Jetta. It was a bit of a whirlwind couple of weeks.”

Watching so many of his old teammates rectify that grand final loss in 2018 wasn’t easy. But at the same time, as he has with so much of his time in the game, Sinclair found a way to make it work.

“I’m not going to lie, sitting at home watching that I was extremely jealous,” he says.

“I was really happy for the guys that I played with in the 2015 grand final to get some redemption and get a well-deserved medal. But I’m still on my frantic search for one of them.”

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West Coast and Sydney will be forever linked by their great mid-2000s rivalry and that span of eight games where no more than four points could separate them. Tighter still, the links between the ruck.

Jason Ball (103 West Coast, 90 Sydney), Mark Seaby (102 West Coast, 18 Sydney), Sinclair (29 West Coast, 72 Sydney), Tom Hickey (23 West Coast, 24 Sydney) and now Swans assistant coach Cox (290 as a player West Coast and now 93 as a coach at Sydney) have all played their part in an impressive game of trading places.

Of the five Eagle-Swan rucks though, it is the tales of Sinclair and Cox that intertwine most. They both arrived at West Coast as rookie draft picks and understudies in their positions, with Cox a constant presence in Sinclair’s decade at the top level.

“Playing with Coxy for those couple of years was unreal,” Sinclair says of their playing crossover.

“It really fast-tracked my development. I hadn’t played a lot of ruck, I was more of a key forward. I used to watch his tape every single weekend.”

“The one thing that always stood out for me was his work rate and I just remember how fit and how hard he would run.

“I’d take a piece of paper and I used to draw where he would run on the ground in squiggles as I watched when I wasn’t playing.

“He was so dynamic as a player, I certainly wouldn’t compare myself anywhere to the level of Dean Cox, but just picking up a few things – he revolutionised ruckwork in the game. I remember one game at West Coast he was taking kick outs!

“I’ve played with him and been coached by him for the entirety of my career bar maybe one year and he’s grown from a great player into a fantastic coach.”

Cox’s status in the game is reflected in AFL life membership, a 2006 flag with the Eagles and 290 games for the club. Now five years into coaching with Sydney alongside Sinclair once more, the senior man says “separating friendships is probably one of the hardest parts of coaching for me.”

The pair can still offer honest appraisals of the other.

Sinclair, in Cox’s eyes, has always “trained as hard as he possibly could … maybe because he was a mature age pick, but he is still going through that process at the minute.”

The Swans ruckman in turn sees a future head coach in Cox, not least because “he gets better and better every year”.

Cox, with his own playing experiences always guiding his coaching in practice, doesn’t shy away from those aspirations either.

“That was probably one of the reasons to leave West Coast, to gain experience and challenge myself in areas of personal development.

“Horse (Swans coach John Longmire) has been really open to developing the people that are around him and I get plenty of opportunities to do that.

“I’m feeling more confident with the day-to-day aspect of coaching and being put into positions as well as the managerial stuff that comes with it. The journey has been enjoyable so far and hopefully that happens at some stage.”

More immediately though, Sydney comes up against West Coast on Friday night once more.

Just another chapter in their remarkable cross-country, cross-club bond.