Courage earns Lenny immediate Hall entry
A GROUP of Greater Western Sydney players had a lesson on how Lenny Hayes’s insatiable appetite for the contest almost formed part of his DNA.
Hayes, now a midfield coach of the Giants, was “set up” when ex-team-mate and fellow GWS assistant Adam Schneider recently started a meeting with footage from the Saints’ clash with North Melbourne in Round 5, 1999.
It was Hayes’s first AFL game. In one passage, he controlled the ball close to the SCG boundary line when a freight train masquerading as Glenn Archer crashed into him at full force. Hayes was skittled as Archer coolly stepped across him.
“Schneids showed it the other day to the Giants’ boys,” Hayes said. “I was starting a meeting and he was taking the p... out of me.
“The boys loved it. The hit was great but they really loved the (Archer) step-over.”
The 19-year-old debutant got to his feet and threw himself back into the contest. That would have infuriated yet still impressed Archer.
“It probably served me right,” Hayes said.
“I was tiptoeing along the boundary and visualising hitting up Stewie (Stewart) Loewe with a bullet pass. Then, whack, ‘Arch’ has come out of nowhere. It was a good hit, right up the middle.”
It was a symbolic launching pad for a career spanning 297 games and 16 seasons, with Hayes’s resilient approach never wavering, despite individual and team hurdles.
“I wasn’t quick, I didn’t have a huge leap or huge kick; I just loved playing in the midfield and being hard at the contest,” Hayes explained. “That what I prided myself on.”
Hayes has never enjoyed talking about himself but he’s happy to make an exception following his elevation into the Australian Football Hall of Fame.
“It’s a great honour; it’s kind of hard to sum up 20 years in the industry,” he said. “I’m very lucky to have played with some great clubs — from Pennant Hills (junior club) to the NSWACT Rams and St Kilda.”
He praised his parents and in particular, his wife Tara, who is the mother of his two sons Hunter and Jacob, for their support over the years.
“My coaches were so important to me,” he said. “There was David Noble and Stevie Wright from the Rams and on to the Saints, the main influences were Grant Thomas and Ross Lyon.
“When I first got to St Kilda it was great to play with Loewe, (Robert) Harvey and (Nathan) Burke, then through the mid-2000s we had (Fraser) Gehrig and (Aaron) Hamill and obviously (Nick) Riewoldt, (Justin) Koschitzke, (Brendon) Goddard, (Nick) Dal Santo, (Luke) Ball and others. I sort of feel this recognition for me, without those sort of blokes, just doesn’t happen.”
Only the elite win elevation to the Australian Football Hall of Fame. But a sign of Hayes’s status is that he won immediate admission following the five-season requirement after retirement.
He expended as much blood, sweat and tears as anyone in chasing the club’s elusive second flag in the first decade of the 2000s – only to fall short.
Adjudged the best player in one grand final, and in the top two from his own team in another, his grit, tackling ferocity, loyalty and capacity to lift his team proved critical.