Let’s start with a clarification. Our tradition at the AFL Record is to honour 300-game players with a long feature and a photograph on the cover of the magazine.
It is an edict that dates back 30 years to when the late Tony Peek was the media czar at the AFL.
But 299 games? Not so much.
However, the fact is that Heath Shaw’s 300th AFL game will in all likelihood take place next week when the GIANTS travel to Adelaide to play the Power and the GIANTS will likely have only a handful of fans at the game.
This weekend makes for a more appropriate recognition of a terrific career.
It pits the club that gave him a second chance and a new lease on his footy life against Collingwood, the club for which he played in a premiership and where his family has made such a deep and cherished contribution.
There will be a smattering of family and friends at the 300th next week, but this is the weekend that many of his mates, including his famous ‘Rat Pack’ Magpie premiership teammates from 2010, have marked in their calendars to come to Sydney to celebrate a wonderful career and an impending milestone.
So, if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for us.
Heath Shaw is an open book. There is the good, such as the Anzac Day Medal he won in 2007 and the premiership in 2010.
His chase and smother that prevented a certain Nick Riewoldt goal in the Grand Final replay that year remains one of the great solo acts in modern football history.
Since crossing to the GIANTS in 2014, there has been a best and fairest and two All-Australian blazers.
The 33-year-old has been a wonderful running defender and backline organiser on the field and a model citizen off it since donning the charcoal and orange.
But back in his Magpie days, there was the club-imposed suspension for drink-driving and crashing his car that prematurely ended his 2008 season.
In 2011, there was an eight-match suspension for betting on football.
You can’t help but nod and agree when Shaw tells the AFL Record, “To be honest, I think I have experienced most things in footy.
“I have the ability to tell some pretty good stories and some stories that I probably shouldn’t.
“But you have to learn from them – the good and the bad – and I definitely have.
“I wouldn’t take anything back or change anything I’ve done; it got me to here and, if any of our younger boys who are rolling up to the club ask a question or inquire about something I’ve done, I’m brutally honest about what happened, how it panned out and that sort of thing.”
It makes Shaw one of the most magnetic characters at the GIANTS.
He can often be seen lunching in the club café with one or two younger players.
“They could be joking around or he could be offering some serious wisdom about the choices they might make in life,” GIANTS coach Leon Cameron observed.
It often is the latter. Cameron estimates that about once a month he will come to learn of a deep and meaningful chat that a GIANTS player has had with Shaw that has led to some sort of positive change, on or off the ground.
Given how many young footballers there have been at the club over the journey, there has been lots of coffees, lots of meals and lots of conversations.
“We got a very good player six years ago,” Cameron said. “But also a very good person.”
Heath Shaw is chaired from the ground after his 250th game
The GIANTS jumped at the opportunity to grab Shaw at the end of 2013.
Cameron was just starting out as senior coach, having been Kevin Sheedy’s senior assistant for 12 months.
The GIANTS had just been left waiting at the altar by Lance Franklin and, while Shaw was no Franklin, he did offer a unique skill set.
“It was a once-in-five-years opportunity,” Cameron said. “You can always find a midfielder, but a great 183cm defender with speed like that is really hard to find.
“Finding a player who sits comfortably in that zero-to-30m zone deep in defence, a place where others, let’s be honest, are shitting themselves, it’s something he’s done his entire life. We sold a good story.”
Shaw needed the change after 173 games with Collingwood.
His family is Collingwood royalty. Father Ray played 146 games for the club and was the losing Grand Final captain in 1979 and 1980.
Uncle Tony played 313 games, was the 1990 premiership captain and later coached the club. Uncle Neville played there as well.
Older brother Rhyce was a teammate, while first cousin Brayden was selected in the same draft.
He thrived under Mick Malthouse, his first senior coach. Malthouse had that rare gift of indulging free spirits such as Shaw, Ben Johnson, Dane Swan, Alan Didak, Dale Thomas and Dayne Beams, while getting their complete buy-in.
“Very good at getting the best out of people in different ways,” is Shaw’s glowing assessment.
Heath Shaw and his father Ray after Heath and the Magpies won the 2010 Grand Final Replay
With Nathan Buckley as coach, things were a bit more rigid and the tensions between them were all too often played out in public.
Shaw saw how Rhyce’s move to the Swans had paid dividends and decided a move to Sydney, albeit in different colours and a few kilometres west, was the sea change he needed as well.
So there is no regret at not being a career Magpie.
“The best thing was for me to get away,” he said.
“It was a rejuvenation, the opportunity to prove people wrong, some stubbornness and the opportunity as well.
“I have got to be part of the story of the GIANTS and in my first few years here we broke a lot of records and made a lot of history.”
Given that 2014 was the year the GIANTS started to come good, history was made more weeks than not.
First wins against clubs and at different venues as well as first finals.
With success comes expectations, and they have been dashed as well.
“I’ve been part of history and that can never be changed,” Shaw said.
Heath Shaw with his father and Collingwood great Ray when Heath was presented his AFL Life Membership earlier this year
Despite the passage of time, Shaw’s affection for Collingwood and his particular group of teammates hasn’t diminished one bit.
“The best thing about our group and our friendship group, no matter what, if we went out on the weekend and perhaps partied a bit hard, we always turned up on the Monday and we trained really hard,” he said.
“We were very competitive about winning and getting the best out of ourselves and that has stood us in good stead over a long period of time.”
That group made an enormous contribution to the flag in 2010 and the near miss the following season.
They ingrained a belief in Shaw that his way of approaching the game can work to great effect and he hasn’t changed much since moving north.
“The latter part of my career, it has been about my routine,” he said.
“It’s not the same, it’s unique and tailored for me, but it gets me prepared to play each weekend and that’s the most important thing in footy.”
It would likely make a sports scientist blanch, but instead of staying off his feet the day after a game, Shaw goes for a 3km run.
Rather than challenge him on it, Cameron lets him be.
“It’s out of the old school, but he’s set in his ways and that probably goes back to his Collingwood days and what he’s learned from his family,” Cameron said.
“He never goes away entirely from our structure, but he finds what’s right for him and he makes it work.
“You can’t argue, given he’s about to play his 300th game.”
Indeed, it was only in 2018 that he suffered a major injury, a medial tear that required a reconstruction and kept him out of the finals.
It was the third year in a row the GIANTS fell short in September, although he is philosophical about last year’s setback, given he was watching from the stands and things on the field were out of his control.
It is the consecutive preliminary final defeats, to the Western Bulldogs in 2016 and Richmond a year later, that still irk him.
“Last year was hard to watch, but I’ve been very lucky to have played many finals and big games,” he said. “I’ve had a pretty good run. I can’t say I was unlucky. Disappointing, but not unlucky.”
He has played in 23 finals and only six active players have featured in more.
The 2016 capitulation at home to the Bulldogs feels like the one that got away.
“We had come so far so quickly and it was ours to lose, but somehow we did that,” he said.
“We thought we deserved to be in the Grand Final, but we didn’t do everything we had to do to get there.”
Shaw still holds out hope of winning a second flag, this time with the GIANTS, but he’s not consumed by it.
“It would be the icing on the cake and the pretty good end to a long career,” he said.
“But I’ve been lucky enough to win a premiership and play in so many finals and big games.
“I don’t think my career will be fulfilled by winning a flag with the Giants, but it would be pretty good.”
Whether or not 2019 will be his last chance remains to be seen.
Cameron was delighted with how Shaw attacked his recovery from his knee injury and how he has presented himself this year and, as recently as last week, they caught up to discuss his playing future.
“He’s had to look after his body more than he used to, but the leg speed, the physicality and the competitiveness is still there,” Cameron said.
“He’s had that attitude to work hard again, so we’re having good discussions.”
Heath Shaw has been developing his coaching ability, working with the GIANTS' AFLW team the past two seasons
Cameron believes Shaw has a future in coaching, while his bubbly personality will surely open any number of doors in the media.
But before then will come some time away from the game.
“To be brutally honest, it is something you think about,” he said of retirement.
“The plan is to take a year away from football, maybe travel.
“After being in the system for so long, you get so used to it that it becomes normal, so I’d like to get out there and experience something a bit abnormal, uncommon and perhaps even a bit uncomfortable.
“And if I come back to football, it will be with a fresh mind and having had some other experiences.”
But he’s relishing the next fortnight.
“I’ve managed to survive this long in the game so I’ve obviously done a few things right,” he said.
“There have been some learnings along the way, things I can highly recommend people avoid, which have helped build the character of the person I am now.
“But to find myself at 299 games playing for a club that didn’t exist when I started, against my old club, in a state where I didn’t think I’d be playing football … yeah, it’s pretty interesting how it’s turned out.”
When it comes to Heath Shaw, interesting might be an understatement.
This article originally appeared in the Round 18, 2019 edition of the AFL Record and is republished with their permission.
