THEY were moments which had the potential to sink careers.
For Bailey Smith, the moment was mid-2022. For Jack Ginnivan, early 2023. Private acts in private places being made public by people with no care.
Of course, a pile-on of negative public opinion was to flow, sentiment largely based around ultra-talented footballers abusing the supposed privilege of being listed with an AFL club. The AFL itself handed down official match-suspension sanctions.
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Fast forward to 2026. These two high-profiled footballers with the massive cult followings, and while quite possibly still prone to distractions, have become blueprints of growth – Smith coming off a season in which AFL coaches voted him their MVP, and Ginnivan this year playing some of the most damaging and smart football of any player in the competition.
Even when mired in their highly adversely publicised periods, neither Smith nor Ginnivan played the woe-is-me card. Both immediately apologised and stated they had done the wrong thing. Both volunteered context to their actions. Significantly, both owned their wrongdoings.
Smith was just 21 when he was the subject of that blinding public focus. At 23, he required a knee reconstruction and as per his own words in accepting the 2025 AFLCA Champion Player of the Year trophy, had been required to attend a "psych ward".
Ginnivan was even younger, 20, when he had to deal with the public vision and outcry from his movements, which while wrong should have been allowed to be kept private, in a Torquay hotel.
These two rockstars, now with different bands, needed different football environments to fully immerse themselves in their respective re-emergences.
While Ginnivan struggled with form in the matches that initially followed, he was still good enough to be included in the Collingwood premiership team of 2023. But just weeks later, an offer to extricate himself from the focus of playing for the biggest club in the land proved compelling, and with every single match he has since played for Hawthorn, he has got better and better, to the point where he is now entrenched as one of Sam Mitchell’s most important facets of a premiership push.
Smith had long been desperate to exit the Western Bulldogs, at which he played in a losing Grand Final in 2021 and which selected him at No.7 in the 2018 national draft. That deal was transacted at the end of 2024. It hasn’t been plain sailing; it never will be with Smith, including moments last year that most seriously involved words directed at a photographer at a GMHBA training session. But away from the big Melbourne smoke, he has been able to establish a meaningful and workable life-football balance.
There aren’t many music rockstars who haven’t personally crashed at some stage, or had a tour cancelled, or endured a band break-up, and many concede they are never too far from another bad headline. The flawed rockstars can sometimes emerge as the most real. And the AFL has always desperately needed its share of rockstars.
The heady stage of playing big-time sport and the fame, ego and adulation that was thrust on Smith and Ginnivan from the very early days of their careers had the potential to derail them.
At new clubs and with different perspectives, Smith and Ginnivan managed to turn those ugly moments in 2022 and 2023 into starting points for growth.
