Despite winning a best and fairest, finishing equal sixth in the Brownlow Medal last year, earning All Australian honours and being named the Bulldogs’ 29th captain, he is not a player we know that much about.
The common perception of Boyd, borne out of the way we see him play, is close to the mark. He is straight-talking and hard-working. Intolerant of fools. And he is tough - his face is hardened and his hands strong.
How tough was emphasised last season when he missed only two games with a broken left hand, which still bears a large scar.
But, as he reveals, there certainly is another side to him, one the football public would rarely have seen. Boyd is also a finance-studying, risotto-cooking, tattoo-bearing, Will Ferrell-loving, routine-obsessed, blue-eyed devoted husband, whose face lights up with almost giddy excitement when talking about the impending birth of his first child, due later this month.
Boyd sheepishly peeps his head through the door of a back room of Figjam Café in Carnegie, a trendy suburb in Melbourne’s south-east. It’s his only day off for the week and we were scheduled - as per text message from the club’s media manager the night before - to meet at 10am. It’s 10.01 when Boyd, with freshly-shaved head, an ounce of fashionable stubble and slightly crooked nose, greets me with a firm handshake.
"Sorry I’m late," he says, with a deep, husky voice. "I thought you were out the front."
Dressed in dark jeans, thongs and a designer T-shirt, Boyd slides into the busy café (potentially named after a well-known colloquial term not appropriate for Boyd) without one patron turning his or her head. He does down-to-earth better than most. While I have jumped up to buy hot chocolates, Boyd has grabbed a bottle of water and filled both cups.
"Are you sure you don’t want to go outside to do it? Will that pick it up?" he asks, pointing at my iPhone, doubling as a recorder. The simple gestures serve as a reminder of one thing: Boyd remains unaffected by his success. Such an approach, without ego or self-importance, can likely be traced to his background.
Sharon and Peter Boyd divorced when Matthew was young, and he lived at home with his mother (now a coterie group member of the Bulldogs, who never misses one of her son’s games) until he was almost 21. He’s inherited her discipline, persistence and ambition.
"That’s just how I am; it’s how Mum brought me up," he says.
Boyd’s father, a defender who captained Frankston in the VFA, was taller than him and just as tough. He failed to break through to play senior League football despite several seasons training with North Melbourne in the 1980s. Boyd doesn’t know a lot about his father’s career.
Boyd grew up in Berwick, almost an hour out of Melbourne’s CBD. As a junior, he played locally at Narre Warren, where he was a member of six consecutive premierships. He attended Mazenod College, a Catholic school on the other side of the freeway, near Waverley Park in Mulgrave.
He was a member of a middle-class, normal family. It’s a way of life he hasn’t forgotten, and seems to still appreciate.
Weeks earlier, in our first meeting at the Bulldogs’ Whitten Oval headquarters, Boyd had run through his football ascension from no-hoper to AFL captain.
After giving up basketball (Michael Jordan was his hero), Boyd spent two seasons with the Dandenong Stingrays in the TAC Cup, but was overlooked in the 2001 draft. Given his father’s history at the club, Boyd chose to continue his career at Frankston in the VFL.
When I mention others have suggested the reason he was not drafted was because he was too light, I am immediately challenged.
"Who said that? Someone at Frankston?" He is on the money. "I don’t think that’s right," he says. But he does not know why for sure.
The truth is, Boyd doesn’t do a lot of looking back - "you can’t afford to" - but his time at the Dolphins, a once proud suburban club now struggling at state level, wasn’t memorable.
Boyd was studying commerce at Deakin University in Burwood, about a 40-minute drive from Berwick in his white Hyundai Excel. It was another 40 minutes to training, and 50 minutes back home.
He’d spend most of each trip agitated, wondering what more he could be doing to get picked for the seniors and, if lucky, get drafted. Realistically, he knew it was a "long shot".
When Frankston coach and enigmatic former Hawthorn, St Kilda and Brisbane Bears midfielder Robert Mace did give him one senior game, he played only one quarter, before being dropped back to the reserves.
Boyd had already decided he would quit Frankston before the club’s awards night, when he won the reserves’ best and fairest, but he is still slightly embarrassed by his acceptance speech, when he told the crowd: "I’d like to thank ‘Macey’ for giving me the opportunity to win this by not playing me in the seniors."
He smiles coyly: "I'd had a few beers by that stage."
By then, he had decided he would play for Mazenod College’s old boys’ team in the amateurs with his schoolmates. A call from Bulldogs recruiting manager Scott Clayton asking him to come down to training ended those plans.
Boyd’s progression as a Bulldog since - he was put on the rookie list at the end of 2002 while on an official pre-season club camp in Ballarat - has been as much a triumph of persistence as anything.
His continual improvement - something assistant coaches Alan Richardson and Chris Bond urged him to focus on when he started at the club - has seen him develop into one of the competition’s best players, but it was as much about having the right attitude as it was application.
In his first few seasons at the club, Bulldogs champion Brad Johnson thought Boyd was a "smart trainer", that he would train hard, but not push himself to breaking point. Boyd grins at that suggestion, but disagrees.
In fact, pre-season training was a ‘break’ for Boyd. He used the off-season, when others were travelling or visiting family or relaxing, to get ahead.
"I’d absolutely smash myself in our off-seasons because I saw it as my chance to catch up on these guys who had experience on me and could do it all," he recalls.
His has been, however, a slow-burn career. The player who unassumingly grows into his role until - bang - he’s dominating games. When the topic of how he has grown to be so consistent is raised, Boyd politely suggests being consistent isn’t really his thing.
"Consistency comes from a belief that if you have the right attitude and right work rate, then you’ll get the same results. That’s not what I’m about.
"I don’t want to just get the same results. I want to improve and want to get better at something in my game every year," he says.
"If 30 touches is what gauges consistency, then I don’t want that. I want to be consistent in my work rate, intensity and leadership, and I think if I’m consistent in those things, my performance will reflect that."
Boyd doesn’t chew up and spit out opponents. He gnaws away at them. He wins one contest, then another, and another. His hands are quick and precise under pressure, he rarely makes a mistake by foot, and he’s hard, at both ball and man.
Boyd is irrepressible. He is death by a thousand kicks.
Football for Boyd, though, is not only an on-going pursuit of excellence, but it is also about enjoying the life that comes with being an elite footballer. That he has perspective about what is an abnormal existence is not a surprise, because it’s the little things that keep Boyd going.
He’s most jovial when talking about the culture of the footy club. Of how an anecdote lights up his day. Of how teammate Patrick Veszpremi makes him laugh during every training session. Of how being around a new batch of recruits each year makes him feel like a 21-year-old, not a 28-year-old. To see Boyd as an intense person is to see one side, but not the only facet of what is a complex personality.
He loves football, but he’s not obsessed by it. He strives for team success but understands circumstances mean it might not happen. He uses the skills he has learned in football to improve as a person away from the game, aiming to continually develop as a person.
Most of all, despite admitting he’s not a creative personality, he gets pleasure out of the game. "I have more fun than some people might think," he says.
"I just like the challenge. The best part of my week is game-day, but I love the lead-up to it, all the anticipation and nerves and anxiousness," he says. "I don’t go over the top with it, but I get excited to play."
He aims to instil the same attitude as captain, the role he was appointed to in January. He admits to previously being too hard on teammates whom he didn’t think were working as hard as he was on the track.
With age, he’s softened that approach, now understanding not everyone works the same way.
It’s going to be a busy year for him. In between our two interviews, he led the club in its NAB Cup campaign and took part in a host of media interviews. He may have done more in that short time than he had before, but he’s relishing representing his club and teammates in an official capacity.
"We might not have many premierships, but this club’s got a lot of heart and character, and to be leading the boys out to represent that each week is pretty bloody exciting," he says.
He may now be the club captain, but Boyd says he won’t be changing anything.
As much as Boyd thinks footy has altered his approach to life, he’s stayed true to who he was before success in the red, white and blue.
Even last year, Boyd, at a Metallica concert, ran into a classmate he had barely seen since graduating in 2000. Boyd, dressed appropriately for the occasion in the metalhead’s favoured flannelette shirt, greeted him like any old school mate would. Footy wasn’t mentioned once.
Boyd admits coming in as a rookie meant he had no expectations placed on him - "and even now there aren’t many" - but he’s never lived the life of an AFL superstar. He has never shared a house with teammates, never been embroiled in off-field controversy, never been a regular in the social pages. His stable personal life has played a factor.
Boyd married his high school girlfriend, Kate, in 2007. The pair bought their first house when they were 21 and now, in only several weeks, they’re ready to welcome a baby. Kate works in administration at a finance company, and the pair moved into a new home in the inner suburbs last season.
Although he says he doesn’t think about his story, it’s obvious he has a healthy appreciation of what he’s done. He believes his qualities have helped him: "I have always had that resolve; things have never come easy for me."
But Boyd also understands football has provided him with something: ongoing challenges to test his ability, prove himself and strive for the ultimate team success.
More than anything, though, Boyd has thought his way through his career.
When he came to the club, he thought about how to get his football on track. When he was in the leadership group, he thought about whether he was right for the role before he nominated himself for the captaincy. He’s even tailored his own game to hide his weaknesses.
He’s always thinking about what’s next. It’s a career with a focus on competing, improving and succeeding, but it’s built on absorbing experiences and using, not forgetting, them.
Even before answering every question during our interviews, Boyd mulls over what to say. He appears to be a rational man driven by process.
"Playing footy is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and you’ve just got to make the most of it," he says. And just as we’re about to finish our hot chocolates, he says, on cue: "Hopefully, that’s what I’ve done."
After some genial small talk with the recorder turned off, we leave through the front of the café and he begs to cover the $6.60 for the drinks, but I’ve got this one covered. He’s parked down the road while the train station looms for me, about a 100m walk.
"You sure you don’t want a lift?"
Matthew Boyd on...
His first year ...
It was daunting because I knew absolutely nobody. I looked at guys like Chris Grant, Brad Johnson, Rohan Smith, Luke Darcy, Scott West and I was starstruck. Whenever they kicked the ball to me, all I could think about was not making a mistake
Success ...
You don’t want to end a career in the AFL having not tasted that success. But you’re not going to win a premiership before the game is played itself. You’ve got to win enough games to get there and whether we do or not really depends on how focused we are each week
Club culture ...
We had a guy from the [NFL team] New York Jets come to the club and he said athletes and footballers and boys are exactly the same everywhere. They enjoy the same humour; some are larrikins and some are big kids just having fun in their workplace
Daniel Cross ...
In our first couple of years, there’s no doubt the two of us would have been competing for the same spot and, to be best mates through that time, which we still are, is quite funny. It’s great competition didn’t drive us apart. We’re always pushing each other along
Matthew Boyd
Born: August 27, 1982
Recruited from: Narre Warren/Dandenong U18/Frankston
Debut: Round 7, 2003 v Fremantle
Height: 184cm Weight: 89kg
Games: 165 Goals: 59
Player honours: best and fairest 2009; 3rd best and fairest 2008; All Australian 2009
Brownlow Medal: career votes 52
This article first appeared in the AFL Record
