The ‘fear of being exposed’ behind Sicily’s scuffles, scowls and suspensions

There has always been a storm inside James Sicily.

For most of his career, we have been able to see it.

It has appeared in the arguments, the scowls, the suspensions and those moments when one of the competition’s best defenders has seemed determined to fight the game as much as play it.

At 31, Sicily has not extinguished the storm. Nor does he particularly want to.

He has just become better at deciding how much of it to unleash.

“There’s obviously always a storm within me when I go out on the field,” Sicily says.

“I’ve got to battle that.”

On Thursday night, as Hawthorn confronts Fremantle in a qualifying final with a home preliminary final on offer, Sicily will willingly walk back into the environment most likely to stir it.

Pressure. Consequence. Fear.

He loves it.

“It makes you feel alive,” Sicily says. “It’s what you play the games for. These are the games that really matter.”

But for all the swagger, Sicily carries an insecurity that seems almost incompatible with the footballer we have watched for more than a decade.

All-Australian. Hawthorn captain. One of the great intercept defenders of his generation. A player who can bend games from behind the ball and whose confidence, at least externally, has rarely appeared in short supply.

Yet, after everything he has achieved, he still feels the need to prove people wrong. Including himself.

“I think I’ve always just felt like a bit of an imposter at times.

“I’ve always got a few demons around not feeling good enough, or not being good enough, from things in the past. I think that’s something that always keeps me motivated and wanting to be better.”

It is a striking admission because it helps explain Sicily the footballer.

The combustible Sicily was never simply angry. There was fear underneath it.

Playing in defence only amplifies it. A midfielder can lose a contest and watch the game continue behind him. Sicily’s mistakes have often arrived with a scoreboard consequence attached.

“As a back, your fear of being exposed is quite high,” he says.

“A direct loss for you normally means a goal. And it’s your fault.

“So there’s a bit of that, and then a bit of proving people wrong, and also just wanting to win. And setting a high standard for yourself and for your teammates.”

For years, Sicily has wrestled with how close to the edge he needs to play. This season, he consciously decided to move closer to it again.

The difficulty, as he discovered against the Western Bulldogs earlier this year, is knowing where the edge ends.

Sicily skirmished with his opponent Will Lewis all night, trading barbs and shoves until Lewis, playing as a defensive forward, prevailed in a six-point win for the Dogs.

“That’s where I got it probably a bit out of hand,” he says.

“And then being able to review that and be like, ‘OK, I want to be on edge, but not that far over the edge.’

“Because it actually works well for me and I feel as though I play well, but I lose the ability to lead and become approachable for my teammates.

“I’d rather give up a bit of me time and me playing well to then be able to lead the boys better.”

That might be the most significant evolution in Sicily. The younger version could afford to make everything about James Sicily. The captain cannot.

He still needs the fire. Hawthorn probably needs it, too. But leadership has required him to understand that there are moments when his greatest individual strength can become a collective weakness.

One or two blow-ups, he knows, and the old reputation returns.

“All of a sudden it’s like, ‘He’s the angry guy again’,” Sicily says.

“For the most part, I feel like I’ve done a reasonable enough job.”

There is another contradiction in Hawthorn’s captain.

Sicily and coach Sam Mitchell are hardly personality twins, yet theirs has become one of the club’s most important relationships.

They were teammates for several seasons before Mitchell became his coach, removing some of the normal distance between senior coach and captain.

“I find that because I’ve known him as a player, now as a coach, it’s such an approachable environment,” Sicily says.

“We can have good chats, we can have challenging chats. Give our views on what we think we should be doing, or anything under the sun, really.

“He empowers the leaders to do their job and do what they feel is right.

“He’s someone that is a big support, and he challenges me as well, which I need.”

This year, Sicily has also shared the captaincy load with Jai Newcombe, a change he says has freed some mental “bandwidth” during the week without altering the responsibility he feels once he crosses the line.

He is refreshingly unsentimental about how long the title should remain his.

“The job [of] being captain isn’t forever, and it’s not yours to keep just because you’re the captain,” he says.

“It’s something that we’ll weigh up at the end of the year, like we’ve done every year. What do we think is best for the team?

There are, Sicily believes, bigger matters immediately at hand.

Hawthorn finished inside the top four without Sicily believing they have consistently reached their highest level.

There were games the Hawks should have won. There were ugly defeats, particularly against Melbourne. But there was enough consistency to earn the double chance and enough evidence for Sicily to believe Hawthorn’s best football remains ahead of them.

Fremantle presents a particularly revealing test.

“They have a patch of 10 or 15 minutes of just pure dominance and take the game away from the opposition,” Sicily says.

Finals, Sicily says, change people.

Players who have spent six months fighting for their own positions suddenly become consumed by the collective.

Sicily feels the change more acutely than most.

This is the environment he has always appeared built for. The challenge now is not calming the storm. It’s controlling it.

Because somewhere beneath the confidence, the captaincy and more than a decade of evidence suggesting otherwise, James Sicily is still trying to convince James Sicily that he belongs.

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