JUST BECAUSE PROFESSIONAL sport is clinical and cut-throat by its nature doesn’t dilute the fact that Saturday is going to be an emotionally-charged day for Pearce Hanley.
Brisbane, his home away from home, the club where he cut his teeth in Aussie Rules, where his friends and brother Cian still play, are his opposition in Round 1 of this year’s AFL season.
After spending eight years at the Lions, last October Hanley agreed to move away from the hustle and bustle of city life, and shifted himself 70 kilometres down the beautiful Queensland seaboard to holiday hot-spot the Gold Coast.
AFL is an afterthought for most sports fans in this part of Australia, once again affording Hanley the opportunity to go about his day-to-day business with the anonymity rugby league players could only dream of.
Hanley will still be almost 2,000km away from the spiritual home of AFL, the Melbourne Cricket Ground, but crucially for him will remain less than an hour’s drive from those who matter to him most in the southern hemisphere, namely Cian and his bull mastiff Marley, the latter of which he hopes will join him by the beach as soon as he up-sizes his living arrangements.
Almost six months since completing the switch the Mayo man admits the change of scenery has been reinvigorating, and he’s desperate to scale the heights that saw him narrowly miss out on All-Australian selection, the AFL’s All-Star equivalent, in 2013 and 2014.
“I left my dog back in Brisbane with my younger brother but hopefully in a few months I can get a house and move her down. Apart from that it’s been pretty smooth and I’m really enjoying it,” Hanley tells The42 of his move south.
“We get days off during the week so I can go up to Brisbane and spend some time with Ciano and the dog so that was one of the biggest reasons as well why I chose the Gold Coast because I’m close to the only family I kind of have in Australia.
I feel I’m getting my fitness back this year since I’ve come back this season. I feel fast again. I’m definitely looking to get back to that form I showed in 2014.
The 28-year-old midfielder finds himself at a crossroads in his career and he’s desperate to put a disappointing final campaign at Brisbane behind him when he begins his 10th AFL season this weekend. And with a chance to shine against his former employers, you couldn’t write the script much better.
It’s a sign of the lofty standards he measures himself by that Hanley considers last season, where he still finished fourth in Brisbane’s best and fairest player awards, albeit in a struggling team, to be such a low point in what has been an Irish AFL success story.
“Last year wasn’t my best year. I don’t think I was very fit, and there were a few different reasons for that,” adds Hanley, whose run-and-carry style is expected to be a nice fit with the Suns.
I started the year pretty well and then against Collingwood I rolled my ankle. After that I couldn’t train for pretty much the next few weeks.
“Games were tough to get through, not being able to train during the week and not being able to turn or have the speed I usually have, my form dropped, and my confidence along with it.
“The season just kind of spiralled out of control. The harder I worked, the harder I tried, the worse I seemed to play. Hopefully it won’t happen again this year.
“I think it was made quite clear during the year that obviously I wasn’t playing my best football in Brisbane, I wasn’t very happy and I needed a change-up.”
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ICYMI: Hanley, Witts, Lyons, Barlow, Bowes and Ainsworth will all line up for opening round ☀️ #AFLSunsLions
Hanley has impressed in his first pre-season for the Suns, averaging more than 20 disposals in his three JLT Community Series games, including an opening-round victory against who else but the Lions.
The experience of playing and scoring a goal against Brisbane last month was a strange one, Hanley admits. However, it will be an altogether different occasion when he lines out against them at the Gold Coast’s Metricon Stadium in Round 1 of the season proper at 9.05am (Irish time) on Saturday.
Hanley’s circumstances dictate that the oval’s spotlight will be on the former Mayo senior, there’s no avoiding it. He says he wasn’t singled out for too much special attention a month ago, but that may not be the case this time around.
“They were very quiet in the pre-season game so whether they’re saving all their ammunition for Round 1 I’m not too sure, but I guess we’ll see soon enough,” Hanley quips.
“It wasn’t too bad, it wasn’t as weird as I thought it was going to be.
I got interviewed there a few weeks ago and someone suggested it would be like meeting your ex-girlfriend again, but it definitely wasn’t that awkward.
“I’m still good friends with the Brisbane boys, I had eight good years there.
“It was fun to play against them, you’d match up on a lot of the players in training drills and you go as hard in training as you do on game day, so I was kind of used to it in that sense.”
During his eight years at the Lions, who he joined just months after making his senior championship debut for Mayo in 2007, Hanley often produced some of his best football in the Queensland derby, known as the QClash, against the Suns.
The Ballaghaderreen man has twice been awarded the Marcus Ashcroft medal, given to the best player on the ground, for his performances in derby games in 2014 and 2016.
He is hoping he can continue that trend this weekend, albeit from the red corner on this occasion, in the 13th edition of a feisty rivalry that is still in its infancy.
Brisbane, while a leading force in the game at the turn of the millennium with three successive Premierships from 2001-2003, have finished among the bottom seven teams for the past six seasons, well short of the all-important top eight who reach the AFL finals.
Gold Coast haven’t fared any better since joining the competition in 2011 but Hanley is hopeful they can make a big push forward this year, especially with so many talented youngsters and the likes of Gary Ablett Jr, one of the greatest players to play the game in recent memory, on their roster.
“They’ve had a lot of injuries the last couple of years,” Hanley says of the Suns.
“I think there’s a lot more depth in the list, they’ve brought in a lot of good youngsters, and they’ve brought in some new recruits who are going to help bridge the gap this year.
“It would be great to play finals but I think Gold Coast have got a lot of respect to earn in the competition before we can think about playing finals.”
Ireland's Pearce Hanley battles for possession with Nic Naitanui of Australia in the 2014 International Rules Series. Hanley is a fan of the hybrid game, especially as a two-Test series, and if his body allows him he is hoping to represent Ireland later this year. Cathal Noonan / INPHO
Cathal Noonan / INPHO / INPHO
The stress AFL puts on the bodies of its professional players is well documented and something many of the Irish contingent trying to make it Down Under are regularly scuppered by.
Hanley underwent a double hip operation in January 2015 which took him a long time to fully recover from, while the likes of Cork’s Ciaran Sheehan and Louth native Ciaran Byrne have had repeated long-term setbacks during their budding careers at Carlton.
These variables make it all the more impressive that Hanley will earn his 130th first-grade appearance this weekend, a figure shy only of ‘Irish Experiment’ success stories Tadhg Kennelly (197) and the late duo of Jim Stynes (264) and Sean Wight (150). Laois’s Zach Tuohy is fifth on the list and will reach 121 when he makes his debut in the navy blue and white stripes of Geelong at Fremantle on Sunday.
Cian Hanley, Pearce’s younger brother by more than seven years, has had a rough start to life in Brisbane since his arrival at the end of 2014 as injuries have continuously hampered his progress.
Cian, a minor All-Ireland winner in 2013, joined his brother at the Lions with the odds already stacked against him, an ACL injury sustained in an All-Ireland minor semi-final against Kerry in 2014 keeping him sidelined for the bulk of his first season.
A serious groin injury put paid to his second-season ambitions but now Cian is poised to make his first reserve-grade appearance for the Lions in the curtain-raiser to Saturday’s QClash. And his older brother couldn’t be prouder of the resilience that the recently-turned 21-year-old, who has succeeded Pearce in the Lions’s No 11 jersey, has shown.
“Hopefully I get to see a bit of that game. I’m excited to watch him play. He’s put in a lot of work and he’s been very unfortunate with injuries.
“Hopefully he gets a good run at it and I’m sure if he does, he’ll show Brisbane why they picked him up.
I think the struggles will stand to Ciano because he didn’t play any football in his first two years.
“He never took a backwards step, his character has been unbelievable. He’s a very impressive young kid, he deserves all the luck in the future and I hope he plays.”
A fighting spirit is something the Hanleys have in abundance and it’s a trait younger brother Tommy has also had to call on as the brave teen continues his fight against cancer.
It’s hard enough being on the other side of the world when everything is going smoothly at home, but when illness strikes down one of those you love, the vast distance between family members is further highlighted.
Tommy’s strife was brought to national attention last year when Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson sent the 15-year-old his best wishes via Instagram as the youngster continues his battle. And Pearce admits it’s been a particularly tough time to be away.
“Tommy has been absolutely excellent. No matter what he’s going through, whenever I talk to him or whenever I FaceTime him, he’s always got a big smile on his face.
“Like his older brother Ciano he’s got some serious character about him. We all love him very much and he’s doing well.”
While his heart and mind may regularly be in Mayo due to family circumstances, Hanley, who is considering doing a real estate course and his coaching badges as he plans for post-football life, doesn’t see himself moving home any time soon despite the lure of potentially helping his beloved Green and Red over the line.
I say it every year that I’d love to come back and play. But it’s just too hard. Obviously the club in Australia have you contracted and they wouldn’t want to lose you for a year.
“And they wouldn’t only lose you for a year, when you come back you probably wouldn’t be the same player because the game evolves so much in Aussie Rules. So I don’t think it’s something I could do.
“I’m contracted with Gold Coast. I’ll have this year and I’ll have three more years added on to that so all I can think of is my contract here and if I could play for a year or two on top of that, that’d be great.”
For now at least, Mayo football remains just an early chapter of Hanley’s sporting journey. This weekend, he is desperate to get the next one off to a winning start.
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Pearce Hanley: Leaving Brisbane, his brother and dog behind for a fresh start in Aussie Rules
JUST BECAUSE PROFESSIONAL sport is clinical and cut-throat by its nature doesn’t dilute the fact that Saturday is going to be an emotionally-charged day for Pearce Hanley.
Brisbane, his home away from home, the club where he cut his teeth in Aussie Rules, where his friends and brother Cian still play, are his opposition in Round 1 of this year’s AFL season.
After spending eight years at the Lions, last October Hanley agreed to move away from the hustle and bustle of city life, and shifted himself 70 kilometres down the beautiful Queensland seaboard to holiday hot-spot the Gold Coast.
AFL is an afterthought for most sports fans in this part of Australia, once again affording Hanley the opportunity to go about his day-to-day business with the anonymity rugby league players could only dream of.
Hanley will still be almost 2,000km away from the spiritual home of AFL, the Melbourne Cricket Ground, but crucially for him will remain less than an hour’s drive from those who matter to him most in the southern hemisphere, namely Cian and his bull mastiff Marley, the latter of which he hopes will join him by the beach as soon as he up-sizes his living arrangements.
Almost six months since completing the switch the Mayo man admits the change of scenery has been reinvigorating, and he’s desperate to scale the heights that saw him narrowly miss out on All-Australian selection, the AFL’s All-Star equivalent, in 2013 and 2014.
“I left my dog back in Brisbane with my younger brother but hopefully in a few months I can get a house and move her down. Apart from that it’s been pretty smooth and I’m really enjoying it,” Hanley tells The42 of his move south.
“We get days off during the week so I can go up to Brisbane and spend some time with Ciano and the dog so that was one of the biggest reasons as well why I chose the Gold Coast because I’m close to the only family I kind of have in Australia.
The 28-year-old midfielder finds himself at a crossroads in his career and he’s desperate to put a disappointing final campaign at Brisbane behind him when he begins his 10th AFL season this weekend. And with a chance to shine against his former employers, you couldn’t write the script much better.
It’s a sign of the lofty standards he measures himself by that Hanley considers last season, where he still finished fourth in Brisbane’s best and fairest player awards, albeit in a struggling team, to be such a low point in what has been an Irish AFL success story.
“Last year wasn’t my best year. I don’t think I was very fit, and there were a few different reasons for that,” adds Hanley, whose run-and-carry style is expected to be a nice fit with the Suns.
“Games were tough to get through, not being able to train during the week and not being able to turn or have the speed I usually have, my form dropped, and my confidence along with it.
“The season just kind of spiralled out of control. The harder I worked, the harder I tried, the worse I seemed to play. Hopefully it won’t happen again this year.
“I think it was made quite clear during the year that obviously I wasn’t playing my best football in Brisbane, I wasn’t very happy and I needed a change-up.”
Hanley has impressed in his first pre-season for the Suns, averaging more than 20 disposals in his three JLT Community Series games, including an opening-round victory against who else but the Lions.
The experience of playing and scoring a goal against Brisbane last month was a strange one, Hanley admits. However, it will be an altogether different occasion when he lines out against them at the Gold Coast’s Metricon Stadium in Round 1 of the season proper at 9.05am (Irish time) on Saturday.
Hanley’s circumstances dictate that the oval’s spotlight will be on the former Mayo senior, there’s no avoiding it. He says he wasn’t singled out for too much special attention a month ago, but that may not be the case this time around.
“They were very quiet in the pre-season game so whether they’re saving all their ammunition for Round 1 I’m not too sure, but I guess we’ll see soon enough,” Hanley quips.
“It wasn’t too bad, it wasn’t as weird as I thought it was going to be.
“I’m still good friends with the Brisbane boys, I had eight good years there.
“It was fun to play against them, you’d match up on a lot of the players in training drills and you go as hard in training as you do on game day, so I was kind of used to it in that sense.”
During his eight years at the Lions, who he joined just months after making his senior championship debut for Mayo in 2007, Hanley often produced some of his best football in the Queensland derby, known as the QClash, against the Suns.
The Ballaghaderreen man has twice been awarded the Marcus Ashcroft medal, given to the best player on the ground, for his performances in derby games in 2014 and 2016.
2014 v Suns
2016 v Suns
He is hoping he can continue that trend this weekend, albeit from the red corner on this occasion, in the 13th edition of a feisty rivalry that is still in its infancy.
Brisbane, while a leading force in the game at the turn of the millennium with three successive Premierships from 2001-2003, have finished among the bottom seven teams for the past six seasons, well short of the all-important top eight who reach the AFL finals.
Gold Coast haven’t fared any better since joining the competition in 2011 but Hanley is hopeful they can make a big push forward this year, especially with so many talented youngsters and the likes of Gary Ablett Jr, one of the greatest players to play the game in recent memory, on their roster.
“They’ve had a lot of injuries the last couple of years,” Hanley says of the Suns.
“I think there’s a lot more depth in the list, they’ve brought in a lot of good youngsters, and they’ve brought in some new recruits who are going to help bridge the gap this year.
“It would be great to play finals but I think Gold Coast have got a lot of respect to earn in the competition before we can think about playing finals.”
The stress AFL puts on the bodies of its professional players is well documented and something many of the Irish contingent trying to make it Down Under are regularly scuppered by.
Hanley underwent a double hip operation in January 2015 which took him a long time to fully recover from, while the likes of Cork’s Ciaran Sheehan and Louth native Ciaran Byrne have had repeated long-term setbacks during their budding careers at Carlton.
These variables make it all the more impressive that Hanley will earn his 130th first-grade appearance this weekend, a figure shy only of ‘Irish Experiment’ success stories Tadhg Kennelly (197) and the late duo of Jim Stynes (264) and Sean Wight (150). Laois’s Zach Tuohy is fifth on the list and will reach 121 when he makes his debut in the navy blue and white stripes of Geelong at Fremantle on Sunday.
Cian Hanley, Pearce’s younger brother by more than seven years, has had a rough start to life in Brisbane since his arrival at the end of 2014 as injuries have continuously hampered his progress.
Cian, a minor All-Ireland winner in 2013, joined his brother at the Lions with the odds already stacked against him, an ACL injury sustained in an All-Ireland minor semi-final against Kerry in 2014 keeping him sidelined for the bulk of his first season.
A serious groin injury put paid to his second-season ambitions but now Cian is poised to make his first reserve-grade appearance for the Lions in the curtain-raiser to Saturday’s QClash. And his older brother couldn’t be prouder of the resilience that the recently-turned 21-year-old, who has succeeded Pearce in the Lions’s No 11 jersey, has shown.
“Hopefully I get to see a bit of that game. I’m excited to watch him play. He’s put in a lot of work and he’s been very unfortunate with injuries.
“Hopefully he gets a good run at it and I’m sure if he does, he’ll show Brisbane why they picked him up.
“He never took a backwards step, his character has been unbelievable. He’s a very impressive young kid, he deserves all the luck in the future and I hope he plays.”
A fighting spirit is something the Hanleys have in abundance and it’s a trait younger brother Tommy has also had to call on as the brave teen continues his fight against cancer.
It’s hard enough being on the other side of the world when everything is going smoothly at home, but when illness strikes down one of those you love, the vast distance between family members is further highlighted.
Tommy’s strife was brought to national attention last year when Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson sent the 15-year-old his best wishes via Instagram as the youngster continues his battle. And Pearce admits it’s been a particularly tough time to be away.
“Tommy has been absolutely excellent. No matter what he’s going through, whenever I talk to him or whenever I FaceTime him, he’s always got a big smile on his face.
“Like his older brother Ciano he’s got some serious character about him. We all love him very much and he’s doing well.”
While his heart and mind may regularly be in Mayo due to family circumstances, Hanley, who is considering doing a real estate course and his coaching badges as he plans for post-football life, doesn’t see himself moving home any time soon despite the lure of potentially helping his beloved Green and Red over the line.
“And they wouldn’t only lose you for a year, when you come back you probably wouldn’t be the same player because the game evolves so much in Aussie Rules. So I don’t think it’s something I could do.
“I’m contracted with Gold Coast. I’ll have this year and I’ll have three more years added on to that so all I can think of is my contract here and if I could play for a year or two on top of that, that’d be great.”
For now at least, Mayo football remains just an early chapter of Hanley’s sporting journey. This weekend, he is desperate to get the next one off to a winning start.
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