Glenn McGrath really needs no introduction. A household name both here and abroad, the 53-year-old describes himself as a proud father, happy husband, retired cricketer, philanthropist, and outdoorsman.
Not only is he considered one of the greatest bowlers of all time, Glenn is also president and co-founder of the McGrath Foundation, which raises money to place breast care nurses in communities across Australia and increase breast awareness in young Australian women.
Recently, Glenn spoke at the National Farmers’ Federation conference about the power of leadership and resilience. Below is an excerpt of his speech.
Today, I’m talking a little bit about leadership, a little bit about resilience, and I guess through my life I've had a little bit of a dabble in both, but I do view myself a very lucky person.
Sure, there's been some really tough times in my life without a doubt, but I’m very lucky that I've gotten to do what I love to do.
I was in the Australian team for 14 years and to stand up here now, I have to pinch myself to think that I've been retired for over 16.5 years. Amazing how quickly time goes.
A lot of people ask me, do I miss playing? And the funny thing is, I don't.
Yeah, I loved every minute of it when I played. I don't miss the training, the traveling, the time away from home, the hotel rooms, preparing for matches, even the matches themselves.
But you get to spend quite a bit of time with some teammates, and I thought I'd share a story of a teammate of mine to start with who had a big impact on me. He was quite an amazing person. His name was Shane Warne.
Warnie was an incredible cricketer. He just knew the game so well. It was great having him in the team because I thanked him for a lot of my test wickets. He said he thanked me for a couple of his.
But the thing about Warnie was whatever he did, was bigger and better than the rest of us.
Shane was here, the rest of the team were there. We accepted that. I think Shane accepted that.
I think about him now, and that he's not with us anymore is still pretty tough. I still find it hard to come to terms with, but I guess it's just one of those things.
Talking about resilience and leadership, and I guess loss - the reason I started with that story about Shane is because there are people that aren't with us anymore and we could have done more.
I think there were signs that something wasn't quite right, but he didn't do anything about it.
And to me, it says there's more we can do. It's not good enough, and we can do better.
When you’re on the Australian team, you’re out there with 10 or 11 of your teammates, plus the guys off the field, and you realise sometimes you feel like you're out there by yourself.
It's not until you actually open up and share your story or share how you're feeling with your teammates that you realise they're feeling very similar to you and it's funny how I look at the farming community.
Now where I grew up, my father was very much you know, ‘if you've got a problem, you don't talk about it. You harden up, you get on and deal with it’.
I guess that's what resilience is to a degree. It's getting through adversity, and then picking yourself up and carrying on.
And I look at a lot of farmers and they’re as hard as they come, they're resilient. Without a doubt they push themselves every day, but then it's about how you pick yourself up and carry on.
Day after day, season after season, it can have an impact.
There's been some tough times on the field, but probably the toughest times in my life have been off the field. I think most people know the story of my late wife Jane going through breast cancer.
When you're diagnosed with cancer, the fear that's associated with that word is pretty horrendous.
When you hear that word, 1000 things go through your mind, you tend to shut off and you don't hear what people are saying, what the doctor is saying.
I remember when Jane was diagnosed, she was only 31 at the time. We’d just come back from the Ashes series in ’97 and she noticed something wasn't quite right with one of her breasts.
We went to some friends and they said ‘you're only 31, everything's gonna be fine, but just get checked out just to be sure’.
We we're pretty confident everything was going to be fine, and I remember sitting in a doctor's office and they sort of hit us pretty hard.
He said, ‘yep, the results are in – it’s breast cancer. The only treatment is a mastectomy, followed by chemotherapy, followed by radiotherapy’.
I remember that Jane didn't want to accept that; she thought losing one of her breasts was part of losing who she was as a woman, and she refused the operation.
We left the doctor's office, went home and packed and we went bush to the property that we’d just bought 160km north-west of Bourke.
We went out there just to get away from things and get our heads around it.
When we came back, she had the operation, followed by the chemo, followed by radiotherapy and it was a pretty tough time in our life.
But Jane had incredible strength and she got through it.
We were approached by a publishing company called Random House. They wanted us to write a book, telling our story from our perspective.
We thought about it for a while because we're both fairly private people, even though we had a profile. And I remember, we thought if we could help one person by telling our story, we thought that was worthwhile.
So, we decided to write the book. They wanted to give a certain amount of the proceeds of the book to a charity foundation of our choice. And I guess that's where setting up a foundation first started.
Life went along well, we have two happy, healthy children. James, our son, was born January 2000. And then Holly was born September 2001.
Things are going on well and then unfortunately, Jane had a recurrence in 2003.
The difference this time was there was a breast care nurse there. The positive difference it made in our lives, but especially Jane’s, was incredible.
Glenn McGrath at Walbundrie Tigers’ Cricket Club’s Pink Stumps Day Fundraiser in 2019
We soon realised there were not enough of these amazing people out there, so we launched the McGrath Foundation in 2005 with two very clear objective - raise awareness of breast cancer in younger women, and raise funds to place breast care nurses in communities right across the country.
Unfortunately, Jane lost the battle in 2008. At that time, we had four nurses employed. Now, we have 204 nurses, and they've supported over 127,000 families right across the country. Hearing those numbers just blows me away.
Thinking back to telling our story, hoping to help one person, and what it's grown into has been incredible.
We focused originally on rural and regional Australia, because we know how tough it is not having that support nearby and picking up, having to leave your family, it has been an incredible journey.
It was Jane's dream that every family had access to a breast care nurse where they live, self-referral and a totally free service.
We feel that number’s 250, so we're well on our way to achieving that.
My new motto is never say never.
When I retired from cricket, there were two things I said I'd never do.
I was never going to coach and never going to commentate.
I'm coaching in India, enjoying it. I'm commentating, enjoying that.
When Jane passed away, I said I was never getting married ever again. I didn't even know how it was possible.
I've been very lucky with Sarah coming into our lives.
Never getting married again - I'm married.
I was never having any more children, had a vasectomy 20-odd years ago now so it wasn't going to happen by mistake. I've had more children and Madison coming into our family brought us even closer together.
The other thing I said I'd never do was live in Queensland. We’re now living in Queensland.
All the things I said I'd never do - never coach, commentate, get married again, have any more children, live in Queensland - I've done them all.
Though, I now never want to be really happy or wealthy, so we'll see.
Putting life in perspective
Looking back on my life, as I said earlier, I view myself a very lucky person.
Lucky because, well, I got to grow up on the farm. It's an incredible life. The life skills it offers you, the work ethic from a young age, and mental toughness. I think the resilience of growing up in the bush is very special.
On the other side of things, the people I've had in my life - Jane was an incredible person. To have then met someone else in Sarah, who's absolutely amazing, I feel very lucky.
The Australian team - I got to play something I love through my life, got paid to travel the world. I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for cricket.
And I guess in a certain sense, it's about giving back. To be able to give back through the McGrath Foundation is something I'm very proud of.
But again, resilience is about getting through the tough times and then getting on with your life; picking yourself up and carrying on.
The people in our life allow us to do that.
When you go through something tough, it puts life in perspective; we realise all the things we worry about on a daily basis are important, but what is truly important are the people in our lives and how they allow us to continue on.
I hope by telling my story, of the tough times and the good times, other people see that it's okay to open up and share their stories.
If we share our stories, then there's going to be less issues, less burdens on the individual and they realise we're not alone in this fight, that there's other people going through it as well.
When I played, I had a favourite saying and I still live my life by that now.
From a guy called Mark Twain, he said ‘20 years from now, you'll have more regrets from the things you didn't do than from the things you did’.
And to me, that's how we should live our lives.
Get out there, back ourselves, live our life to the fullest and enjoy every minute.
Please check on your mates, see how they're going and allow them to provide support for us as well.
If we do that, I think we'll create a better community, people will come together and there'll be less issues.
I know there's some tough times coming up - farmers do it tough with drought.
Yeah, I think it's a great lifestyle, but you've got to work bloody hard and there's so many things to contend with.
The one thing that we all need, we've got no control over and that's whether we've been through tough times of drought, bushfires, floods, what have you.
But it's about being resilient, picking yourself up, looking after each other and carrying on.
This story is part of the Resilience in the Bush series by AuctionsPlus. The series will tell the stories of people helping farmers and their communities to deal with tough times. If you have suggestions for profiles of people who are making a difference, or tips about how to get through this time, please email newsroom@auctionsplus.com.au.
If you need someone to talk, there are excellent resources available. Visit our webpage with a bunch of names and phones numbers for where you can find support.
