{"id":963897,"date":"2026-11-14T06:48:23","date_gmt":"2026-11-14T06:48:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/963897\/"},"modified":"2026-11-14T06:48:23","modified_gmt":"2026-11-14T06:48:23","slug":"paddy-steinfort-from-afl-misery-to-mentoring-patrick-mahomes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/963897\/","title":{"rendered":"Paddy Steinfort: From AFL misery to mentoring Patrick Mahomes"},"content":{"rendered":"

Paddy Steinfort knows about pressure and how to deal with it.<\/p>\n

Over more than a decade, the 47-year-old Aussie has worked at the forefront of mental resilience training for some of the biggest sporting organisations in the world, mentoring some of the biggest sporting stars.<\/p>\n

Some of those big names? Steinfort is reluctant to single anyone out, but \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cPatrick Mahomes. Shouts me out after a Super Bowl,\u201d he offers after some gentle prodding.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrianna Stewart, one of the best female basketball players on the planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then there\u2019s the teams: I\u2019ve been at the [Boston] Red Sox, the [Toronto] Blue Jays (Major League Baseball), the Socceroos and the Matildas and the Philadelphia Eagles in the NFL. And I have a NASCAR team I\u2019m working with at the moment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steinfort has come a long way in the pressure game.<\/p>\n

30 years ago, he was a 17 year old ruck prospect fresh off a Larke Medal for the best player at the Under 18 National Championships and approaching the Draft with the knowledge that it was when he will be picked up rather than if he would be an AFL draftee.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, I\u2019m going to get drafted. It was just a matter of where,\u201d Steinfort remembers from his base in New York City.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then I got drafted to the team that I barracked for, so that was pretty, like, surreal and very cool and very good for my family because they were all mad Tigers.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steinfort had to quickly change his focus from Tigers fan to Richmond footballer (\u201cI had a kick of the footy with Matty Knights and then Benny Gayle and I went home and decided I should probably take their posters off the wall now\u201d), but he had no doubt that he was destined to be an AFL footballer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought it was like, I\u2019m going to be a star and this is what I was born to do, but I think that was more just because I believed a lot about thinking positive and manifestation and sh*t like that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steinfort\u2019s older brother Carl had been drafted two years prior and had struggled to gain a foothold at Geelong in his first few years, so Paddy knew it wasn\u2019t going to be handed to him easily.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, at no point did I not think that by the time I was 25 I\u2019d be a 100 game player and getting Brownlow votes and all that sort of stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for the young Steinfort, that wasn\u2019t how his footy dream played out.<\/p>\n

In his first season with the Tigers he\u2019d played well in the seconds and was even best on ground in the Reserves grand final, but things went downhill from there.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the end of that first season, I\u2019m going into my first pre-season trip, having finally settled into the footy club, and then they drafted Brad Ottens while I was in Bali. Looking back now, that\u2019s probably the first sign that things aren\u2019t going to go perfectly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steinfort\u2019s dream of playing for his childhood team quickly became a nightmare as injuries and frustration took over.<\/p>\n

Groin, knee and thigh injuries kept his football to a minimum, and by the time he faced posterior cruciate injuries in both knees in his fourth and fifth years on Richmond\u2019s list, he saw the writing on the wall.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just seemed to get deeper and deeper into a hole that I might not be able to climb out of as far as my career goes.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the end still came as a shock, and caused bad blood with his beloved yellow and black for years to come.<\/p>\n

Steinfort had worked his arse off to come back from injury and into contention for a place in Richmond\u2019s team for the 2001 finals, and had it on good authority that the selection panel were looking at him seriously.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019re like, look, we don\u2019t know when you\u2019ll get your shot but we really want to give you a shot and we think you\u2019re a great person to play on someone like \u2026 [Carlton ruck] Mark Porter. We go in and we play Carlton \u2026 and I\u2019m like \u2018f*ck, I\u2019m going to debut in a final on the MCG. How good. After five years, after all I\u2019ve been through, this is brilliant\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the club went a different way, and the way Steinfort found out was just cruel.<\/p>\n

\u201cI sit there and I look at the board and I\u2019m trying to find my name on the field but I\u2019m not, okay, I\u2019m starting, where am I? I\u2019m on the bench, where is my name?<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd then it dawned on me that I wasn\u2019t being picked and if I\u2019m not being picked for this game then I\u2019m probably never being picked \u2026 and I started bawling because that was when I was like, sh*t, this is not going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steinfort is comfortable to admit now that he didn\u2019t handle the end of his AFL dream well when it came.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t handle, arguably, the next three or four years of my life very well because I was a bit immature and I didn\u2019t seek help in terms of just telling people that I was feeling sh*t. And the way that went down didn\u2019t help at all, for sure.\u201d<\/p>\n

It took 16 years \u2013 and a move to the other side of the world \u2013 for Steinfort\u2019s childhood love to rekindle. A drought breaking premiership for the yellow and black didn\u2019t hurt either.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Richmond forgiveness part was fun and funny, but also quite emotional,\u201d he remembers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was in the pub in New York, it\u2019s 4am watching the granny and [they] obviously spanked the Crows. And then all my family are at the game in the crowd and we FaceTime afterwards and they\u2019re all bawling and I start bawling and I\u2019m like, oh, this is great \u2026 and that was a moment where I came to terms with and probably made peace with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steinfort\u2019s discomfort at identifying as a former professional footballer also lasted until long after his playing days finished.<\/p>\n

\u201cI reckon I carried that for a good decade \u2026 I never wanted to talk about it to anyone because in my eyes I\u2019d failed and that was the identity that I wanted and I didn\u2019t have it.\u201d<\/p>\n

A qualified physiotherapist, Steinfort avoided footy for a few years post-AFL, but was drawn back into the industry first in player development and then into wellbeing and performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was my way of healing myself, I guess, or making myself okay with it. If I wasn\u2019t going to have a career, I\u2019d help other people\u2019s careers.\u201d<\/p>\n

These days, Paddy Steinfort is very comfortable with his AFL journey not playing out how he had dreamed of, 30 years ago.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s based in New York City but spends his time jetting around the USA and the world assisting elite sportspeople and business leaders as a highly sought after performance consultant<\/p>\n

\u201cMy dream at Richmond didn\u2019t come to pass and it was more of a nightmare in the end but had that happened there\u2019s no way I would have lived this life where I couldn\u2019t have dreamed of this, I was dreaming of something that I didn\u2019t get and then I ended up getting something arguably better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Steinfort\u2019s experience in dealing with pressure is something that he delves into in a soon to be released book, Pressure Point.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery time we are under pressure it\u2019s because our identity is on the line and that sets off this stuff inside us that if you don\u2019t know how to face it and you end up making bad decisions.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat to me is the most rewarding thing that I do these days is helping people avoid that pain or discover that they\u2019re doing it and then set about fixing things before they end up losing what they want.\u201d<\/p>\n

And 30 years on, what would Steinfort say to 17 year old Paddy on the verge of an AFL contract?<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ll be OK,\u201d he says finally.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhatever happens, you\u2019ll be OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think as it got worse and worse for me, I tried harder and harder because I was so scared of finding out that the identity that I had and thought that, you know, that\u2019s why people like me and why I have friends, but in reality \u2026 it is not why you\u2019re valuable. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s great if you can do it, but if not, it\u2019ll work out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Originally published as \u2018In my eyes I\u2019d failed\u2019: How a pick 16 went from AFL wilderness to getting a Pat Mahomes shout out<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paddy Steinfort knows about pressure and how to deal with it. 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