Garry Lyon has turn out to be a type of folks.
He by no means thought it will be the case, however there’s no hiding the thrill when the subject turns to his new love.
The Melbourne nice and media star is now a garden man.
Courtesy of social media, there’s a entire world on the market of people who find themselves obsessive about their lawns, importing pictures of their masterpieces and evaluating notes with different like-minded garden artists world wide.
Lyon isn’t on social media, but when he was he’d little doubt be a type of folks.
He says the very best factor he ever did was purchase himself a farm down on the Mornington Peninsula. It’s his secure place, his haven away from the brilliant lights of tv and the craziness of breakfast radio.
Last week he left SEN shortly after his breakfast present with Tim Watson and was sitting on his tractor by 11am.
“I don’t know what I’m doing on the tractor, but I get on it and drive around,” Lyon says.
“I slash paddocks and I’ve also got a ride-on mower so I’ll just put on the headset and listen to some podcasts.
“It takes me six hours to mow all the area I’ve got and I love it. It is the best thing I do, it is like therapy. When I finish I get off and feel so good.
“I just love it and seriously I’ll pray that a branch has fallen down so I can get on the tractor and pick it up.”
Lyon has 50 acres and runs a “very healthy 300 to 400 head of kangaroo” given how rampant they roam within the space, though he does even have a few of his neighbour’s sheep getting across the place.
A brand new home is the newest “passion project” on the farm, which has seen him relocate to a different property at close by Red Hill throughout building.
“The best thing I ever did with my life was buy some land,” Lyon says.
“I used to love the city, but now I don’t, I love the farm.”
He made the change to the bush after the hardest interval of his life, when he retreated from the highlight after news broke of his affair with Nicky Brownless, the spouse of his good pal Billy.
The farm has performed a serious half in his therapeutic, and in his first intensive interview since, Lyon reveals why he nonetheless loves being behind the microphone after virtually three a long time.
His media profession began when he was working on the AFL and hosted the youngsters present AFL Squadron within the early Nineties. His first radio gig was at 3AW alongside heavy hitters Steve Price, Rex Hunt and Sam Newman.
“Steve Price was doing a thing with Sam Newman and Rex Hunt at 5.45pm on a Friday, and it was iconic radio,” Lyon explains.
“They then went on holiday so he (Price) asked me to come back. I was going to Inverloch on holidays but I’d drive up on Friday lunchtime in the traffic and Pricey would be always running late, so I’d get about six minutes and then I’d go back to Inverloch.”
From that little phase huge issues grew.
Lyon has been the primary man within the particular feedback chair at 3AW, Triple M and SEN. His profile exploded on Channel 9 when he progressed from The Footy Show panellist to host. He additionally featured on Nine’s Footy Classified.
While Eddie McGuire had been often known as Eddie Everywhere, he had turn out to be Gary Everywhere earlier than his sabbatical.
In 2017 he returned to SEN to accomplice Watson on the early morning present, and joined Fox Footy, the place he’s turn out to be the chief of the ship, internet hosting Friday night time soccer, delivering particular feedback one sport every weekend and taking up the compere’s chair on the favored On The Couch program.
During footy season he can have sooner or later off – often Sunday, though he nonetheless has to keep watch over video games at residence, with the radio present chopping again to 3 days per week (Tuesday to Thursday) this 12 months to attempt to ease the load.
A latest weekend away taking part in golf with Newman and others from the previous The Footy Show days gave Lyon some perspective about how a lot the business has modified.
“We had so much fun and laughed and I was sitting there thinking we couldn’t do a hell of a lot of stuff we used to do,” Lyon says.
“I don’t have a problem with that, but from that aspect it’s not as, I don’t want to say fun, but we were a bit looser. Everyone was a bit looser and probably weren’t as cognisant of everything.
“I still love it, but you have to be careful.”
Doing particular feedback at video games continues to be his favorite a part of the gig.
“I work with some great people but they are all different,” he says. “There are some who for whatever reason don’t want to do too much research, which is fine, while there are others that are absolutely across every single thing that goes on.
“I personally sit somewhere in the middle. I think the craft in the commentary for us is watching a game and within 10 or 15 minutes you have got to pick up the thread up, that’s the ability and sometimes you can support your argument with lots of different stuff.
“My sense of having done a good job well is walking away from the game and saying, ‘Yeah, I’m really happy I picked up that, I anticipated that’.
“The young blokes coming into (commentary), that is their challenge, to find their own style. You don’t have to be like (Jonathan) Browny, you don’t have to be like (David) Kingy, you don’t have to be like any of them, you just have to be yourself.”
He was reminded about his ardour for the commentary final 12 months when he did a sport with Anthony Hudson and Nick Riewoldt from the Fox Footy bunker.
“It was during the hub and it was when Jordan Dawson kicked a goal after the siren for Adelaide to defeat Port,” Lyon recollects. “It was so good, we got so caught up in it that when it happened we jumped up and hugged each other.
“The three of us hugged each other in a studio in South Melbourne over a game none of us were invested with our teams. I thought that’s pretty cool, you can still go and see something that can move you emotionally so much.”
He might be with out his right-hand man Riewoldt this season after the St Kilda champion made the shock determination to relocate together with his household to the United States.
“I’m going to miss Nick, I really miss him,” Lyon says. “Again, everyone is a bit different, but he was a talent/producer, that’s where he was going. There are talents who do their job and do a great job but they need direction.
“He was a talent/producer, he was like, ‘Why aren’t we doing this? Could we do this? What about this? Can we do better?’.
“For me that is the way I am, and because I have been doing it for a long time it was really great to have a bloke that sits alongside you like that, so then you don’t feel that pressure.
“He would stop in the ad break and say, ‘Mate, we have got to do this or we haven’t done that’. I’ll miss him, I hope he comes back, he was a really talented operator.”
Riewoldt is being changed by ex-Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley because the third wheel for On The Couch, with Lyon having fun with going head-to-head with him in regards to the trendy sport.
“When he came out (of the game) last year on radio he brought his coaches’ focus. I think great, I’ll challenge that, because coaches by their very personality think they know everything, they have to, so I like needling him.
“There is nothing better when you and someone are at it and it’s serious but not for too long. You need to lighten up, stuff around and have a laugh.
“I’m 55, I have never stopped to think about that, but 55! That’s why hanging out and working with these guys is so good, it makes you feel young.”
Lyon, who performed 226 video games and captained the Demons, was in Perth for Melbourne’s historic premiership win in 2021 and nonetheless can’t imagine how moved he was by the expertise.
“The circumstances conspired in such a way that I think made it for me even more emotional because you are over there, essentially on my own (because of Covid restrictions), I had none of my mates, none of my old teammates apart from a couple of Western Australians.
“I was surprised how moved I was and to see how much it meant to my boys, too. I was thinking I was never going to see one, they were thinking they were never going to see one, I am never going to share seeing one with them.
“So in the end it was so cool.”
He has solely watched a replay of the grand remaining as soon as, a few months later again at his farm with sons Josh, Ben and Thomas and brother Rick.
“I’m not a big wine drinker but over the years I’ve accumulated some Grange and when the boys were young they’d be like, ‘What’s this, Dad?’,” Lyon says.
“I would say if you ever touch that I’ll rip your ears out. I explained to them what it was and said if we ever win a flag we’ll drink it.
“The minute we won the flag it was like, ‘Get the Grange, get the Grange’. So we had the Grange, we had big steaks, a big screen out in the shed and it was one of the great days.”
And Lyon is predicting there could possibly be one other day on the farm later this 12 months: “I think Melbourne can win it again, I really do.”
Originally printed as Garry Lyon opens up on the very best transfer he’s made and the way footy media has modified
Source: www.news.com.au
