Letting Go of the Game

It was July 2016, shortly after my 23rd birthday, when everything caught up with me.

I’d been living a self-destructive lifestyle, intensely suffering for a long time and eventually, I just had to step away.

At the time, I was in the leadership group of the football club and also on the committee.

Australian Rules Football had been in my life since I was 8 years old.

It was more than just a game, it was structure, community, identity.

But I was drowning beneath the surface, and I knew something had to change.

So I stepped away from everything to try and sort myself out.

And during that time, I had a spiritual awakening right in the middle of work one day.

That shift changed everything.

Suddenly, I was lost to the game.

I thought I’d always be involved in footy forever.

Maybe one day I will reconnect again but living overseas and doing what I’m doing now makes that almost impossible.

I’m 32 now.

And I know I’m on the wrong end of a playing career.

I did briefly reconnect with the game in 2023, when I returned to help out as an assistant coach and team manager.

But then I left Melbourne for Darwin, and life took me in a completely different direction.

Letting go of football wasn’t easy.

It was something I thought would always be there.

But the truth is something deeper was calling.