by Just before Covid hit, and just as Australian sport was starting to properly come to terms with the effects of concussion, former Hawthorn footballer Tim Boyle wrote a piece for the Sunday Age titled “Perhaps it’s not the new kind of courage to play on at all. “. I thought about that piece when Daniel Venables retired, when Angus Brayshaw retired and when Collingwood’s Nathan Murphy called time on his career on Tuesday morning.
These days, when a footballer retires, they stand in an auditorium in front of their partners. There are sniffles and trembles and tortuous pauses. Many of them now read from the Notes section of their iPhone. But for those who are retiring due to concussion, there is a huge exhalation. There is a life to lead. There is a world outside of football.
Related: Collingwood’s Nathan Murphy has been forced to retire from AFL due to concussion
And there is solace for those who support and report on the game as well. If Murphy had continued to play, it would have been a great experience to watch. When Paddy McCartin was recruited in the most innocuous of circumstances, it was a little embarrassing to watch him get help. Murphy spoke beautifully about his mother, and how she compared the rooms to the airport scene in Love Actually after the pre-match last year. Now she no longer has to watch her son risk long-term brain damage on the football field.
Murphy didn’t really celebrate with his teammates after last year’s grand final. Although they were drinking two hands, he had an appointment with a medical board that was deciding his future in the sport. He stayed outside for half an hour while they discussed. It is an increasingly common situation. They eventually said it was okay to play on it. But pre-season training cast further doubt. Physically, there were no worries. But mentally, he wasn’t ready to make a full commitment. He had to be all-in. He knew he couldn’t be that player anymore. He didn’t want to be a player.
His former coach Nathan Buckley spoke on Monday about a footballer who took a long time to find his feet, a long time to find out what kind of player he was. He was an outstanding junior cricketer. He dreamed of opening the batting for Australia. In his early years, he was tried further up the field. But gradually it became clear that he was a defender through and through.
He thrived under Craig McRae. He got away from a great Collingwood back line. Their defenders would reorganize themselves, work for each other and spend space. Like all of them, Murphy had the perfect balance between risk and reward. He knew exactly when to leave it, when to stand up, and when to block a teammate. He was reliable and determined. He allowed the likes of Nick Daicos and Darcy Moore to roam and flourish. In their premiership year, he played 24 games and was instrumental in many of those finishes. When Collingwood made a poor start to their premiership defence, it was thought that he was absent.
Buckley spoke of a footballer who was in many ways too brave for his own good, who had to be re-programmed, who had to be taught to defend himself. Whenever Murphy was released, the coaching group would give him extensive instruction on how to maneuver his body and how they didn’t expect him to recklessly commit to every contest. Murphy would reveal his head. And in his first minute of his return game, he would put himself back into a pack. It was constitutional there.
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The public appreciated that kind of courage and more importantly, encouraged it. Coaches like Grant Thomas would do a review on Monday morning, run through the tape and play every player that sat out a contest. It was almost a badge of honor to be concussed. Luke Ball called it “mixed shit”. “Every player who has ever played league football has faced the threat of embarrassment, in one form or another, and there is no quicker way to achieve it than through demonstrable confusion,” Boyle wrote. Another former Hawthorn forward, Dermott Brereton, recently spoke about being put back on the field when he was conned. “That was a sign of your manhood,” he said.
Those attitudes are changing. They are definitely changing within clubs. It is not always clear how the sport is analyzed and commented on, especially by the tough guys of the past. But such reckless abandon is no longer negotiable. A concussed player is not good for his team, or himself. And it’s no longer considered weak, or letting your friends down, if you choose to quit football.
Nathan Murphy was in the system for seven years. He only voted one Brownlow vote. He only kicked one goal. He had at least 10 concussions. The decision to play was taken out of his hands, but he accepted with friends, laughter and a certain relief. He reminded us that courage in football comes in many forms. He emerged with his health, his capital and the respect of everyone who watched him play.
