Delisted, Doing It Tough, And We Should All Pipe Down

Twenty-four years old, delisted, and brave enough to put his own struggles out there on Instagram for the whole footy world to see. I don’t care what club you go for or how many finals you’ve watched your mob lose, that takes more guts than kicking the winner after the siren.

I won’t be naming the bloke here and I won’t be dredging up the details of what he’s been through, because that’s his business and frankly none of ours to pick over like a bag of chips at three-quarter time. What matters is he’s a young fella who wore the navy blue, who got told his services were no longer required, and who’s now dealing with a mental health episode out in the open where everyone with a phone can have their say. Good on him for fronting up. I just wish the game around him didn’t make it necessary so often.

Delisting Day Isn’t What It Used To Be, And Not In A Good Way

Back in my day – and yes, I know, here we go – delisting was a quiet, almost embarrassed affair. A bloke got a phone call, maybe a letter if the club was feeling formal, and he went off to find a job on the tools or behind a bar and that was that. Nobody outside the inner sanctum much knew or cared. It sounds harsh written down like that, and in plenty of ways it was, but there was a mercy in the anonymity of it too.

These days a delisting is a press release, a hashtag, a bunch of stats about games played and disposals accumulated, and then radio silence from the system that built the kid up in the first place. He goes from having a locker, a psych on call, a fitness program mapped out to the minute, and forty mates who see him every day, to absolutely nothing overnight. No wonder blokes crack. I would too.

The Club’s Statement Was The Right Call, For Once

Carlton put out their own words supporting the lad and I’ll give the footy department credit where it’s due, because they didn’t try to bury it or spin it into some feel-good nothing statement. They said the right things about wraparound support and about the door always being open. Whether that’s just words or whether someone from the club is actually ringing him every second day to check how he’s tracking, that’s the bit us punters never get to see, and it’s the bit that actually matters.

I’ve said for years the AFL Players Association does more heavy lifting on this front than head office ever gets credit for, and fair play to them too. But a statement is easy to write. The follow-through six months down the track when the cameras have moved on to the next bloke who’s been delisted, that’s where you find out if a club actually cares or if it was just optics.

The Whole System Chews Kids Up Then Spits Them Out

Here’s my gripe, and it’s not a new one for me. We draft these boys at seventeen and eighteen, we tell them they’re the future of the club, we put them on TV, we put their faces on membership posters, and then two or three years later if they haven’t quite made the grade we cut them loose with a payout and a pat on the back. Some of them handle it fine and go on to have good lives. Plenty don’t, and we only ever hear about the ones brave enough to speak up, which tells you there’s a lot more struggling in silence than anyone likes to admit.

I’m not soft on footy, never have been, and I still reckon a bloke needs to be judged on what he produces on the park. But there’s a difference between judging a kick or a tackle and judging a person’s worth as a human being, and I worry we’ve blurred that line so badly that delisted players think they’ve failed at life rather than just failed to nail down a spot in a twenty-two. That’s on the industry, not on him.

Social Media Is A Blessing And A Curse Rolled Into One

Instagram gave this young fella a way to tell his story in his own words without a journo putting a spin on it, and for that I say good on the platform for once. But it’s the same platform that no doubt copped him plenty of unwanted opinions during his time on Carlton’s list, keyboard warriors who’ve never kicked a footy in their life telling a twenty-something he’s overpaid and underperforming. You can’t have it both ways, folks. If you want to pile on a kid when he drops a mark in round fourteen, don’t be surprised when the same kid ends up doing it tough after he’s cut from the list altogether.

I’ll admit I’ve grumbled about a few draft picks and a few delistings myself over a beer at the club, and in hindsight some of that grumbling was probably too personal for my liking. There’s a lesson in there for blokes like me too, not just for the anonymous trolls.

What The League Actually Needs To Do About It

Head office loves tinkering with rules nobody asked for, the deliberate out of bounds nonsense and whatever they’ve dreamt up for the interchange this year, but they’re a lot quieter when it comes to genuinely fixing the aftercare system for delisted players. I’d like to see a mandatory minimum period of psych support and career transition help built into every player contract, not as some optional extra the clubs can quietly wind back when the salary cap gets tight, but as a hard requirement policed by the league the same way they police everything else.

I’d also like every club, not just the ones with a good PR department, to be upfront and public about what support actually looks like after delisting, because sunlight tends to keep organisations honest. If Carlton or any other club is genuinely doing right by this bloke, say so plainly and let the members see it. If they’re not, well, that should come out too eventually.

The Only Thing That Matters Now

I hope this young man gets the help he needs and gets to a good place, whatever that looks like for him, whether that’s another crack at league footy somewhere, a solid job away from the game entirely, or just a quiet life out of the spotlight. That’s the only outcome worth caring about here, not premiership points, not draft compensation, none of it.

The navy blue jumper doesn’t belong to him anymore in an official sense, but he’ll always be one of ours in the way that matters, and I reckon most Carlton people feel exactly the same. Look after him, and look after each other, because footy’s a tough enough game without us making it tougher on the blokes who didn’t quite make it.