Collingwood’s Jamie Elliott on rare foot injury, retirement call and new leadership role

Jamie Elliott faced an agonising choice last year: walk away from the game he loved or risk losing toes in a rare surgery. The Pies’ highlight reel opens up on his life-changing call.

If Jamie Elliott had followed his gut feel last year the AFL would have been denied another season from one of footy’s great excitement machines.

If he had declined the surgery that put multiple toes at risk amid a complicated vascular concern in his foot he would have never been where he is today.

Fourteen years into a career with a premiership, a Mark of the Year title and so many freakish individual highlights, Elliott is officially a member of the Collingwood leadership group.

The once-brash young kid from Euroa has officially grown up.

As he told this masthead in a rare interview ahead of the Gather Round clash against Sydney: “I am growing as a person and a player and at 32 I think that’s pretty good”.

Yet that voyage of self-discovery has only been possible after navigating a near-impossible medical choice.

Last year Elliott battled an unusual vascular issue that saw multiple blood clots preventing him getting enough blood supply to his toes.

There was no easy remedy as international experts admitted they had rarely seen the medical issue in a person so young.

Jamie Elliott's Anzac Day grab

Not long removed from that 2023 season – with a flag and that Gather Round matchwinner with three minutes on the clock against Port Adelaide – he wasn’t ready to retire.

Yet for a time he felt the choices presented to him by his surgeon gave him no choice.

“There were a few options I had to consider and a couple of them were pretty grim,’’ Elliott said.

“One of them was retiring, one of them was having surgery where there was a chance I could lose a couple of toes if they got it wrong. When he said it, I was like, ‘I will retire’. I didn’t want to go through with it and then I sat on it for a week. I was thinking, ‘I don’t know, I love footy and there was a small chance it could happen’. So I put it in the hands of the surgeon.

“They went through my pubic area, put a tube down there and it goes through your main arteries down your leg and your body produces something which thins your blood naturally.

“This is a concentrated version and they push it down there and it basically dissolved the blood clot. The arteries are so small down there that if they stuff it up it could block it.”

An incident which ended up costing Elliott ten weeks of his season had initially started with some numbness in his foot then progressively got worse.

Eventually surgery was the only option and allowed him to return for the last seven games of the season.

Jamie Elliott nearly stepped away from the game. Picture: Michael Klein

“Basically I had a couple of blood clots towards the end of my toes, towards the end of the foot and when I was doing more exercise the blood wasn’t getting to my toes,” he said.

“Slowly it got worse and worse and my foot became numb. Someone said (my foot) was going black but it was actually going white because of the lack of blood flow.

“We spoke to specialists and tried to get clarity, we spoke to a couple of doctors overseas and they said they had only seen a couple of cases where it was so far down the foot.

“Normally vascular issues happen in older people. But the surgeon did a good job. It was a bit of a risk but it turned out well.”

Some of those symptoms still linger – some numbness in his foot if he has been wearing tight shoes – but he is very much over the worst.

Having worked so hard to establish this career, he isn’t keen to let it go.

Elliott was famously considered not fit enough to be draftable until the community banded together in Euroa to help him thrust his name forward.

With father Jamie having passed away of cancer when Jamie was 13, mum Fiona worked two jobs to make ends meet while local farmer and fitness coach Kevin McFarlane put him through an intensive program in a gym on his farm.

This week will be his 199th AFL clash, with his 200th game likely an Easter Thursday clash against the Brisbane side that Collingwood conquered to hand Elliott that cherished premiership medal.

It would be rich reward for a player who twice missed entire seasons through injury – a 2016 back concern and multiple hamstring strains in 2018 as his teammates roared to within seconds of a premiership.

And with body and mind sound he is keen to play on but doesn’t yet have a deal from list boss Justin Leppitsch.

“I love footy. We get to run out of 82,000 fans. I am not going to be able to do that forever so you have to make the most of it. My body feels good, so if ‘Leppa’ is listening, send me a contract. I am ready to go.”

He won’t need the kind of incredible post-siren goals that he conjured against Essendon in 2022 to prove his worth to Craig McRae.

Jamie Elliott's goal against Essendon

McRae came to him over summer and told him he had the votes to be included in the leadership group.

At first Elliott wasn’t sure what to make of it all.

“It was a weird one. Even under Fly the last couple of years I feel like I have got a leadership presence in the forward group even without a title but I don’t go out of my way to want to be in the leadership group. I just play footy. I try to lead by example.

“It is a bit weird to be coming into the leadership group for the first time and being 32 years old so I did ask Fly when he mentioned it and said you have been voted in and I asked questions around, ‘I am 32, what happens if this is potentially my last year’.

‘He said, ‘It’s up to you but we would like to have you in there. I am enjoying it, I am loving it.

“There are more meetings so I don’t know if I am enjoying that part but the biggest thing for me is that it’s forcing me to grow as a person and a player, I guess.”

In Collingwood’s victory over Carlton last Thursday night Elliott went goalless for the first time this year.

And yet the single item of note on his stats sheet – seven tackles – was just as important in that victory as his highest tally going back 45 games to the 2022 semi-final.

“I know the last two to three years for me personally I do worry about the forward line and how it’s functioning. The players within it. The younger players. Bobby (Hill) Shooter (Lachie Schultz), Beau (McCreery).

Bobby Hill celebrates a goal with Jamie Elliott. Picture: Michael Klein.

“I am trying to support Checkers (Brody Mihocek) and the older guys so its given me more purpose and actually being in the leadership group we do exercises where we have things we plan for during the game and things we focus on it brings me out of myself and I focus more on the group.

“To be honest if I play my role it doesn’t really matter (if I kick goals). We just want wins on the board and if I can get Shooter to be more comfortable to play to his strengths, if I can Beau to play well, if I can do anything helpful to pump them up … Just empower them, then I am doing my job and my footy will just flow on from there.”

He is thrilled by ex-Docker Schultz’s early-season form, even if he will miss some weeks with a hamstring concern just as he was showing his best form at the Pies.

“We play similar positions. It’s a bloody tough role. It goes forward and you might not see it. Media will come for guys if they aren’t performing well on the stats sheet but within the four walls of Collingwood we value other things than goals and touches. The last few weeks he has got his rewards on the stats sheet but the stuff we watch during the week might be vision of defensive pressure, it might not be a tackle but he’s in the right spot. It’s a holistic thing and it’s a team view.”

Now with that milestone coming into view Elliott will again thrive on the big stage against Sydney with those Gather Round heroics against the Power fresh in mind.

With Collingwood 3-1 and improving by the week, Elliott plans on making the most of every moment in the magical twilight of his career.

Originally published as Collingwood’s Jamie Elliott on rare foot injury, retirement call and new leadership role