Sacked podcast: Travis Cloke opens up about his breakdown, footy demons, and leaving Collingwood and the Bulldogs
He was a premiership player, best and fairest and one of the most powerful forwards in the game. But late in his career, Travis Cloke cut a vastly contrasting figure as he sat crying in the changerooms following a training session.
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It seemed the perfect rebirth for Travis Cloke.
A strong mark in his first game for the Western Bulldogs, the boos of Collingwood fans who previously cheered him reverberating around MCG, the 50m goal that shut out familiar internal doubts, and the “double cobra” celebration.
One of footy’s most feared power forwards had found a new home at Whitten Oval in 2017 and with that perfect start believed he could banish the issues that had turned his last year at Collingwood into such a bittersweet experience.
Fast-forward three months, and Cloke cut a vastly contrasting figure as he sat crying in the changerooms following a training session.
He couldn’t explain what triggered his breakdown.
What happened leading into Round 13, 2017 encapsulated the stresses and strains he confronted throughout his career. In the past, he didn’t know how to heed warning signs that had been flashing for years.
This time he had the means to confront those demons, not for the sake of his career, but for his mental welfare.
“I got back in the changerooms and … I just broke down crying,” Cloke told the Herald Sun's Sacked podcast.
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“I didn't know what was going on … I was going, ‘This is not normal’.
“I made a couple of phone calls, spoke to my manager (Robbie D’Orazio), spoke to my wife and they both said: ‘What do you want to do?’.
“I couldn't give anyone an answer.
“The drive from Whitten Oval to home (in the Yarra Valley) was probably the longest hour of my life. So many things were going through my head. I just had to get home and remove myself from football.”
Cloke met with “a few people outside the footy club, and it was all anxiety based … that pressure of performing every week to the standards I had … but also to the (expectations of the) club, the general public, the media.
“I wasn’t the player I was four or five years (earlier). The game chewed me up and spat me out pretty quickly.”
That stark moment brought Cloke to two realisations – footy “wasn't the No.1 thing” in his life any more, and the pressure to perform on game day was too consuming.
The demons he had been ignoring for years could no longer be contained.
GOING TO THE DOGS
A Collingwood best-and-fairest winner at 20; a premiership player at 23; a dual All-Australian. Cloke was an AFL superstar at his peak.
No one has ever taken more contested marks in one season.
But the longer his career at Collingwood went on, the focus on his performance and his occasional goalkicking yips weighed heavily on Cloke.
He couldn't explain it, let alone quell the anxieties eating away at him.
Cloke was dropped on three occasions in his last season at Collingwood (2016), and while his conversations with coach Nathan Buckley and president Eddie McGuire were helpful, he knew he needed a change.
“I think the game changed a little bit (in 2016) and the game style of the Collingwood Footy Club changed a bit, too,” he said.
“Anzac Day was the first time I had been dropped in my whole career. It was a bit of a shock, but I guess looking back on it, it was probably where I wasn’t confronting a few things that were going on in my own life.”
Each weekend, whether in the AFL or the VFL, Cloke was confronted by the same pressures and anxieties.
“It was a tricky six months for me,” he said.
“I was a late 20s male, (I was) meant to be this assertive, aggressive person on the footy field, (but) that wasn't me away from the footy club.
“I am pretty lighthearted, I am pretty emotional and I love my friends and family and that wasn't the person I was meant to be on the footy field.”
Around the middle of 2016, he knew the best thing for him – and Collingwood – was moving elsewhere.
He met Richmond coach Damien Hardwick, but figured the Tigers (where his Dad David was a two-time premiership player) would only heighten the pressure.
He figured the Bulldogs, under Luke Beveridge, would be the “off Broadway” club he craved.
“I wanted to go to a club that was a bit more low profile, that I could go to and just play footy, and hang out with the boys and not be in the spotlight,” he said.
That all changed when the Bulldogs went on to win the 2016 flag, the club's first in 62 years.
Instead of a low-key, low-pressure start at a new club, Cloke joined the reigning premier and was scheduled to meet his old side in Round 1.
MORE: THE SLEDGE THAT ALMOST MADE CLOKE QUIT
A PAINFUL 250TH
He kicked five goals in his first four games with the Dogs before North Melbourne’s Jack Ziebell rattled his rib cage – and ultimately future – in his 250th match.
“It was my first proper injury,” Cloke said.
“I split my intercostal, my ribs pretty much in half. Ziebell got me a beauty.”
At that moment – a few months before his changeroom breakdown – he figured “footy wasn't for me any more.
“I loved the fun of the football club, but I just didn’t enjoy the competition any more.”
The injury break – as well as his mental health hiatus a few months later – showed how match-day pressures impacted on his state of mind.
“That's where I realised that anxiety for me and that mental health issue was purely that weekend match day (trigger) for me.”
He returned from injury in Round 9, then was dropped, before returning for Round 12 against Sydney.
A break to deal with his mental health issues following, then Cloke played out the season.
Still under contract for 2018, he intended to honour the deal.
‘WHAT DO YOU WANT TO DO NEXT YEAR, TRAV?’
Cloke had every intention of playing on until the Herald Sun revealed the Bulldogs were second-guessing the next year on his contract, a decision that blindsided the first-year Dog.
His exit interview with Beveridge went well and he was working on his off-season program when a phone call came from the club’s then footy boss Jason McCartney.
“Jase was like, ‘Mate what do you want to do next year?’,” Cloke said. “He said, ‘We are in a position where we are going to go with youth next year … there is a possibility we can pick up Josh Schache (from Brisbane)’.”
“This was kind of like a moment where I was like, ‘Do I want another year like this year? Do I want to run around in the VFL? Do I want to finish that way?’.
“I had a few conversations with my family and my manager. I came to the conclusion that I had had a good run in footy.
“It wasn't what I was expecting when I left the Pies at the end of 2016. But I’m not disappointed it happened.
“I tried to find that spark for my AFL career and it didn’t happen.
“I thoroughly enjoyed my experience at the Bulldogs … but at the same time I was not expecting it (to be sacked) one day before list lodgement.”
He conceded few footballers have been as comfortable being “sacked” as he was from the Bulldogs, saying it proved a “weight off my shoulders”.
“I instantly felt happy, not saying I hadn’t for a long time, (but) it was a different form of happiness. I could wake up and not feel the stress of going for a run.”
Cloke generously sacrificed money in his financial settlement, just as he had done when leaving Collingwood 12 months earlier.
He and his wife Rebeccah were about to become parents, and he was happy to move onto the next phase.
FOOTY’S A BUSINESS
Cloke had been a footy prodigy who always intended to join brothers Jason and Cameron at Collingwood.
But after only one season with his siblings in 2006, he received a stark lesson that footy was a business.
“They got delisted (in late 2006) and (in 2007) I won my best-and-fairest,” Cloke said.
“I guess that's the year I realised footy was a business.
“I was 20 at the time. I realised that’s when I really had to knuckle down because you don't know when your contract might be up, when you might have played your last game. That fun was taken away from me at a young age. I realised this was a business, and looking back on it, it was probably a good thing (to realise so early on).”
He was “a bit annoyed” with his brothers’ sackings.
“I probably took Cam’s spot … he was playing forward with a bit of ruck, so I probably took the same position.”
Jason Cloke's departure was more of a shock, given he had played 76 games.
Jason missed the 2002 Grand Final due to suspension then played well below his best in the corresponding game the following year.
That prompted coach Mick Malthouse to say of Jason after the 2003 Grand Final: “I thought Jason’s game was better in last year's Grand Final.”
Travis recounted: “Yeah, it was (savage). We said, ‘Did he really just say that, but that’s the way he felt and he never shied away from saying what he felt.”
He said Jason hadn't reconnected with the game since his sacking.
“Since he retired he hasn’t been to a lot of games,” he said. “He has moved up to Queensland with his young family and wife.
“It was a shame the way it ended because he had a really good start of his footy career.”
THE YIPS, THE FLAG AND THAT GOAL
Cloke kicked 452 goals and 369 behinds, but knows many fans recall the latter more than the former.
The criticism he received for occasionally having a yips added to his anxiety, but also stopped him from adequately enjoying the extraordinary highs he scaled.
“My whole career I got criticised for not kicking goals and for kicking points … if I had converted more of those points I would be sitting a bit higher on that list,” he joked about being seventh on Collingwood's all-time list behind club greats Gordon Coventry, Peter McKenna, Dick Lee, Peter Daicos, Saverio Rocca and Alby Pannam.
“There has always been that criticism of my career – my goalkicking probably overshadowed my football career.
“I guess that's the world we live in, we don't really go to the positive, we go to the negative immediately.”
As a consequence, he didn't celebrate his career highs as he should have.
“I enjoyed it, but I definitely didn’t enjoy it enough.
“(We) would have a really good win, but I would sit there all weekend and question what I could have done better.”
The moment Cloke celebrated the most – and continues to – was Collingwood's 2010 premiership
“Obviously, 2010 was the pinnacle of my career, winning the Grand Final.”
The most important goal of his career came late in the final term of the 2010 Grand Final. It put the Magpies in front by a point, only for the Saints to level the scores a few minutes later.
“Any time the ball is in your hands, there are expectations,” he said of that goal.
“You don't even think where your hands are or where the ball is going. (You) just kick it and hope it goes through the big sticks and it did.”
The Magpies won the flag in the replay the following week.
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THE FUTURE
If you had told Cloke during his darkest moments that football would still be a part of his life after his retirement, he would have laughed.
But before the COVID-19 shutdown, he had been working in Collingwood’s development and next generation academy, imparting his knowledge to young players.
“When I retired, I didn’t want to stay in football … I thought this game was so toxic, but I still wanted to improve and grow as a person.
“That led me onto the next path of what I’m doing now.
“Luke Power took me over to New Zealand with the under-18s academy team and that's where I found that the game is so good, so raw and so emotional that I want to give back in a way I never thought I could. That’s in a development phase of the next generation of kids and superstars that I reach out to now.
“I've been a part of it, I've lived it and seen the good and bad.
“I really want to spend time educating and upskilling myself in this space.”
Originally published as Sacked podcast: Travis Cloke opens up about his breakdown, footy demons, and leaving Collingwood and the Bulldogs