Hamish McLachlan: Dylan Roberton hopes to come back from heart concern
Dylan Roberton was starting to feel like his AFL career was really going places when he collapsed suddenly during a game in 2018. A year later, with a defibrillator permanently in his chest, he was looking forward to a return when he felt it go off “like a kick in the chest”.
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Dylan Roberton spent three years at Fremantle before moving home to Victoria to start a
family.
He settled into the Saints, and has become a leader of the club.
At the start of last season, Dylan collapsed on field with a heart irregularity. He spent the rest of the year watching on.
This year, as he was walking off after a pre-season game, he felt his defibrillator give him an
almighty shock. His heart needed help again. He hasn’t played football since.
We spoke about moving from Freo, collapsing on ground, choosing between Matthew Pavlich and Nick Riewoldt, coaching, a worried mother and getting back out on the field.
HM: A trivia question to start — who was the first sub for Fremantle?
DR: That’s me. Round 1 in 2011. Against Brisbane.
HM: Well done. For double points, who did you replace, and in what quarter?
DR: Rhys Palmer … in the third?
HM: Tick … and tick. Are you one of those players who can remember every detail about every game?
DR: Pretty much, actually. I’ve always been a bit of a footy nerd, I still watch every game. I always have. Some players get drafted and get sick of watching games, but I still love it. I can remember that substitution clearly though. Matt de Boer said to me at the time that it would be a trivia question one day … and I’ve always been ready for it … I nailed it, didn’t I?
HM: You crushed it. A hypothetical. You played under Matthew Pavlich at Freo and Nick Riewoldt at the Saints. You are in the schoolyard — picking a team — both are staring at you wanting to be picked — who do you choose?
DR: Oh, come on — that’s a seriously tough one. They are both very similar men, so impressive on so many levels. Both were the face of their footy clubs for such a long time. They both had an elite level of professionalism. Rooey had a work rate that was unparalleled, it actually almost defies belief how hard he worked — it can’t be understated. I was pretty young and naive when I was playing with Pav, but he was such an incredible leader of the club — the culture setter. It almost felt like he was more than a football player, like he was running the whole club. The question’s too hard … I can’t pick one of them over the other.
HM: You were traded to the Saints and the very next year Fremantle play in a Grand Final. How did you feel watching on?
DR: First of all — moving was very hard. When we found out that Amy was pregnant, and we had to make the decision about whether to come home or not. There was a strong pull to be back close to our families — we were both so young — I was going to be a father at 21. Anyway, after a lot of thinking, we thought we would go home and have family around, as much as I was loving Freo.
HM: And watching the Grand Final?
DR: Oh yeah … that was the question, wasn’t it! You know, I can remember saying at the time to my mum that we (Freo) would definitely make the Grand Final next year. My last year, was Ross (Lyon)’s first year. His plan was so strong that you could just tell that success was imminent. The Dockers played in two finals that first year, I didn’t get to play in either of them. The right decision for me in a football sense would have been to stay, but family came first. I actually wore my Freo jumper when I watched that Grand Final.
HM: (laughs) Seriously?
DR: I did, it was exciting to watch them play. I had some close friends playing in that match. It’s a little different now of course, there are only a couple of players still at the club I played with. I watched it with a few mates. I wasn’t great company — I was just engrossed in the game. I was so flat when they didn’t get over the line. The decision had been mine to come back to Victoria, and we left on really good terms, I’m not sure how I would have felt if I had been kicked out of the club.
HM: Skip forward to 2017. After a slow start at the Saints with injury — 2017 sees you finish second in the B&F, in the All-Australian squad, a part of the leadership group and signing a four-year extension. Things were good — you would have had some pretty lofty standards set for 2018.
DR: Things had turned for me. As a young player, you worry so much about getting a game every week. Having injuries doesn’t help your cause, which I had at the Saints, early days. As you mature, and I think this happened somewhere around my third year at the Saints, and you are getting more established, your thinking starts to shift. Rather than just thinking about yourself, you start thinking about the team, and how you can help the collective, so the team can get better. It felt like I was ready to step up and be a leader at the club. My expectations for 2018 were pretty high. I was very comfortable that I was going to be playing each week, so I can focus on helping the team a lot more. I’ve always been fairly vocal, even when I’m personally having a bad game.
HM: So everything was set up, ready to go and then it all literally changed, in a heartbeat. In Round 4 last year against Geelong you collapsed to the turf. What do you remember about the moment?
DR: The Cats had us on the back foot, they were kicking goal after goal, we were getting pumped. I was standing on the half-back flank waiting for the ball to be bounced up in the centre, and all of a sudden, I just felt really dizzy. Everything just started spinning, and I can remember telling myself to try and kneel down and try and really focus on the grass to try and get everything to stop spinning.
HM: Did you think it was something serious — or did you just think you were out of gas and getting a bit light-headed?
DR: You know that feeling when you stand up too quickly? It was kind of like that. That’s all I thought it was, I wasn’t thinking it was a serious issue. But then the doctor told me it wasn’t that. Your blood pressure is normally quite low when that happens, but mine was right up, it was extremely high.
HM: Do you remember collapsing?
DR: I don’t remember collapsing as such — or lying on the ground at all, there is just a complete blank spot there. I do remember the doctors telling me to stay lying down because I was trying to stand up when I gained my consciousness. In my head, I really did think that I had put myself to the ground so that I could compose myself and that I was fine, just a little dizzy. I didn’t realise I had been unconscious.
HM: The footage is pretty terrifying, you’re just running along and then you fall to the side as if you’d been shot.
DR: It didn’t look good, did it? I didn’t believe the doctors until I’d seen the footage, they were telling me I’d been out but I was sure I hadn’t been. I was arguing with them, trying to tell them that I had just been looking at the grass. Once I saw the footage, I realised how wrong I was.
HM: Did you suspect it was anything to do with your heart?
DR: I had no clue to be honest. The doctors took me down to the rooms, and they hooked me up to the ECG machine, which I initially thought was just a precautionary thing. I could absolutely feel my heart beating erratically, but I wasn’t sure if that was just an adrenaline thing or not, I just wasn’t sure. I still wasn’t worried though. When I was running off, I felt as fine as I had before the game had started, there was no illness or anything. I thought maybe I’d miss a week just as a precautionary thing, but after they did some tests, and we got the results back, that’s when I realised it was a lot more serious and we took the year off.
HM: You had a second episode in a pre-season game this year, was it the same again?
DR: It was very different, I didn’t feel anything coming on in that one. It was reported afterwards in the paper that I had felt a bit groggy but that wasn’t the case — that wasn’t the case at all.
HM: How did you know you had the episode?
DR: It was recorded on my defibrillator that had been installed a month or two after the Geelong incident last year. It records everything my heart does, and is programmed to pick up any irregularities. If you have an irregularity that doesn’t correct itself within a certain period of time, it will intervene and give off a shock. That’s what happened to me in Ballarat, I was walking off the ground and just felt a big “bang”. It felt like someone had just kicked me in the chest.
HM: So you felt nothing at all — until the defibrillator kicked in?
DR: That’s right, I was walking off the ground and taking a drink from my drink bottle at the time. I just about launched the bottle when the shock kicked in. It was like getting jump started with a set of jumper leads or something.
HM: This was post-match wasn’t it?
DR: It was, I’d shaken hands with all the Bulldogs players and was thinking “you beauty, I’m back — I’m good to go”. It was our last game before the season started in two weeks, and I’d played all right, and everything was all set. But they ruled me out for the year.
HM: Bugger of a thing. How big is the defibrillator? And where do they put it?
DR: It’s under my lat muscle, so you can’t see it, it’s subcutaneous. The leads go under my left pec, across the sternum, and into my chest. You can’t see any of it. If it needs to go off because of an irregularity, it just sends a shock and gets everything back to how it needs to be. It was really uncomfortable in the first few weeks. I had a cold, and every time I coughed, it was pretty painful. I don’t notice it at all now, I was worried that I would feel it every time I copped a bump or landed on it, but it is fine now.
HM: How does it keep itself charged?
DR: I really don’t know, I assume it has a really good battery.
HM: Do you know the exact nature of your condition yet?
DR: Not really, they know what happens, and what the rhythm is called. Normally you have a diagnosis of why it happens. I think Jaidyn Stephenson, they know what his heart condition is, so they can treat it accordingly. With mine, they still haven’t locked down what it is, mine doesn’t happen every day, just a very random occurrence. If I was tested on a treadmill today, nothing would probably happen. That is one of the reasons we have to be so conservative, which is frustrating, but I can understand it.
HM: Does it scare you?
DR: I’m OK with it I think. I’m confident it will be OK.
HM: How does you body feel now? 100 per cent fit — and no symptoms or stresses?
DR: That’s exactly it, which is both a good thing and a frustrating at the same time. Paddy McCartin, he feels physically crook in his head, which would be shocking. I feel perfectly fit and feel like I could play and do everything as per normal. I haven’t felt dizzy, or in any way abnormal, since that incident in Geelong.
HM: You’ve known football all your life. Majak Daw said recently that he’s confident he will play AFL football again at some point — do you think you will?
DR: Yeah, I do. After the incident against the Bulldogs, they drove me to the hospital that night so they could download all the data to see what had happened. That’s a bonus in itself. When I played Geelong, there was no way of truly knowing what happened, but the second time, they could see the data. It was pretty tough though knowing that the season was just around the corner, but that the right thing to do was be defensive and conservative, and sit it out.
HM: How has the whole process affected you outside of football? Are you and Amy closer? Do you have better perspective on life? Any considerable changes?
DR: The toughest thing was after the defibrillator was first put in. I wasn’t allowed to do any exercise at all for three months, not even weights or anything like that. As a result, I spent a lot of time at home, and I was grumpy. Because I wasn’t burning energy during the day, I wasn’t sleeping properly at night. Ever since I was about nine, I was playing and training, so I’d spend all my energy during the day, and sleep really well at night. My body wasn’t getting that stimulus which was really hard to deal with. If someone does a knee, there is still a physical path forward, you can still do some exercise and training — but I couldn’t do anything so I battled. Amy and I and the kids have always been great — nothing has changed there.
HM: No training — but now you are helping with coaching.
DR: And I’m really enjoying it. I’ve always been keen on doing some coaching post-footy. Over the past four years, I’ve done all the coaching courses, but they’re all theoretical-based and not practice-based. So I guess the silver lining out of all this for me is that I have done some coaching, and learnt some new skills like cutting vision and things like that. It’s been good to put my interest in coaching to the test. And the good news is, it hasn’t scared me off chasing coaching as a profession post playing.
HM: How have your family coped with the heart issue — has everyone been OK for you to keep pursuing the game?
DR: I think everyone has been pretty balanced. I’m not sure I’ve taken the situation as seriously as the doctors have wanted me to.
HM: Meaning?
HM: Well, I’ve always been OK with it and just assumed it will be OK. I think it has been more worrying for my family than it has for me. Mum is probably the one who was freaked out the most about it, my brother has a bit as well.
HM: How is Mum now? Does she want you to pack things up and start coaching?
DR: I’m not sure — I probably don’t want to ask. Mum supports me in everything I want to do. She knows how much I love footy, and she’s so supportive of that. She’s determined to find out what it is that is affecting me, and spends a lot of time reading articles, and learning as much about it as she can. She’s always calling, telling me to read this book or that article.
HM: Do you?
DR: Not really — I should. That sounds bad — I’m just busy fathering and I just think it will be OK.
HM: Lazy … if it all goes well, how does it play out from here?
DR: The same as last year — I’m aiming for pre-season games, and to be back by Round 1. I’ve been training again for the last three weeks now, and I’ll continually step it up. Hopefully by the end of the year I am back to full training and can do a full pre-season.
HM: Do you still have to do any testing?
DR: Not really, every time we do a test it comes back fine. The doctors are still frustrated they can’t lock down what it is exactly.
HM: Do you have to take any medication?
DR: I’m on a beta-blocker, I don’t even know what that does to be honest.
HM: You don’t know how the defibrillator works or how the medicine works? It is your heart, you know Dyl?
DR: I should probably be across it more — I know how it all works in very layman terms. Our doctors, Tim Barbour and Ian Stone, they are so thorough and wouldn’t put me at any risk. They recognise the serious nature of it, so they are going to make sure they do everything the right way. I have full trust in them, and just do everything they say.
MORE HAMISH McLACHLAN:
GWS GIANTS CO-CAPTAIN PHIL DAVIS INTERVIEW
AFLW STAR DAISY PEARCE INTERVIEW
HM: Good to be in good hands … before we go — have you got an answer on the Pavlich-Riewoldt question yet?
DR: Yes … I’ll coach them. I’ll give up my spot. I’ve done my coaching stint — I’m ready. Rooey can play at half-forward, and Pav, as he has proven, can play anywhere. He’s made All-Australians playing as a defender, a forward and a midfielder. Pav can go wherever we are struggling, he’s Mr Fix-it.
HM: I’m not sure taking both was the point of question, was it?
DR: No, but I’m taking both. And they can be co-captains!
HM: I’ll pay that. Good luck on getting back.
DR: Thank you mate — good to talk.
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