Essendon assistant coach Dale Tapping on his blood cancer battle and his plan to fight it
Essendon assistant Dale Tapping is battling blood cancer currently, and he says his diagnosis should be a wake-up call for others to listen to their bodies and get checked.
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Essendon assistant coach Dale Tapping was shocked when told he had myeloma – a type of blood cancer – on January 19 this year. Everything he has done in the three months since has been geared towards fighting it. But he has been buoyed by the remarkable support of his wife and kids and the footy club that has wrapped its collective arms around him. He chats with Mick McGuane and Glenn McFarlane.
MICK McGUANE: Tapps, can you tell us when all this started?
DALE TAPPING: It was the 19th of January at 5pm. I went to the doctor for a minor thing. But he couldn’t quite fix it. He gave me some drops and asked me to come back and see him on Wednesday. He was the club doctor (Brendan de Morton). He said: ‘How else are you going?’ I’d been a bit sore in the rib cartilage since the end of last season. I’d done a rib cartilage when playing footy … it was similar pain, but this one lingered a bit. He said to me: ‘You’ve got your day off tomorrow, go and get an X-ray’. I didn’t think too much about it. I was in the gym at 7am (the day after the X-ray), and Morts rang me. He said: “Today, I want you to go back at 3.30pm, I’ve organised a CT scan for you, to have another look’.
GLENN McFARLANE: Did that worry you?
DT: I didn’t think anything of it. I mentioned to Scotty (Essendon coach Brad Scott) that I had to take off a bit earlier. It was a moment in time when I was in the scan when it washed over me a little. I thought ‘This is a bit different’. Then I moved onto another thought. I had to go and see Morts at 5pm. I walked in there and it was pretty confronting. He said to me straight up, ‘Well, I haven’t got good news for you mate’. He mentioned myeloma (a type of blood cancer that develops from plasma cells in the bone marrow). I had no idea what it was, but I knew it wasn’t good.
MM: What went through your mind?
DT: All of these thoughts come rushing into your mind … family, Kellie (his wife) and the kids (Summer, 17, and Mason, 14). The doctor continued to provide information about what was ahead of me in the short term. He was talking to me, but I just didn’t hear a thing he said. It was a sombre walk back to the car.
MM: What was the drive home like?
DT: Slow. I spoke to Kellie, she was great. I said ‘I’ve just come from the docs, I haven’t got good news’. She goes, ‘what’s happened?’ I said ‘I will be home in 15 minutes, we can have a chat then’.
MM: On that drive home, you have 15 minutes to strategise how you are going to tell your wife and kids. How tough was that?
DT: Kellie and I spoke first. The kids weren’t home. It was a Friday and Mason was at cricket and Summer was out. We had a chat and the initial plan was to gather all the information before (telling the kids).
GM: When did you tell the kids?
DT: The plan was to gather all the information (first), to give them real clarity about ‘this is what Dad has been diagnosed with … this is what is ahead of us … this is what we are going to do’. But I didn’t get that information for another week. We told some immediate family and through goodwill, it started to filter out a bit. I said to Kellie, ‘we can’t run the risk of the kids finding out second-hand, we would never forgive ourselves’. So we called them in on the Saturday.
GM: What did you say to them?
DT: I sat them down. This is where it gets hard. It was tough … (starts to cry).
MM: How proud are you of how the kids have held themselves?
DT: They have been amazing. The initial part of talking to them about it was tough … It was just the four of us. Summer reacted outwardly emotionally and Mason absorbed it all. He was trying to reconcile what it all meant. He didn’t say much, and wandered off to his room. Summer got her emotions out. I reassured her we would get through it. Mason went to his room. He wandered out at his speed, and sat down and we ended up watching the cricket. That’s how he managed it.
GM: There are obviously varying degrees of this form of cancer?
DT: Yes, there are. I had a meeting with the specialist, then I had to go in after the Australia Day weekend. I had a series of tests for two days. The specialist gave us a summary of what they had tested on and where we were at. You are drifting in and out of thought, trying to maintain a positive outlook. I had Kellie in there, and my sister-in-law, who is a medical nurse. The door flicked open and your life in his (the specialist’s) hands. The first words were: ‘We are 100 per cent certain you have myeloma … the tumour is in your rib cage. It is not anywhere else in your body parts’. Obviously with myeloma, it is bone cancer. The plasma cell count reading was seriously high, but it can be extreme for some people. Mine was around 29 and anything above 10 puts you in the dangerous category. It was stressful, but the fact we identified it relatively early meant we had a plan, we had a schedule of treatment and we knew the direction we were heading in.
GM: Tell us about the treatment you are receiving?
DT: (Last Monday) was my ninth treatment into a 16-week treatment block. I get a weekly chemo injection in the abdomen and every fortnight I get my bloods to monitor them. Then every month we get a bone infusion to add a bit of strength. I had all three this week. I duck off from (the club) at 3pm and go to St Vincent’s Private.
MM: There is always a team within a team – you have that at home; you have that at Essendon. What about the specialist team looking after you?
DT: They have been awesome … I have a specialist doctor, he won’t say he is the best, but everyone else does. His name is Ali Bazargan. My first appointment back after five weeks, he had the numbers all up, like it was a match report. He said, ‘You are progressing well, your cell count is starting to improve, and if you are getting that after four or five weeks, that’s a positive sign’. My mindset straight away is, ‘if the best says that, I am comfortable’. I am basically trusting him with my life. I won’t read too much about it (myeloma). I won’t google it. Whatever he says, I’m going to listen to. Unfortunately Mick and Glenn, there is no cure for this … the cure is getting a nice balance with your meds in remission and that’s what I have to get to. I’ve had amazing support from people getting in touch to share their own stories. They are comforting stories too. I have had about 24 people who have contacted me. I’ve gone back to all of them. They have shared their stories around diagnosis to where they are now … 10, 12, 15, even 20 years down the track. If I can get something like that tenure … and who knows what the medicine is going to be like in the meantime. That’s what Ali said. We are making ground every year. He said to me on that first meeting … ‘Look, you have timed it pretty well. If you had come to see me six or seven years ago, I would have given you three to five (years to live).’
MM: Have you had any setbacks?
DT: I haven’t, Mick. I’ve had good chats with colleagues I’ve worked with … Bucks (Nathan Buckley), Fages (Chris Fagan), Harvs (Robert Harvey), Scotty Burns … Bucks asked about my mindset. I think having a positive mindset is extremely important. But it can be difficult to execute all the time. The other day I didn’t have a great sleep and came into work. On a scale of one to ten, I was probably about six and a half or a seven. I was a bit off my best, but I embraced it. My self-awareness allowed me to identify I had had a poor sleep and was not at my best. I put little markers in place throughout the day. I had to do the reviews with the (Essendon) boys and had to run the meeting. The next day was a really good one. I found that to be the key to it, managing those days and using it as a reference point to realign myself.
MM: You’ve maintained your role as Essendon’s forwards coach. How therapeutic has it been for you?
DT: 100 per cent it has. I was guided by my specialist. One of the first things he said was ‘We are not putting this on a pedestal, we are functioning as normal’. I had a chat with Scotty. He has been awesome, as have all the coaches and players. Craig Vozzo (Essendon chief executive) will ring me every week to see how I am going. I have got to the point where I have accepted the challenge ahead of us. I feel like I am in a good space because of what is going on around us as a family, and in my role at the Essendon Football Club. When you think about it, I couldn’t be in a better environment. I roll in here every day, we have 44 players and staff who are chasing the best version of themselves, and the energy that generates is fantastic for me. I am using that energy and I contribute to it with what I bring to the organisation in my role.
GM: How did the players react?
DT: Scotty, (general manager of performance Dan McPherson, ‘Mahns’ (general manager of football Josh Mahoney) and I decided I should address the playing group and staff. They were shocked. The players have been fantastic. I had Peter Wright and Sam Weideman come up and sit in the coaches’ room. We sat there for half an hour and we would have spoken about footy for one minute. Both are mature men, quality humans. Part of my coaching methodology is around being holistic. It is more than a game for me. They (the players) are human beings first and foremost.
MM: What does this mean for your ambitions of one day becoming a senior AFL coach?
DT: I suppose you always cross those bridges if the opportunity presents itself. In our current situation, I have a sharp focus around my health. But even besides that, I’ve always had a focus on the ‘now’. I’ve always had the philosophy where if you are good at what you do, then the opportunities will facilitate themselves.
MM: If you had one succinct message for people, what would it be?
DT: If your body is giving you a signal, you need to listen to it. My body was telling me I was not right. I was good enough on this occasion to follow it. Listen to your body, go and get checked. You want to see your kids grow up and get married and have a family. That’s part of my plan, and seeing that through is the least I can do.
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