Footy is an emotional game full of ups and downs but there’s nothing like it, Dermott Brereton writes

Footy is an emotional game full of ups and downs but to play it at AFL level, it’s the best time in a young man’s life — at least it was for Dermott Brereton. He explores Round 1, Jesse Hogan’s anxiety battle and more in an exclusive column.

Jack Higgins celebrates kicking a goal on debut. Picture: Michael Klein

Jack Higgins’ footy career has been a genuine interest of mine after watching plenty of his junior football from age 10 until he was drafted.

So it was a pleasure to sit beside him at the Fox Footy launch on Monday.

We agreed with a laugh, big smiles on our faces and pure appreciation, that to be young, fit and playing AFL in front of big crowds is the best time of your life.

When you are as young and inexperienced as “Higgo”, you don’t really know what else the world will deliver you.

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Can anything else in life compare?

Can anything be better than running on to the MCG in front of 90,000 fans?

Just as I told Higgo, “no there isn’t, they are the happiest and best days of your life”.

Of course there will be stress, there will be endless fatigue, there will be physical pain and there may even be anguish and torment.

But the journey is worth it.

Jack Higgins celebrates kicking a goal on debut. Picture: Michael Klein

In recent days we have all been made aware of the unfortunate circumstances in which Jesse Hogan finds himself and that mental health is a serious issue.

We can feel sympathy for those who suffer these illnesses.

My words here are not to antagonise those who suffer, but more to the point to identify that for most people, going to the footy, playing footy and working within the footy industry is a privilege and a godsend.

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Even when our team loses, we have been taken on an emotional journey.

We can end up broken hearted about losing, but we also feel those glorious moments when Charlie Curnow takes a screamer, Stephen Milne just misses gathering a ball that would have given St Kilda a flag, or Gary Ablett Sr kick nine in a Grand Final.

Moments that will make you relive them inside your head when you sit at the local coffee shop, or you’re sitting in bumper-to-bumper traffic heading to the game.

Footy is the best Soap Opera of all-time.

Fremantle recruit Jesse Hogan is battling clinical anxiety. Picture: Getty

There are heroes and villains. There are the skilful and the labourers. There are back room deals and there are alliances. In every part of the field there is a story.

With my tongue planted firmly in my cheek, I said to Mark Robinson once, “let’s do an interview about an AFL player, who played well enough so that he was either loved or hated by different groups of supporters, he got paid incredibly well, he got to drive beautiful motor

cars, he bought a beautiful house, he could meet and romance some of the most beautiful

women he’d ever seen, he got given free drinks at every nightclub he entered, he got invited to every major shindig in town and he lived happily ever after”.

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The suggestion was a simplistic view of the life of an elite footballer who wants to and chooses to live that way.

But for a young lad growing up in the suburban neighbourhood playing football in hand-me-down footy boots, attends the local Primary school, plays at the local juniors and is glued to watching the AFL every possible minute of his childhood, that is a dream and it is

achievable.

Of course it is up to the individual how he chooses to partake in everything outside of the football field, but the opportunities that exist for a young player are limitless.

A win in Round 1 will get you the same four points as a win in any other round of the season.

But Round 1 is climactic. The starvation of the true code that the public, the media, the league and of course the players have gone through since last year is real.

Players are conditioned for the contest. And as much as their bodies are screaming for a rest at the end of a season, those same bodies are screaming for a physical test by the eve of

Round 1.

As you walk into the ground for the first game of a new season, you think you have an idea of what lies ahead.

You know your body, you know your teammates, you roughly know what your coach is going to do, but you don’t really know how much it will measure up to what the opposition has been doing for the past five months.

Dustin Martin flies for a mark in front a packed MCG crowd during last year’s season opener.

Is your team the new season’s bolter? Or have you slipped back? You have no certainty that you are going to be either. Or you may flatline, which is no good to anyone.

The uncertainty is fantastic. It makes you feel like you are alive and in the moment when it comes, you can make a difference.

For me that was living, that was the greatest time of life.

Supporters know that, too. That is why more than 90,000 will turn up on Thursday night.

They have hope and a new season means everyone walks into the ground for the first game on even terms.

We feel for young people like Jesse Hogan and even if we don’t truly understand what it is like to walk in their shoes, we give them our sympathy and our support.

But for most of us, just like Jack Higgins, we look forward with anticipation and hope that these coming days will be some of the greatest days of our life.