Collingwood’s Jaidyn Stephenson shows he is full of heart
JAIDYN Stephenson is one of the politest footballers on the field but his mum was dreading his AFL dream was over when the revelation he carried a genetic heart condition hit the headlines.
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RAQUEL Stephenson was dreading the conversation.
As her son Jaidyn sunned it up on a cruise ship near New Caledonia last November, back home the revelation he carried a genetic heart condition was splashed across draft headlines.
“Our biggest fear was we were going to have this poor kid get off the cruise and I was going to have to say, ‘No one’s going to take you, mate’,” Raquel said.
“We just had a crappy time leading up to the draft. A lot of these kids have this great lead-up after they put all the effort in and the hard work.
“But Jaidyn just had this other thing hanging over his head, as we did. It took a bit of the shine off it for us.”
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In a flash the question flicked from “Will he go No.1?” to “Will he go at all?”
For draft watchers, that seemed absurd.
Stephenson was a lightning-fast matchwinner who could cut through the lines and kick bags of goals from the wing.
“Peter Matera-like,” AFL talent manager Kevin Sheehan said as he ranked Stephenson the No.1 prospect.
Stephenson had always seemed destined to play in the big league, right from when he would snap pairs of socks through doorways at the family’s Ferntree Gully home.
Raquel noticed “something a bit unusual” in Jaidyn’s junior games and last week teammate Callum Brown reflected on their 2015 TAC Cup under-18 grand final, when Stephenson was just 15.
“He kicked three goals that day, finishing with 10 from our four finals matches — pretty ridiculous for a bloke who was two years younger than most of the other guys,” Brown told the AFLPA.
But about two months before last year’s draft, AFL clubs discovered the Stephensons were carrying a genetic heart condition after younger sister Tegan, a promising netballer, produced similar ECG results to Jaidyn.
Suddenly, the whole family was prescribed “precautionary” beta blockers, which are consumed in pairs three times each day.
“If Tegan hadn’t made it to AIS level, there would’ve been no testing,” Raquel said.
“If my kids had only reached even rep level we would’ve gone on living our lives as normal. I think that’s a negative to this athlete screening, because we’re asymptomatic (showing no symptoms).
“Now we’ve been exposed to having a so-called condition, and it just makes it really stressful.
“And then to have it spread all around the country … it gained momentum on the internet and it got to the stage where someone said to us, ‘God, he needs a heart transplant’.
“Look, I have no issue with it. I just think there should be an opt-out tick box on some of these forms, that if you can say I’m asymptomatic and there’s no family history.”
Clubs began jumping off Jaidyn on medical grounds and, according to Raquel, the rising stress levels overshadowed the perceived dangers.
“Them saying he couldn’t play would’ve damaged him more psychologically than the very tiny risk of him playing and something happening,” she said.
“And Tegan’s in exactly the same boat. Not quite as much exposure, but she’s going through exactly the same on the netball side of things.
“We’ve all been put on medication. Maybe we’ll come off it — we don’t know. At the moment that’s what they’ve told us to do, so we’re doing it.
“Jaidyn doesn’t believe he’s got anything going on at the minute.”
For Jaidyn it has always been no symptoms-no worries, and his November boat holiday shielded him from the hysteria.
“I didn’t feel the pressure of it too much,” Jaidyn said.
“But it did take a toll on Mum and Dad. Especially Mum; she was having worries that I wasn’t going to get drafted.”
Jaidyn said there was only one thing he could do to help his mum — “I had to get drafted!”
About 3pm on draft day, he walked into his parents’ Sydney hotel room and said: “Mum, I’m feeling sick”.
Unbeknown to the family, Stephenson had no need to be queasy. About an hour earlier, Collingwood settled on taking Stephenson at pick No.6.
“We didn’t make a final decision until 2pm,” recruiter Derek Hine said.
“And it was on the back of external (and) internal assessments from key medicos all around the world.
“Ruben Branson, our doctor, co-ordinates all the information and if Ruben felt for one minute he wasn’t going to stand up (medically) we wouldn’t have taken him.”
Raquel asked Jaidyn’s manager, Robbie D’Orazio, for updates and at about 4pm he told the family that Stephenson would get drafted.
Still, D’Orazio’s declaration wasn’t enough.
“Until his name was called out I didn’t have total faith in anyone or anything,” Raquel said.
Stephenson was drafted with a final diagnosis incomplete, and while cardiologist testing is still ongoing, he is all the rage with Magpie fans.
Housemate Kayle Kirby and St Kilda’s Dylan Roberton have been hospitalised with different heart complaints this season, but not even that has bothered Jaidyn.
Instead, he has simply played with flair and dare, and that has been all too rare at Collingwood of late.
“A lot of his pressure is chasing pressure, because he closes the distance so quickly,” coach Nathan Buckley said.
“Not unlike a Cyril Rioli or Paul Puopolo for Hawthorn, you never know when they’re going to get you.”
Stephenson might be the most dazzling Magpies draftee since they took Dale Thomas at No.2 in 2005.
At the Pies he is known as the “polite footballer”, with teammate Steele Sidebottom pointing out he even says please and thank you on the field.
“I do say ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ too much, and Steele likes to pick up on it,” Stephenson said.
“It’s more the ‘thank-yous’ rather than the ‘pleases’ on the field. I wouldn’t say, ‘please give me the ball’, but if they set me up for a goal I’ll say, ‘thanks for that, Steele’.”
Raquel said it was merely the way her kids were raised.
“They used to joke at Eastern (Ranges) that he even says ‘thank you’ to the water boys,” she said.
“No one says thank you to the water boys but Jaidyn thought why not? They’re doing a job and giving me water.”
After four AFL games it is clear Stephenson’s courtesies don’t extend to opposition defenders. Last week he bagged five goals against Adelaide to claim the Round 4 Rising Star nomination.
But perhaps his texting etiquette could be sweetened. Last Monday morning, he texted his parents, “I got rising star nomination”.
“That was all — we get very short texts,” Raquel said.
“All we got for his first game was ‘playing’. I said, ‘So are you on the bench? An emergency? Or what?’
“The response I got back was, ‘If I was an emergency mum I wouldn’t have said playing’.”
A few people have noted to Stephenson how snug Peter Daicos’s No.35 looks on his back, with the Magpies handing the famous number to their top draftee in their debut season.
But he has no designs to break that tradition and keep the number.
“I’ll have to change it next year, so I don’t want to get too attached to it,” he said.
Raquel, a lifelong Collingwood fan, forecast tears at the MCG today as the Last Post is played and she stares at the No.35.
“I cry even if the Last Post is playing anywhere. Anzac Day is always big for us,” she said.
Last year the Stephensons flew home from Tegan’s netball competition late on April 24 and were up at the quarry in Ferntree Gully “at the dawn service in the dark and walking through the mud”.
War medals and photos decorate their house, with Raquel’s grandfather having served in WWI and husband Darren’s father in WWII.
Victoria vice-captain Tegan took home a silver medal playing goal defence in Sunday’s national under-17 final in Adelaide.
On Wednesday, on the MCG in front of 90,000 people, it is Jaidyn’s turn.
“Gee wiz. He’s never played senior football and he hasn’t looked like he’s out of his depth,” Raquel said.
“He’s young and wiry and that but I think he’s done extremely well.”
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