Gary Rohan has overcome many setbacks to finally play his 100th game

GARY Rohan made his debut eight years ago but the Swans forward will finally play his 100th game, overcoming physical and emotional setbacks that would have broken many.

Sydney teammates rally around Gary Rohan after his goal following the death of one of his twin daughters. Picture: Getty Images

IN decades as a sports medico, Nathan Gibbs has seen the full spectrum of trauma injuries.

As he ran across the SCG to Gary Rohan on an April day in 2012, Gibbs had reason for optimism.

Swans forward Rohan was slumped on the ground after a collision with a sliding former Lindsay Thomas, but the force of his clash with the then-Kangaroo looked closer to a two than a 10.

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What Gibbs saw shocked him.

“In simple terms, if it was a horse they would have shot him,” he told the Herald Sun this week.

“You know what I mean? He broke his leg with the bone sticking out — a compound tibia fracture — and the smaller bone, the fibula, was sticking through the skin, too.

“His circulation was cut off and when we straightened his leg it would come back. His leg was so crooked it was starting to kink his circulation.

“It is probably the worst one I have seen, particularly when the tibia is staring straight at me.

“It’s an injury many people never come back from. Many people never run again.”

As gruesome the memory, Gibbs can’t help recalling what Rohan did next.

“We had to get him stabilised and the ambulance was waiting. We had to take him through the crowd to get to the ambulance.

“And as he was going through the crowd they were all cheering and his character was such that he was waving to them.”

Gary Rohan has finally reached 100 games. Picture: AAP

THIS weekend on that same ground, and in front of the same adoring fans, Gary Rohan, 26, finally will play his 100th AFL game.

Gibbs probably shouldn’t have doubted him, considering what the former Swans doctor knows about Rohan’s character.

Rohan flashed onto the AFL scene as a No.6 selection in the 2009 draft, a red-haired flyer from Cobden with his eyes on the big time.

Yet football and life’s journey have shown him how cruel they can be at times, and so affirming at others.

You probably know the potted bio.

Three times overlooked as a Geelong Falcon, an 18-month recovery from that leg injury, an enigmatic player mixing brilliance with periods where he seemed becalmed.

Two barren and losing Grand Finals during which nerves hit him hard and his father Jim had to sit in the stands holding his tongue as wags shouted abuse.

Of course, as luck would have it, those losses bookended a Sydney premiership. Rohan was in the stands that day, still wondering if his wounds would heal, literally.

Then this year’s bittersweet moment, when Rohan’s wife Amie gave birth to twins Bella and Willow, knowing a birth defect would take Willow from them immediately.

No wonder those who know Gary Rohan will celebrate the milestone with gusto.

Rohan slumped on the SCG after having his leg broken in 2012.

From teammate Sam Reid, to player mentor Rhyce Shaw, to old man Jim, to his mates back in Cobden, they paint a similar picture: A country boy who has never changed, never forgotten his mates, never given up, never stopped telling those terrible “dad jokes” that make Shaw laugh.

“I was proud of him to play one game, let alone 100,’’ said Jim, no longer on a dairy farm but still working in Cobden, 200km south-west of Melbourne.

“When the surgeons said to us it could be career-ending you fear the worst, but he’s got over that hiccup and he’s had a lot of hiccups along the way.

“Unfortunately we have just gone through another one with these twins, but give the kid credit, he’s strong and he’s kept going.

“As a father I am bloody proud of the lad to get to this milestone.”

Jim and Belinda Rohan have lived every bump, as have Rohan’s younger brother Ashley and sisters Stacy, Rebecca and Jessica.

He has lost count of the times the family made the 12-hour journey to Sydney in a 12-seater mini bus, including on that horrible night when his career was thrust into doubt.

Now the kids are doing their own thing back at home, they have been able to afford to fly more recently.

Family friend Wayne Robertson played senior footy with Rohan in his under-age year as he proved to the Falcons he was good enough with a series of brilliant defensive games.

“He is a great kid from a great family. The thing about Gary is he has never forgotten where he came from, never got ahead of himself,’’ Robertson said. “Every time he comes back he is there at Auskick, there at the primary school.

“Jim and Belinda are a family that support all their kids. They are quite remarkable as a family and for him to be the type of person he is now, it comes from a family upbringing.”

Rohan admitted this week his wife Amie’s support had helped him through those darker moments of self doubt and anger.

“It’s been a very long road, and it probably means a lot more given what I have been through to get to 100 games,’’ he said.

“There are heaps of times I thought to myself it probably wouldn’t have happened. But if feels so much better to get to 100 games, dealing with all those downs and eventually having turned it around.

“There have been some very down times. Breaking a leg and missing pretty much two years of footy and the boys winning a premiership, that hurt a lot.”

Rohan effectively missed two seasons — from Round 4, 2012 to Round 21, 2013 — and Gibbs still is shocked he was able to retain his trademark speed.

“Most players with a compound fracture of the leg never come back and play again,’’ he said.

“They get problems with the union of muscles, there is a high risk of infection, it took many months for the shinbone to unite and wound to heal and to get over the risk of compartment issues, which thankfully he didn’t develop. Most people who suffer that injury never get their speed back and yet I reckon he’s as fast as he was.”

A young Gary Rohan in Cobden before the 2009 draft.

ESSENDON great Tim Watson laughed on radio this week about his three-possession Grand Final in 1993, a quiet day totally ignored because of the spoils of victory.

And yet Rohan’s two poor Grand Finals have seen him savaged, as is so often the case for the vanquished on the game’s biggest stage.

In the 2016 Grand Final he was the 44th ranked player in my 1-44 rankings after four clangers from five touches. He had only seven possessions in the 2014 Grand Final.

He has spoken about paralysing nerves crushing him, but as teammate Sam Reid said, playing deep forward in a losing side is not the place to boost your statistics.

“He has been unfairly judged,” Reid said. “Those games can be the hardest games as a forward. Some days you just struggle to find the footy.

“Everything is put under the microscope when you lose. It’s so easy to point fingers and blame someone but it’s never an individual’s fault, especially in a Grand Final.”

Dad Jim agreed: “It’s amazing for a kid to play in two Grand Finals, and like I said to him, a lot of players don’t get that chance at all. Hopefully he gets to play in a winning one. You have to grab that chance”.

Rohan enjoys a goal against the Giants in Round 3. Picture: AAP

Reid and Rohan are the last survivors of the 2009 national draft, great friends and occasional rehab buddies.

Rohan quickly endured the nickname “Rooster” after an early photo of him with a chook on his shoulder drew the attention of Sydney players.

His streak of red hair brought another nickname that seems to have faded.

“He is ‘Gazza’ or sometimes ‘Ranga’,” Reid said. “In his first year there was a bit of footage from a TV game and there was no commentary and you could hear someone shouting clear as day as he was running through the middle — ‘Get the Ranga, get the Ranga’.”

Reid said Rohan and Amie had coped with their difficult family situation with class and openness.

“He is going to be a really good dad,” Reid said.

“He is a bit of a child himself and he would be the first to admit it.

“He has got along really well with all the other boys’ kids. He was almost best mates with Lewis Jetta’s son.

“They have been so open from the start with Amie’s pregnancy. They said to anyone, ‘If you have any questions and want to talk about it, we want to educate people with what the girls are diagnosed with’.

“They have been so open and we have been out to dinner with them and had chats about it. They have handled so well what is an incredibly difficult time.”

On Thursday night Rohan sent a text to assistant coach and player mentor Rhyce Shaw.

“He sent me a photo of him and the dog, and Bella laying on his tummy,” Shaw said.

“You never thought Gaz would be like that because he was such a little kid. He has come through all this and got to this stage in his life. It’s fantastic.

“I am so proud of Gaz and Amie with the way they have handled it. They have really matured through this process.

“My wife is close with Amie and we caught up with them early and they said, ‘The best thing we can do is to get it out in the open and to talk about it’.”

Shaw, 36, described Rohan as a little brother, having taken him under his wing when he arrived from “Cobbo” as a wet-behind-the-ears country kid.

“He is a good Cobden boy,” Shaw said. “His stories about Cobden are pretty funny. He is shocking with his jokes; he has got all these dad jokes. That’s Gazza to a T. He makes us laugh.”

Gary Rohan with wife Amie and twin daughters Bella and Willow.

On the night Rohan broke his leg Shaw and a handful of teammates visited him in hospital, where he was still in his Swans jumper all those hours later.

“I just remember everyone saying how bad the break was and you think about the other guys who have gone through that stuff and you don’t know whether they come back the same or not,” Shaw said.

Shaw endured a nightmare Grand Final himself at Collingwood before playing in the 2015 flag, and said Rohan’s Grand Final story was not fully written.

“He has had really good finals, too,” he said.

“The game to get us into the (2014) Grand Final against North he played off half-back (winning 23 possessions) and I was like, ‘My career is over’.

“He was so fast, running and bouncing through the middle, and I was like, ‘I am gone now. If Gazza is playing like this, I am in a lot of trouble’.

“Footy can be such a harsh game. Benny McGlynn is the same way. Sometimes footy doesn’t fall your way but I am sure he has got a flag in him, Gazza.

“He is a special athlete. He has got the most explosive footy speed I have ever seen. He is so quick and explosive and he can change a game, but he’s such a humble kid, too.”

A 17-year-old Gary Rohan with brother Ashley and sisters Bec and Jessie.

Driving 12 hours to watch your son get abused in the stands must be one of parenthood’s most thankless tasks.

“It’s bloody hard as parents, you are sitting in the stands and people bag your own kid,” Jim Rohan said. “It’s hard to bite your tongue at times, but you do.

“And that’s the way we go about it. It’s the same with the newspaper. Sometimes you don’t read newspapers because of it.

“You wrap the kid when he deserves it and kick him when he’s down. I do believe at this stage he deserves the credit.”

Rohan still has so much football ahead of him, re-signed until 2020, but Jim’s gut feeling is that he and Amie will return to Cobden one day.

Amie’s father, Tim McGlade, is on the committee at the footy club, having coached the reserves in recent years, and her brothers still play there.

For now, though, Amie and Rohan are easing Bella into life at home.

“Fatherhood is very good. I am loving every bit of it,’’ he said. “So far so good. She only woke up a couple of times for a feed (last night).

“They say that’s normal with premmie babies — they are used to the sounds of the ICU and all the noise, then you bring them home to a quiet place and they kind of freak out. But I have let the dog into the room and they go well.”

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