AFL 2023: Former Kangaroo Jason McCartney relives his famous comeback game after Bali bombing 20 years on
As Jason McCartney recovery progressed, he set about striving for an AFL comeback. But one month out from that fairytale game, McCartney came close to giving up.
Jason McCartney was moving house earlier this month when he stumbled across an old playing kit.
Tucked away in an attic in cardboard boxes gathering dust, the guernsey and gloves he uncovered could have been any old pieces of sporting memorabilia.
But this was no ordinary playing kit.
Fortuitously, almost 20 years on, McCartney unearthed the playing gear he wore from the night he made one of the most emotional and extraordinary comebacks – and subsequent retirements – in AFL history.
The long sleeves and protective gloves McCartney wore concealed the special compression garment covering his skin to help heal the second-degree burns he suffered to more than 50 per cent of his body just 237 days earlier in the Bali bombings.
His North Melbourne jumper had the numbers 88 and 202 featured prominently below the neckline to represent the 202 people and 88 Australians who lost their lives in the attacks.
Those playing clothes came to represent much more than any other jumper worn during McCartney’s 182-game AFL career.
But like the memories in many people’s lives, they became stored away over time.
“I knew I had it all stashed away somewhere,” McCartney said of his recent find.
“I have still got it all. But you know what it’s like, there’s nowhere to put it. It’s all in boxes. It was in an attic and will now all go into under house storage.
“Obviously you never get rid of it …. but like anything as time goes by you probably don’t think about it as much.”
The mementos of that night might now be hidden away, but the significance of that match will never be lost on McCartney.
In round 11, 2003 against Richmond, McCartney took to the field for one final time as his heroic comeback etched a place in football folklore.
It was a moment McCartney – and many of the people closest to him – thought would never happen after the horror of the 2002 bombings.
THE COMEBACK MISSION
As he lay in his hospital bed recovering from his serious burns in the Alfred Hospital, playing football again was initially a remote thought.
His injuries were severe. He almost died during surgery, battled blood poisoning and spent five days in a medically induced coma to recover from his extensive burns and injuries.
The road to recovery was going to be a long and painful one.
To begin with there was one major goal pulling him through – the upcoming wedding to his then-fiancee, Nerissa.
But as he started his rehabilitation, his mind started to tick.
“Initially football was the furthest thing from my mind. My wedding was more of a priority because that was in December that same year, in 2002,” McCartney said.
“But as I started going through rehab, not that I let on to Nerissa much at the time because of all the focus was on the wedding, there was a period there where I certainly started thinking about returning to footy.
“I just didn’t share it with my wife until after the wedding.”
McCartney had been told by doctors it might take him as much as two years to get back to full health after the severity of his injuries.
As he started making noises about making a return to football, there weren’t many people who thought it would be possible.
That only made McCartney more determined.
“I was very bullish about it.” McCartney, now the Giants’ general manager of football, said.
“I had a lot telling me that it wouldn’t be happening and that probably spurred me on a little bit more.
“But the one thing I knew is I just had to be positive. I couldn’t even allow that little bit of negativity here or there around what I might be able to do. I just couldn’t let it enter my thought process really because I was coming from a long way back.
“I was super positive, I probably was a little bit hopeful, but I was bullish I could get there.”
Not everyone shared McCartney’s optimism.
After McCartney returned to the club in January, it was obvious to his fellow Kangaroos the toll the comeback mission was taking on their teammate.
“I did not think he had any chance (of getting back to play),” his former North Melbourne teammate David King said.
“He was wearing a second-skin bandaging for months. He was unable to train properly to prepare himself, to train was an ordeal that took hours, post-training the same.
“He looked awful, and I mean that in the nicest possible way.
“It was hard to watch him go through those troubles.”
Then North Melbourne coach Dani Laidley said the club was not even thinking about the possibility of McCartney returning to play, but his determination was inspiring.
“We were in awe of him, actually,” Laidley said.
“Just watching him go through what he did every morning, putting his thermos on and that sort of stuff just to get ready to do some training.
“He started off very slow, just jogging laps and that in itself was a huge inspiration to us.
“The players were just amazed at, here we are, only months on that he was doing what he was doing. It was something to behold.
“It taught us all a lot about how far you can push yourself and your desire to achieve what he did, which was getting back to playing AFL football. It was a life lesson for all.”
THE SETBACKS
As his recovery progressed, McCartney returned to the VFL for then affiliate Port Melbourne.
But his return to the field was not without its hurdles.
About a month before his comeback match, McCartney injured his calf in the VFL, which came close to ending his remarkable comeback tale and the doubts started to creep in.
“I hurt my calf and I was pretty frustrated and I was about to pull the pin then,” McCartney said.
“There was a decent shrapnel wound in my calf and I was having issues with it.
“I knew I was so close to getting back in the AFL side and then when that happened, I just went home and I was in a filthy mood.
“You reflect on your career. I didn’t get selected for Adelaide (in 1997 grand final) and they won, played in a losing grand final (for North in 1998), next year got stupidly reported and missed out on a premiership (in 1999). Who goes on holidays and gets blown up? All this sh*t, it only happens to me. It’s obviously not meant to be.
“So I was pretty miserable that night and Nerissa wore the brunt of that and sensed it all.
“I think ‘Stevo’ (Anthony Stevens) and ‘Arch’ (Glenn Archer) and a mate of mine in Perth who was with me in Bali, Peter Hughes, sort of put some perspective on it like ‘Hang on a minute, it’s just a calf injury, you have had worse’ and sort of got me back on track.”
The calf injury turned out to be a blessing in disguise for McCartney as the enforced break helped to refresh his tired body.
But it also underlined the toll the comeback was taking and was when he decided, if and when he did get back to the AFL, he would be one and done.
“It was probably that week-and-a-half to two weeks where I missed one game and it was amazing how great I felt,” McCartney said.
“I was still able to do a bit of training, but just not breaking open grafted skin that weekend and not taking the blows to the body, I just felt like I had so much more energy.
“It was probably in that period I realised, I probably can’t keep doing this to be honest.
“That’s when I made up my mind that whenever this (AFL return) happens, and hopefully it’s soon, it will just be a one off.”
THE CALL UP
The day after playing in a Sunday VFL match at Frankston, McCartney met with Laidley and then North football manager Tim Harrington on Monday afternoon.
The comeback was on.
It was a moment McCartney had dreamt of, but one which also unleashed months of bottled up emotions.
“As amazing as it was, that night was probably the most emotional I had been throughout the whole recovery phase because it was the first night I had the realisation it was actually going to happen,” McCartney said.
“It was also the first time I had allowed myself to look back at what had happened, because I didn’t allow myself to, I just wanted to keep moving forward.
“It was when I allowed myself to look back for the first time, the realisation of just how lucky I was to survive (sunk in).”
A short turnaround added to the challenge of McCartney’s comeback.
“Jase was struggling. It was taking its toll on him physically and mentally,” Laidley said.
“We had a Friday night game, so there was only a five day turnaround. I said, ‘Look, let’s just do everything you can, we’ll get you up’.
“He was going to retire after that game but we did not want to tell anyone because we didn’t want to take away from the game.
“We didn’t know whether to tell the playing group or the leadership group.
“Jason and I were chatting all week and we came to the conclusion, on the Friday morning after the team meeting, we told the leadership group. So they knew but the rest of the team didn’t know at that point in time.”
THE MATCH
McCartney tried to treat the build-up to his comeback match as he would have any other, but it was an impossible task.
In the rooms pre-match, he struggled to keep his emotions in check.
“The hardest thing was (seeing my) dad, my brothers, Peter Hughes, who was in Bali with me at the time, his son and Corey (McKernan) in the rooms as well,” McCartney said.
“It was hard, because you wanted to acknowledge them, but I knew I just couldn’t spend too much time or look them in the eye because I knew I would get too emotional.
“I remember seeing footage of dad being out there when I ran out and sort of shaking his hand and half brushing him off because I didn’t really want to spend too much time looking him in the eye.”
McCartney spent the first quarter of the match on the bench and when he did come on, he struggled to make an impact on the game.
“The second and third quarters I only got a couple of touches, kicked a point I think at one stage and gave a couple of frees away,” McCartney said.
“My biggest fear was going into the three-quarter time coach’s address and thinking I would be back on the bench.
“But luckily ‘Laids’ left me on.”
Up in the coaches’ box, Laidley was riding every possession with McCartney.
“He got a couple of touches in the second quarter and it settled my nerves and I’m sure it would have settled his, as well,” Laidley said.
“In all honesty, by keeping a little bit of petrol in his tank for the second half, he did a couple of ripping things, which were significant late in the game.”
THE MOMENT
Barely a minute into the final quarter, as North Melbourne held onto a three-point lead, McCartney’s moment came.
King collected the ball on the wing near half-forward, turned and booted it inside 50m. McCartney shrugged off his Richmond opponent, Andrew Kellaway, to mark the ball on his chest 30m out from goal, drawing a massive roar from the crowd.
Now he just had to kick it. Problem was the gloves which were protecting his delicate skin were conducive for marking, not so much for ball release.
“I was pretty nervous lining up to go back and have that shot,” McCartney said.
“I was worried about the ball-drop with the glove. The (protective) garments underneath were really slippery, so I needed grip, but I also needed extra protection because my hands were a bit of a mess.
“I knew as soon as I dropped it, as soon as I hit it, I didn’t have to wait. I was very relieved that it had gone straight.”
McCartney was mobbed by his teammates and his coach was just as relieved.
“It couldn’t have been scripted any better,” Laidley said.
“It was a just reward for all the work that Jason put in.”
While it is remembered as a defining moment of his fairytale football farewell, it was not the passage of play McCartney enjoyed the most.
After the Tigers regained the lead, he played a part in another chain to help the Kangaroos seal a three-point win.
“Although that (goal) was big, it was probably just a really messy passage of play that I was involved in late,” McCartney said.
“I was able to really hold my ground on a ground ball and probably the glove helped me pick it up one-handed. As I was flung around, (I) dribbled that kick towards goal and Leigh Harding, who was very quick …. he swooped on it and put us in front.”
THE RETIREMENT AND LEGACY
As he was interviewed on the field after the game, McCartney shocked the AFL world when he announced to the crowd that the comeback match would be his last.
Chaired off the field by teammates Drew Petrie and Shannon Grant, a feeling of relief set in.
“(I had) become a focus of what had happened (in Bali) purely and simply because of what my job was. For no other reason,” McCartney said.
“Obviously we know our sport is extremely popular and it was a journey of recovery that people could follow because of what my job was.
“I knew I was going to be in the spotlight, but it just felt like I could finally take a breath then to be honest.”
The emotion spilled over into the rooms after the match.
It was a game about much more than football, as was reinforced to King post-match.
“It was hard not to get swept into the euphoria of the night and what it meant for people for him to get back to AFL footy and then play a major role in the win,” King said.
“People (impacted by the bombings) were clinging to Jason as the torchbearer that you can still succeed after this tragedy, this act of terrorism, that you can still be OK.
“I wasn’t aware of that until it hit me right in the face in the post-match.
“You see this guy go on this long journey and you go ‘What are you doing?’. Then you see why he does it and you go ‘This guy should be Australian of the Year’.”
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