Little binned soldiers
The Age
Mark Hawthorne
February 26, 2005
The average AFL player's career is less than three years - nearly half what it was in 1999. The game appears to be churning through and discarding a growing army of young talent, Mark Hawthorne reports.
The headlines, in the wake of the AFL's release of its annual report, come as no surprise. Skyrocketing pay. Million-dollar salaries. The average wage packet of an AFL player these days is 20 times that of mere mortals on the national average, we are told.
But behind the riches and glamour enjoyed by those in the upper echelons of the league lurks a much harsher reality. The never-ending search for the next superstar, and the physical and emotional demands placed on those young recruits wanting a piece of the action, are churning through players like never before. The truth is, while we focus on the stars, the AFL scrapheap grows bigger. It's a situation that concerns the AFL Players Association, so much so that it has conducted its own research into the average career expectancy of AFL draftees.
It has found that the average career of an AFL player now stands at only 2.9 years. Six years ago, that figure was 4.9 years.
For many, that equates to less than three years on the AFL minimum salary of $51,500 (first-round pick), plus, for the particularly talented, $2200 to $2400 a senior appearance. There's little time for further education and the risk of serious physical injury is greater than in most occupations.
A great number of AFL recruits do not just depart the league with shattered dreams, but also with shattered bodies and often with little tertiary education or vocational training. No wonder the brow of the association's chief executive, former Richmond player Brendon Gale, furrows just a touch when he considers the numbers.
"I've seen too many players go through it - too many," he says. "It's a big concern to us. We are trying to stress to these kids coming in that you just don't know when your careers are going to end."
To make the point, the association enlisted the help of St Kilda's young star Nick Riewoldt to address the class of 2005 at this year's draftee induction camp, held last month.
Riewoldt, who entered the league in 2001, could not have been blunter. "Take a look around," he said to the latest batch of AFL hopefuls. "More than half the players here won't be in the AFL in three years' time. Not long ago, I sat in the same place as you and now more than half of those blokes have gone."
Gone, but where to? Former Footscray and Richmond player Justin Charles is typical of the tales of former AFL players. In one way, he was lucky. He had trained as a plumber before his body gave out because of a degenerative hip condition after 90 games, and at the age of 27. But just having a trade to fall back on did not prepare him for life after AFL.
"The end came suddenly for me," Charles said. "I woke up on a hospital bed after routine exploratory surgery. The doctors were waiting for me to come to, and told me I'd never play again. They said one more season, and I'd need a hip replacement."
Just months after playing football at the MCG, Charles was working waist deep in other people's sewage. Depression, he says, set in fast.
"I was like every kid who enters this league," he said. "I thought I was going to be the next (Wayne) Carey or (James) Hird or (Michael) Voss. That I'd play for 10 years and have a nice cushy job in the media at the end of it. But not everyone gets that, and for a lot of us, it's really hard to deal with.
"Not playing was especially hard. Playing AFL football is the greatest ego stroke any young man can experience. Period. When it was over, I was depressed. I won't hide from that.
"I suffered from depression. It's been a long tough haul to come out of that. It has taken me six years. I look at my AFL career now and it seems like someone else's, or it was in another lifetime."
It's a common tale, Gale says, and depression is one of the obstacles that face retired players. "You've just got to realise it's such a rich environment," he said. "You're working side-by-side with 40 to 50 fit guys. You push each other to the limit, you make a lot of sacrifices.
There's all the trappings that come with being an AFL player - the adulation - and we all have egos. And then it just stops. Players have a lot of difficulty dealing with that. I know a lot people say, 'Oh he's just being precious, get on with it'. If you didn't know a different life, you could."
As a result of his own experiences, Charles is starting a business called Set For Life, which will advise professional sportsmen. "I want to help those players the system chews up and spits out," Charles said. "The insidious thing about the AFL system is that there's little preparation for life after football. You come in with great expectations, but only a few make it."
During his nine years in the game, Charles' body took a tremendous battering. After retirement, the medical bills for his degenerated hip began to mount. "All up, I've spend more than $15,000 on doctors for AFL-related injuries," he said.
Gale identifies medical problems as a big cause of the shortening AFL career.
"There are many facets to the high attrition rate, but the foremost is that it is just a tough game," Gale said. "Players are taller, heavier and more powerful. I don't care what anyone says. The game is harder now, physically, than ever before. I've watched the old replays and seen how guys want to go the knuckle. But in terms of hard collisions and relentless football, the guys have got it much tougher now. The collisions hurt - and there are lots of them."
Gale says there is another equally important factor, and that is the fish-bowl existence of AFL life. For some, the attention and the glamour is central to the attraction of life in the AFL. For others, it is an unwanted pressure.
"To put it in perspective, when I started as a footballer in the late 1980s, there were about 100 accredited media people dealing with the AFL," he said. "There are now more than 1300. Our research shows that guys, after four or five years, are just jack of it. This is the problem with drafting youngsters. We deal often with kids who say, 'Look, I've had a taste of it, but it's not what I expected it would be like'. There are quite a few cases of those guys walking away, players who had the talent for a long career, had all the talent in the world, but couldn't put up with the constant expectation and attention, and that has sent the career figures down."
Gale points to the reluctance of Nathan Ablett to play as a prime example. "He's a gem, but just didn't want to play," he says. "That's not good for the game. There are many more cases just like that, of players who have just walked away, guys playing in the amateurs or back in the country who have been lost to the AFL."
Since 1998, the association has been working harder to try to prepare players for life after the game. Now, for the first time, more than 75 per cent of young recruits are doing some form of further education and training. But Gale says it will be 10 years before the association knows if it has turned the tide.
In the meantime, his job is to convince his members to think about the day after they hang up the boots, and to battle the perception that AFL players are overpaid.
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