Polak awake and showers, as Tigers head into uncharted waters
Peter Hanlon | July 1, 2008
MOGGY, the Richmond Football Club's tabby in residence, slept soundly at the door to the Punt Road offices yesterday. On one side of the glass, at least, it was life as normal.
Football clubs go to enormous lengths to better themselves, yet are marked almost exclusively on how they fare in the business of winning matches. The handling of off-field crises, should they arise, is still relatively uncharted territory for a 150-year-old pursuit.
"It's certainly not something they 'whiteboard' and expect, but they've come a hell of a long way in dealing with this sort of thing," Pippa Grange, the AFL Players Association's manager of psychology, people and culture, said yesterday. "This is a really great example Richmond have handled this very, very well from our perspective."
"This", of course, is the head injury received by the Tigers' defender Graham Polak, when he was struck by a tram in Armadale on Saturday night.
His improvement continued yesterday, Polak coming out of an induced coma at the Alfred hospital and his manager, Paul Connors, reporting he had managed to get out of bed and take a shower. But the club's doctor, Greg Hickey, said it was still too early to eliminate the possibility of permanent brain damage.
While they await further news, the club's various arms have swung into action. Grange spoke to football manager Greg Miller and development coach Craig McRae on Sunday morning to offer assistance, and has been impressed with their diligence in handling an incident far more devastating than any on-field loss, one which has touched all at the club.
Coach Terry Wallace has spoken individually to every player on the list, as well as Polak's girlfriend, Alyce. Long-time club chaplain Paul Cameron has comforted the family at the hospital, and was at Punt Road yesterday morning to speak with Jordan McMahon and Cleve Hughes, who witnessed the accident, and any others who felt they needed his counsel.
"Something like this, when you have one of your own family and that's what Graham is to us, one of our family go down in such an horrific accident
a lot of people at the club have been affected by this," president Gary March said yesterday. "Graham is a much-loved player around the club, he's got a great character, he's a really good guy.
"A lot of us have had a lot to do with Graham
We just want to make sure they can cope with this, keep their chin up, and hopefully we can get through this as a club and it'll make us stronger."
March, who addressed the Tigers' staff yesterday afternoon, said he had taken calls of support from AFL clubs both local and interstate, from club legends such as Royce Hart, and had been buoyed by the level of community support.
Beyond Polak and his family, March said the club was concerned for Hughes and McMahon, "their health and their mental state", and that Hughes' family had flown to Melbourne from South Australia on Sunday. "Cleve's in a reasonable state of mind at the moment, but obviously quite traumatised by being on the scene. We've just got to work with him and help him through."
Grange's first involvement in a true football tragedy came with the death of Melbourne's Troy Broadbridge in the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, a time when "there was not really a plan in place for something as horrific as that". She is heartened by the improved processes established since.
"It's really encouraging to see people (at clubs) who are able to think not just, 'How do we manage the message of this?', but really, 'Who's important? How do we keep the players informed? What do we need to do with his family?'."
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