It's fair to say Tony Armstrong has had a meteoric rise to fame.
Winning a Logie for his work on the ABC's morning show News Breakfast this year has been a pretty good step along the way.
But he says it took a "pretty brutal" failure to get to where he is now.
The former AFL player revealed the painful learning curve he was dealt when he was dropped from the league.
"You're sold on the dream that, like if you work hard and try your best it'll work out — and it doesn't always work out," Armstrong said.
"But with a little bit of perspective now that I'm older, it's fine. It's fine to fail."
The insight was prompted by a question from presenter Zan Rowe in her Take 5 program, where she asks interview subjects to nominate five songs that have shaped who they are.
"The longer it is since you played people start to do a revisionist history on your behalf, and it's always good," the 33-year-old said.
"'Oh why'd you retire?' I didn't retire, I got sacked because I wasn't good enough."
Armstrong played 35 games across three clubs, the Adelaide Crows, Sydney Swans and Collingwood, from 2007 to 2015 before he was let go while still aged in his mid-20s.
"It's pretty brutal," he said.
"Because you're like 'I don't have a contract', '[the team] just drafted a couple of halfbacks', 'this isn't looking good'," he said.
"Then you get the call into the office and it'll be like the general manager of footy and like they'll basically say we're not going to renew your contract, good luck.
"And that's it, I basically got shown the door, and I was an athlete so I knew how to walk out.
"It's pretty brutal. I was gutted, yeah it took me years to get over, because I was like 'far out I've wasted eight years of my life'."
The realisation that it was OK to fail came to him after he began commentating football.
"Probably when I started commentating, [I thought] like, oh yeah, there are other things that I'm pretty good at," he said.
"Because until then I knew I was alright at talking crap, but I didn't realise you could monetise it."
Armstrong took over the News Breakfast sports presenter role a year after joining the ABC in June 2020.
He started as a sports news producer/presenter and commentator on Grandstand AFL and then hosted the summer series of Offsiders.
Earlier this year, he won the Graham Kennedy Award for Most Popular New Talent at the Logies.
"I didn't realise how many different ways you can have a career, and feel good about yourself with what you're doing and put food on the table," Armstrong says.
Watch Armstrong's full interview on iview.
You can catch the extended interview, with full songs included, on the ABC listen app.
Zan Rowe will interview Tori Amos next Tuesday, October 18, at 8pm on ABC iview and ABC TV. Watch episodes with Guy Pearce, Missy Higgins and Keith Urban on ABC iview.
