Football, Michael Tuck once said, is an endless series of kicks in the guts. Tucky had just about the complete footballing career – seven premierships, 39 finals and about 3,500 games. But in the end, all he could think about was the struggle, the setbacks and the (rare) losses.
The football field isn’t the Gaza Strip and we should be wary of anyone who refers to a knee injury as a tragedy. I remember when Melbourne’s David Schwarz, just 23 at the time, injured his knee for the third time and the TV man interviewing him was almost in tears. “Cheer up mate,” Schwarz said. “I’m fine.”
But it was impossible to not be flattened by the news that Sam Docherty has ruptured his anterior cruciate ligament for the third time. Few footballers have had more kicks in the guts. At Brisbane, bedevilled by injury and a lack of opportunity, he was part of an exodus of interstate players. A former teammate farewelled them with the hashtag #mummiesboysarehomenow.
Days after he’d met his Carlton teammates, on a high-altitude camp in Arizona, he received a phone call informing him that his dad, at 53, had died of a heart attack. Several years later, after winning a best and fairest and an All-Australian blazer, his knee buckled in a non-contact drill at pre-season training. The most diligent of athletes, he did all the rehab and fronted up for another pre-season. In a one-on-one duel with Charlie Curnow, the ligament ruptured again. Another 12 months off.
During the Covid-19 pandemic, he was diagnosed with stage 2 testicular cancer. A year later, it had spread to his lymph nodes, lungs and stomach. “A lot of big white dots” Docherty said. Throughout Melbourne’s endless lockdowns, requiring almost full-time care, he endured 12 weeks of chemotherapy. He lost all his hair, about a stone-and-a-half of weight and was completely isolated. He was blown away by the support – from family, from teammates, from complete strangers. “I got to see the best part of people,” he told Channel Seven. “In today’s age, it’s hard to find sometimes.”
Docherty returned in 2022, didn’t miss a game and was runner-up in the best and fairest. Indeed, for more than a decade, he’s been the most dependable of footballers. He played in some truly awful teams. Being a defender in some of those Carlton sides was a burden you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. He was constantly undersized and under siege. Four of his coaches were sacked. Together with players such as Kade Simpson and Patrick Cripps, he gave Carlton a semblance of respectability, a reason for fans to keep turning up.
It was both fitting and fortunate, when the young winger Ollie Hollands switched play with seconds to go in last year’s semi-final against Melbourne, and when an entire club’s decade boiled down to one contest, that it was Docherty on the end of the kick. He’d earlier dislocated his shoulder and had it yanked back in. His young opponent overcommitted, Docherty kept his head and set up the match-winning goal. With apologies to Taylor Swift fans, I’ve never felt the MCG shake the way it did at that exact moment.
When Robert Murphy wrecked his ACL for the first time, he described the sound as like ripping the leg off a roast chook. Docherty’s injury, like his previous two, was far more innocuous. Just before half-time, with his ligament already ruptured and the game seemingly shot, he attacked the ball, beat off two opponents and won a free kick. He then sat out the second half on the bench, hoping it was just a hyperextended knee, as Carlton launched the most astonishing of comebacks.
As well as Docherty, the Blues were missing arguably their two most important players – Sam Walsh and Jacob Weitering – and several other walk-up starts. They defeated a Lions outfit that had been close to unbeatable at home, that was nearly eight goals up, and that played almost perfect football in the opening term.
Watch enough football, and listen to some of the people who populate its commentary boxes, and one can become cynical and jaded. But what the great sportswriter Hugh McIlvanney called “the magnificent triviality of sport” can still teach you, move you, surprise you and leave you in pieces. It can, as Harry McKay demonstrated on Friday night, offer stories of redemption. It can, with a 46-point comeback, make your brain yelp. It can then, with one phlegmatic press release and injury confirmation, completely rip your heart out.
