sidelined

Enough about tipping. It’s the ANZAC week, and that always stirs my emotions. I will spend the morning laying a wreath and then will come home to watch the Essendon-Collingwood game. It’s a day James Hird has made his own, and as it may be the last season we will ever see him play, it’s a day I will cherish.

My emotions have also been stirred by the news that a particular Essendon player reached a particular milestone, by playing in the Bendigo reserve team. Adam Ramanauskas has been with the team since 1998, and played in the Premiership side of 2000. He’s a very tough player, so you wouldn’t think it was an achievement to be playing in reserves, especially not at the age of 27. But this is the sort of news that makes Dons fans - and many other fans - cry. Because, since 2003, Rama has been battling cancer, in the form of tumours in his neck. The first time led to an eight-week lay off, but in early 2005 he scored a knee injury and then, whilst recuperating, the tumours regrew. He’s been out ever since.

Sport demands physical excellence - hard bodies and hard minds. Most people run a mile from cancer, and the merest suspicion of weakness gets you deselected, demoted or delisted, as Roos player Jonathan Hay found when he confessed he was bipolar. You would expect such a thumper of a disease to have cruelled Rama’s chances. But he has never lost his place in the side. He is loved by his team mates, but that would not be enough to save his spot. For that we have to thank our 27-year veteran coach Kevin Sheedy, and the Essendon Club, who held a spot other clubs would have given away to a talented, healthy rookie.

It’s a story that is a nice counter to all the testosterone-laden crap that goes along with AFL. As Essendon captain Matthew Lloyd said today:

“Often we probably take this game too serious and it’s not life or death like his cancer was, so I think sometimes you just go back and play football like when you were a kid.”

It’s a remark that makes me think of one particular kid who was buried exactly this time two years ago. His long struggle with leukaemia was inextricably tied to the Sydney Swans, as many members of his family are mad fans, and the Swans visited him in hospital, and wore black armbands when he died. His mother and I spent Saturday night telling a non-AFL fan that the Swans’ 2005 premiership was a victory for this dear little boy, my son’s friend. So is Rama’s triumph. I know when Rama runs back onto the field in the middle of this year I will cry buckets.