Brandon Jack is living proof, if it were needed, that there is plenty of life after hanging up your footy boots.
His career in footy with the Sydney Swans didn’t meet his expectations.
Brandon didn’t play over 200 games or win a premiership. He left the game at age 23, having only played 28 professional games.
After retiring, he was trying to hide from his failure to make it in the AFL.
“This thing that my whole life has been built upon, was pulled out from under me,” he says.
“I had that meeting and then was on the verge of crying.”
He ran into his former Sydney Swans teammate and assistant coach Rhys Shaw after the meeting.
“When I saw Shawy, I think that’s the first time I’d really let it all out,” he said.
Brandon describes Shaw’s impact on him during his final years as his “saving grace”.
In the final weeks of his AFL career, he says Shaw told him that he hadn’t given up on him.
“I cried after he told me that in the sheds before the game, and then went out and played one of my best games,” he remembers.
“[Shaw’s] the first person to sit me down and say, ‘What do you want to do?’ Honestly, in my life I can’t remember ever being asked that question.”
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)Four years on from retiring, Brandon wouldn’t trade his career in the AFL for the world.
“Because I met incredible people like Rhys Shaw, and so many of my teammates are still my closest friends.”
Brandon now writes regularly for The Sydney Morning Herald about sport and politics, and is making music under the name BrandonJack&TheArtifacts.
He describes the first time he sent his demos to a radio station as him “finally feeling comfortable” doing what he wanted.
“That was the first time in my life, I’d really had to forge my own path and I loved that.
“I wasn’t thinking too far ahead about things. I was used to making stuff and recording songs in my room, because that’s what I love doing.”
Source: AFL NEWS ABC
