Bríd Stack: It’s over, but I couldn’t have done any more. It just wasn’t meant to be
FRIENDLY FIRE: Our columnist Bríd Stack with Giants team-mate and fire-fighter Louise Stephenson at the station house on Castlereagh Street in Sydney. Both players have struggled with injury this season and have developed a close bond. Bríd’s son Carthach Óg was wowed by the visit to Fireman Sam!
On Wednesday, Cárthach and I took Cárthach Óg to the fire station on Castlereagh Street in Sydney City. He has two small fire-engines in the apartment at home, which he plays with the whole time, so he nearly lost his life with excitement when he was sitting in the real thing.
We were no sooner back to the car after our visit when it was lights out for a little boy who couldn't believe his luck in meeting a real-life Fireman Sam.
We took loads of videos. Sending home those memories means the world to Cárthach Óg’s grandparents, especially when they miss him so much. It’s strange for them to watch him grow and see his personality develop thousands of miles from home.
But seeing him so happy softens that loss when they know this is an experience of a lifetime for him, especially when life must be so tough in lockdown for kids everywhere in Ireland.
We went to the fire station through an invitation from my team-mate Louise Stephenson, who is a firefighter. Louise missed a lot of our early preparatory work when we were hubbing in Albury and Adelaide because she was at fire-fighter training. Since returning to Sydney, we’ve become very friendly.
The offer was even more welcome from Louise because I know she wanted to do something nice for our family, and to try and take my mind away from football and injuries. As much as Cárthach Óg enjoyed the experience, it was just what I needed too since my news on Monday effectively ended my dream of playing AFLW in 2021.
It was devastating but I’ve had to shift my mentality over the past week. The constant chase for something that was always running away from me forced me into accepting that reality by just living in the moment. The chase may have ended but the journey is still ongoing. And I’m determined now to just enjoy the experience for as long as I’m still in Australia.
Meeting friends like Louise and her taking the time out of her day to show us around her precinct was another reminder that this journey has been about so much more than just football. Even with all the wonderful success we had with Cork, it’s the people and the memories you make that always mean much more than the medals.
When you’re in your own bubble, everything in front of you is tunnel-vision. You only see the next challenge, the next target, the next goal. Yet deep down, I’ve been gradually widening my eye-span over the last three weeks to start taking in the bigger picture.
I was at a café in Concord on Monday with Cárthach, Cáthrach Óg and Cora Staunton when Dr Parkinson, the neurosurgeon rang. I was taken aback to see his number flash up on the screen because I know how busy he normally is on Mondays, when he spends most of the day in surgery.
I stepped away to take the call because I suspected he was calling with bad news. Dr Parkinson said that while I already shown great progress, he couldn’t sign off on releasing me back into a contact sport so soon after such a serious injury. He added a final four weeks to my recovery timeline and was delighted that I had recovered so well.
During so many of our previous conversations with Dr Parkinson, I had been overcome with emotion when he delivered bad news, or news I didn’t want to hear. There was a finality, in terms of playing AFLW in 2021, to what he was telling me now but I was calm and composed as soon as he delivered his verdict. The emotion had almost been siphoned out of my reaction because, in truth, I expected it.
Just as importantly, I accepted it, because acceptance was easier when I knew in my heart of hearts that I couldn’t have done any more. I had tried absolutely everything to get back. I was prepared to continue emptying myself to live my dream but, now that the opportunity was finally out of my hands, there was a deep inner satisfaction in how I had so relentlessly pursued my dream.
If I had accepted what so many people told me weeks ago and listened to what medical evidence and opinion had loudly declared to me, I might have spared myself a tonne of heartache and effort.
But adopting that attitude would have only hitched an even heavier load of regret to a carriage already full of it.
The lingering questions would have tortured me. ‘Could I have made it back if I had pushed myself harder? Did I take the safe, but soft, option? Was I really true to myself?’ At least now, I know that I was.
After my last meeting with Dr Parkinson in mid-February, I felt the next two weeks were do-or-die in my slim attempts to make it back. Shortly after that meeting, I emailed Dr Parkinson with an impassioned plea to try and steer my viewpoint into his perspective around my injury predicament.
It was always a shot in a million trying to use emotion to skew a medical professional’s opinion. But I was still willing to try.
I told Dr Parkinson that I felt a rescan on my neck after eight weeks was going to make little or no difference to my situation, because the season would effectively be over by then. So I requested a rescan within two weeks of our last meeting, which would have brought me up to a six and a half week mark after fracturing my neck. And if the scan showed that the injury hadn’t fully healed by then, at least I would have a definitive answer in my own head, as opposed to dragging out that agony for another two weeks.
Accelerating the process by ten days was clearly going to be a risk but I was fully prepared to take it.
Dr Parkinson agreed to move the rescan forward. So from the moment that email landed in my inbox, I became obsessed with using every minute to further my healing. I was so driven to make myself so strong and fit that I wanted the power in my body to over-ride any doubts surrounding my injury.
The following day, I began acupuncture for the first time in my life. Not everyone is keen to have a raft of needles stuck into their body like a pin-cushion but I knew the practice would be beneficial to increasing blood flow to my neck as well maybe having a knock-on effect on the impacted nerve in my arm.
I had four 90-minute sessions within the space of 12 days. I told the acupuncturist Terry not to spare me and to pump the current attached to the needles up as much as possible. I could immediately see the benefit after the first session. Terry tested my arm strength before and after the session and I reckon it increased by 20%.
I was on a total high. Sometimes when you want something so badly you can try and convince yourself that that something is better than it actually is. But it definitely wasn’t just my head playing tricks with me; the improvement in my arm strength was as clear as day. To prove it to myself when I went home, I tested it with Cárthach.
That just added more fuel to my bonfire of motivation, which I stoked into an inferno over the following two weeks. I took so much calcium, vitamin k2, vitamin D, vitamin C, joint support, turmeric and fish oils that I kept the local health shop in business.
I went to a whole new level again with my physical conditioning. I increased the intensity of my neck exercises to five times a day. The physios had allowed me back running so I was hammering the 2km route that wraps around the edge of the Tom Wills Oval. I was lifting heavier weights with each session. I was eating and sleeping as well as I ever have in my life. I just wanted nothing left to chance.
The first real setback in the middle of that personal onslaught though, had nothing to do with myself or the injury; the girls losing to the Western Bulldogs in Round 5 was a silent hammer blow to everyone, but particularly to myself.
As well as draining a mountain of salt from the eggshell timer, it drained my motivation to see more time running out on the Giants’ season.
I didn’t want to start feeling sorry for myself, but I hadn’t time to either because I immediately had to switch my focus on the Monday after the Bulldogs defeat to a battery of retests on my arm strength. Using the exact same tests from three weeks earlier, I was now equal on both sides at 30 degree and the improvement in my 90- and 120-degree flexion was obvious. I still didn’t have full power, but I had shown enough to keep me motivated to keep going.
Shortly afterwards, I did a 6km run and an 11k time-trial on the bike. I smashed them both. I never felt better afterwards. Even the girls had noticed the drive I had shown and was continuing to show.
‘You’ll definitely be back if you keep this going,’ a handful of my team-mates said to me that afternoon.
To keep my focus so high, I just needed the girls to get back on track with another win in Round 6 last Saturday. It was always going to be a huge ask against the Brisbane Lions in Canberra, and the girls were just beaten by a better, fitter, faster, stronger team.
Everybody was down on Monday and I didn’t want to dampen that mood any more after receiving my news. Shortly after Dr Parkinson called, I rang our head coach, Alan McConnell to ask if I could meet him before training.
Alan has been wonderful to me since I got here but our meeting cemented just how much he reminds me of Eamonn Ryan, our beloved late Cork manager. When I told him the news, he was as upset as if I was his own daughter.
Since I arrived into the set-up, Alan has always put me the person before me the player, just like Eamonn always did. They have so many similar traits because Alan values honesty and effort, while constantly challenging the group to get the best out of ourselves.
When Eamonn took us over first with Cork, he had come from the men’s game and I often got the impression that he felt he couldn’t give out to us because we were girls. Then again, Eamonn was such a gentleman, I doubt if he ever gave out much to the lads either.
Alan has a similar background as he spent most of his coaching career in a men’s setup, but he is so caring and empathetic to girls that his actions remind me of Eamonn in so many ways. He is always seeking to build resilience. Alan wants his players to become life-learners and better people as much as he inspires them to become better footballers. The greatest tribute I can give to Alan when comparing him to Eamonn is that they are just completely invested in what they are doing, and completely invested in the people they are doing it with.
Even though I can’t play, Alan has asked me to come on board in a mentoring capacity with the young girls in Year 1 and 2. That will help channel my focus constructively in the coming weeks, but I also sat down with Alan on Thursday to draw up a plan for me until the end of the season.
For now, my primary aim is to join in with the girls for non-contact training over the next few weeks. I don’t know what will happen next year so I just want to finish up here on the pitch in some capacity.
Alan asked me after our meeting on Monday if I wanted to address my situation with the group. I felt there was no need. There was enough disappointment around the locker-room besides me adding to it. I just told him that the news would filter through the group in its own time.
As the week has gone on, I’ve been able to reflect more on the disappointment of not being able to do what I came out here to do. Yet perspective has also allowed me to stand back from everything, look at it in cold blood, be more analytical of my predicament, and to strip back some more layers from that obsessive pursuit.
What if I had played one game at the end of the season and another tackle had done more damage?
I was lucky not to have been paralysed in the first place. You can’t get that lucky twice. If anything had happened, I’d never have forgiven myself.
It just wasn’t meant to be, but I’m prepared now to invest my time in the best way I can while I’m still here, enjoying the experience for what it is in the moment, as opposed to agonising over what it could have been.
You just have to choose your attitude. Even though I was so disappointed to see the girls lose to the Lions, it was brilliant to see Tipperary’s Orla O’Dwyer play so well for Brisbane. It was exciting too to watch three Irish lads — Colin O’Riordan, Callum Browne and Barry O’Connor — play a reserve game between the Giants and the Sydney Swans last Sunday at the Oval. We met up with Colin in a café afterwards for a lovely chat.
Football has always been such a huge part of my world, but that world is nothing without people.
Despite the disappointment, that pain has been eased by the friends I have made, and the kindness shown to me and my family since we arrived in Australia. One of the highlights of our time here was a recent trip to the zoo, which was organised by the club.
Cárthach Óg had an absolute ball, just like he had at the fire-station on Wednesday. And seeing my little boy smiling and so happy makes me realise how fortunate I am to have what I have.
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