BulldogBelle
23-05-2009, 12:19 AM
A very deep and meaningful article article on Scott West......
Lost Dog (http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sport/afl/story/0,26576,25523772-19742,00.html)
The Herald Sun
Mark Robinson | May 23, 2009
PROBABLY not in 324 glorious games for his beloved Western Bulldogs was Scott West scared, or lost, or lonely. That came afterwards. After the crowds disappeared. After the locker-room banter was gone. After the contested ball didn't need winning.
After all, no one can keep playing the game they love, a game that began for West at five years of age and a game that, for those who play at the elite level, defines a person's worth, even to themselves.
For Scott West, the fear of retirement because of injury sent him spiralling into a world of darkness and self-examination.
He would wake up and wonder: what am I going to do today?
He would take three of his four children to school and then park himself at an Essendon cafe, sometimes for up to three hours.
He would read the paper, every word, and often wonder what the boys at the club were doing.
He would sit alone mostly, only occasionally phoning one of the boys asking, hoping, if they'd like to share a coffee.
A seven-time best-and-fairest winner at the Bulldogs, West was 34 years of age and lost in a society of "normal" people.
So much did he miss the training, the build-up, the banter and, most of all, the exhilaration of game day.
He missed - and later pined for - the regimentation of being an AFL footballer. Self-discipline was an issue.
He has now recovered, certain again about his life's direction as a person, husband and father, and is a part-time assistant with the Melbourne Football Club.
He says he wants to be a senior AFL coach.
But last September through to the middle of October, which led up to a four-week holiday with his family on the Sunshine Coast, West was a football tragic.
Selfish and absorbed, he dulled his fear by drowning it in alcohol.
"I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where you've got this real big party you've been looking forward to, with all your mates, and it comes and goes, and all of a sudden you haven't got anything for a month," West said.
"You wonder, 'What am I going to do for fun for the next month? I've got to create some excitement because I can't wait another month to have that good time'. So you just go out and create your own.
"That's what it was like. You didn't know where the next good time would come from, so you would go out and have a drink.
"I was probably teetering on . . . going out tonight, going out the next night, yeah, I'll go out again tonight, go out on the weekend.
"But it might have been good because I got it out of my system. I went away on holiday, surfing. I took kids to the beach every day, went up to the Sunshine Coast.
"But I'll tell you right now, there comes a day where you say 'I'm going that way or I'm not going that way.' Absolutely.
"You knew you were stretching friendships, stretching relationships, going out all the time, not spending enough time with the kids because you weren't around.
"That's how I dealt with it."
Consequently, the home front became as much a minefield as West's mindset.
Wife to Leshelle and father to Rhylee, 10, twins Cooper and Kobi, five, and 10-month-old Levi, West neglected his responsibilities.
"Leshelle could probably see retirement was going to hurt me more than what I could see retirement was going to hurt me," he said.
"She was there for the journey. And I probably did avoid dealing with it. Going out every night with four kids at home probably put a bit of strain on it. But we went away for a month and sorted it out.
"We dealt with things and we moved on.
"It hurt her because I didn't turn to her and I turned to the drink."
In a typically honest assessment, West said his life had become a drunken haze of late nights and he never considered the damage he was doing - to others or himself.
Nor did he feel he had to defend himself.
"You probably get to the point where you don't care what other people think. I've been judged for 15 years, so who cares, they're going to keep judging me. It's true.
"But if I want to go down this coaching path, I'm going to keep getting judged. Everyone gets judged.
"And I think when you can judge yourself realistically, that's when you know where you're going and what you can do.
"And that time came for me."
West ended his career in the most painful of ways: an injured knee in his final year, 2008, limited him to just four games.
"The pathetic-ness of a late-season attempt to make the preliminary final-bound Bulldogs was played out at Williamstown on a crisp Saturday afternoon.
Jabbed and drugged with pain-killers, West slogged through the middle of Burbank Oval in what was to be his last game of footy.
He was diagnosed with a rare injury - bone stress in the patella tendon behind the knee.
He had played the first three rounds of AFL - picking up 28, 26, 21 and 18 touches in Round 6 - before his knee surrendered.
He had minor knee surgery that was expected to sideline him for just two weeks. That was in April. A setback in June, the club announced, would put him out for another five weeks.
Hopes drifted to a return by Round 17 or 18. They didn't materialise. Then came D-day, the VFL match at Willy.
West was gone before the game started.
"I played that game because I had got to the end of the year, and I thought, 'S---, if I can play with a couple of Panadol the pain might not have been that bad'. But I had more Panadol than you can poke a stick at that day.
"That convinced me I couldn't play that year. And it was becoming a side issue as well. Would I come back and play finals? Had I played enough games?
"The guys were doing the pressers and getting asked, so it was becoming a circus at the end."
The Monday after the preliminary-final loss to Geelong, the club told him they wouldn't be offering him a new contract.
The next day West conceded at his retirement press conference he was angry and disappointed because he wanted to play in 2009. He was also full of self-pity.
"I think all of the above," he said.
"A little bit anger I wasn't still playing, disappointment I never played in a Grand Final, I never won a Grand Final. Despite everything I won, all I wanted to be was a premiership player.
"They have an opportunity this year and I was there for 19 years through the system and I think, 'S---, I wish I was still there'."
For West, the marching band had packed up and he had to go home. He doesn't blame the Bulldogs, nor does he believe they made the wrong decision.
He also makes a point of thanking the club for a wonderful career and coach Rodney Eade for wonderful advice, which he does not wish to share.
"Anything to do with you, personally, you have to see both sides," he said.
"I've no qualms about what happened. But I guess when you have a mindset early in the year, even during the year, that l thought I'd play again - and the docs and physios and surgeons were telling me by the pre-season start I'd be brand new - I wasn't prepared as I would have liked to have been to move on."
West, who owns a transport business, did not feel properly prepared to face the "real" world. It is a phenomenon known to sportspeople the world over - let's call it post-football trauma.
West missed the comfort zone of football. The regimentation, if you wish.
"Once you finish playing footy, you wake up and think, 'What am I going to do today?' " he said.
"You've got this part of your life where you know what you're going to do day in, day out, and all of a sudden you have to make decisions.
"I didn't know if there was a job out there or not, but I had to make a decision to go part-time or full-time and I don't think I was in a state to make that decision because I was so, you know, everything was just moving at 100 miles an hour.
"I had a plan, but the plan was to do it in 12 months. That plan got moved forward and I had to rush to make it, and I'm pretty happy with the decision I made.
"To get involved in another club was the right move."
West admitted he was a lost soul.
"Absolutely. Read the paper back to front," he said.
"It was hard. Anyone who was at that level was very highly motivated. One thing I prided myself on was being a self-starter, I didn't need motivation before a game because what I was doing was motivating enough.
"I didn't need motivating to train because I wanted to improve, I wanted to be fit.
"But then (after retiring) I'd just go to a local cafe and drink coffee and read the paper, and try to ring up anyone who wants to have a coffee, so you'd have someone to talk to. It was scary. And I was one of the lucky ones. I played for a long time.
"So imagine doing that at 24 when you haven't got a uni degree, you didn't really do Years 11 and 12 properly because all you wanted to do was play league footy.
"You'd think, 'S---, what am I going to do? I could play local footy and get a bit of money. If I go to uni, guys my age are all working, so I'm going to go back to the minimum wage'.
"That's why clubs have to keep developing their people. It's why the draft age should be 20. That's a big issue for me. Finish Year 11, finish Year 12, get their licence, develop them. We should give 16 and 17-year-olds the best chance to get an education."
West has regained direction in his life. He began as part-time assistant coach at the Demons in December and helps former Sandringham coach and current Demons midfield coach, Mark Williams.
He manages his duties at the club while coaching the kids' basketball team, working occasionally on radio station SEN and going to football Sunday mornings and Sunday afternoons, basketball on Monday nights, all with his kids.
He is unsure if he will go full-time coaching or, indeed, if he will be offered a role.
"There are no guarantees in life. When you're 24 or 25 you know you're going to play next year and the year after. I don't know what next year will bring. Melbourne have got Round 22 and then life changes again because I'm only contracted until October," he said.
"But it's exciting as well. The phone might ring and someone might ask: 'Are you keen to coach, what do you want to do?' It's exciting at Melbourne. We have a young list and a great coaching staff."
The self-pity is long gone and the confidence has returned.
"I've really got my teeth into coaching," he said.
"I know what I want to do now and I'm hellbent on doing it - I want to coach AFL. I've certainly got a game style, I'm working on a philosophy on coaching, but having just come out of the game, I don't know what it takes to become a senior coach.
"I'd like to sit down with people who have coached, who are current coaches, so I'm trying to gather all the information. I think coaches learn all the time.
"I'm coaching on reputation of playing, not coaching on reputation of coaching. And I want to have respect as a coach."
West hopes to be ready in four years and, with a wave of the hand, dismisses the notion that great coaches must have played in premiership teams.
"I hear that all the time, that premiership players are on a different level to good players who haven't won a premiership," he said.
"That's a lie. But that's human nature.
"Right now we could name 10 players who were in the right place at the right time. We could name 100 of them.
"Robert Harvey, one of the greatest players of all time, was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and yet he was a great leader."
Back to the Bulldogs and West tells a story that is neither happy nor sad, but a jolt that football lingers for no one, not even its champs.
It was in December, and West had to drop his car off at the mechanics across the road from Whitten Oval.
"I saw all the cars there so I thought I'd wander over, saw the doors were open and walked through the concourse there," he said.
"I was standing there in a T-shirt, hat, shorts, thongs, and I must have stood there for half an hour watching the boys training and no one even saw me.
"I was thinking, 'Hey boys, I'm over here'. But they were training and I was 25 to 30 metres away.
"I had a strange feeling. They might have thought I was spying because I'm at a different club, and people get a bit touchy about watching training.
"And then I wandered out. I saw a couple of people on the way back to the car and they said, 'Hey, Westy, what are you doing here?' It was weird."
West said hello and then goodbye.
And then drove home.
Lost Dog (http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sport/afl/story/0,26576,25523772-19742,00.html)
The Herald Sun
Mark Robinson | May 23, 2009
PROBABLY not in 324 glorious games for his beloved Western Bulldogs was Scott West scared, or lost, or lonely. That came afterwards. After the crowds disappeared. After the locker-room banter was gone. After the contested ball didn't need winning.
After all, no one can keep playing the game they love, a game that began for West at five years of age and a game that, for those who play at the elite level, defines a person's worth, even to themselves.
For Scott West, the fear of retirement because of injury sent him spiralling into a world of darkness and self-examination.
He would wake up and wonder: what am I going to do today?
He would take three of his four children to school and then park himself at an Essendon cafe, sometimes for up to three hours.
He would read the paper, every word, and often wonder what the boys at the club were doing.
He would sit alone mostly, only occasionally phoning one of the boys asking, hoping, if they'd like to share a coffee.
A seven-time best-and-fairest winner at the Bulldogs, West was 34 years of age and lost in a society of "normal" people.
So much did he miss the training, the build-up, the banter and, most of all, the exhilaration of game day.
He missed - and later pined for - the regimentation of being an AFL footballer. Self-discipline was an issue.
He has now recovered, certain again about his life's direction as a person, husband and father, and is a part-time assistant with the Melbourne Football Club.
He says he wants to be a senior AFL coach.
But last September through to the middle of October, which led up to a four-week holiday with his family on the Sunshine Coast, West was a football tragic.
Selfish and absorbed, he dulled his fear by drowning it in alcohol.
"I don't know if you've ever been in a situation where you've got this real big party you've been looking forward to, with all your mates, and it comes and goes, and all of a sudden you haven't got anything for a month," West said.
"You wonder, 'What am I going to do for fun for the next month? I've got to create some excitement because I can't wait another month to have that good time'. So you just go out and create your own.
"That's what it was like. You didn't know where the next good time would come from, so you would go out and have a drink.
"I was probably teetering on . . . going out tonight, going out the next night, yeah, I'll go out again tonight, go out on the weekend.
"But it might have been good because I got it out of my system. I went away on holiday, surfing. I took kids to the beach every day, went up to the Sunshine Coast.
"But I'll tell you right now, there comes a day where you say 'I'm going that way or I'm not going that way.' Absolutely.
"You knew you were stretching friendships, stretching relationships, going out all the time, not spending enough time with the kids because you weren't around.
"That's how I dealt with it."
Consequently, the home front became as much a minefield as West's mindset.
Wife to Leshelle and father to Rhylee, 10, twins Cooper and Kobi, five, and 10-month-old Levi, West neglected his responsibilities.
"Leshelle could probably see retirement was going to hurt me more than what I could see retirement was going to hurt me," he said.
"She was there for the journey. And I probably did avoid dealing with it. Going out every night with four kids at home probably put a bit of strain on it. But we went away for a month and sorted it out.
"We dealt with things and we moved on.
"It hurt her because I didn't turn to her and I turned to the drink."
In a typically honest assessment, West said his life had become a drunken haze of late nights and he never considered the damage he was doing - to others or himself.
Nor did he feel he had to defend himself.
"You probably get to the point where you don't care what other people think. I've been judged for 15 years, so who cares, they're going to keep judging me. It's true.
"But if I want to go down this coaching path, I'm going to keep getting judged. Everyone gets judged.
"And I think when you can judge yourself realistically, that's when you know where you're going and what you can do.
"And that time came for me."
West ended his career in the most painful of ways: an injured knee in his final year, 2008, limited him to just four games.
"The pathetic-ness of a late-season attempt to make the preliminary final-bound Bulldogs was played out at Williamstown on a crisp Saturday afternoon.
Jabbed and drugged with pain-killers, West slogged through the middle of Burbank Oval in what was to be his last game of footy.
He was diagnosed with a rare injury - bone stress in the patella tendon behind the knee.
He had played the first three rounds of AFL - picking up 28, 26, 21 and 18 touches in Round 6 - before his knee surrendered.
He had minor knee surgery that was expected to sideline him for just two weeks. That was in April. A setback in June, the club announced, would put him out for another five weeks.
Hopes drifted to a return by Round 17 or 18. They didn't materialise. Then came D-day, the VFL match at Willy.
West was gone before the game started.
"I played that game because I had got to the end of the year, and I thought, 'S---, if I can play with a couple of Panadol the pain might not have been that bad'. But I had more Panadol than you can poke a stick at that day.
"That convinced me I couldn't play that year. And it was becoming a side issue as well. Would I come back and play finals? Had I played enough games?
"The guys were doing the pressers and getting asked, so it was becoming a circus at the end."
The Monday after the preliminary-final loss to Geelong, the club told him they wouldn't be offering him a new contract.
The next day West conceded at his retirement press conference he was angry and disappointed because he wanted to play in 2009. He was also full of self-pity.
"I think all of the above," he said.
"A little bit anger I wasn't still playing, disappointment I never played in a Grand Final, I never won a Grand Final. Despite everything I won, all I wanted to be was a premiership player.
"They have an opportunity this year and I was there for 19 years through the system and I think, 'S---, I wish I was still there'."
For West, the marching band had packed up and he had to go home. He doesn't blame the Bulldogs, nor does he believe they made the wrong decision.
He also makes a point of thanking the club for a wonderful career and coach Rodney Eade for wonderful advice, which he does not wish to share.
"Anything to do with you, personally, you have to see both sides," he said.
"I've no qualms about what happened. But I guess when you have a mindset early in the year, even during the year, that l thought I'd play again - and the docs and physios and surgeons were telling me by the pre-season start I'd be brand new - I wasn't prepared as I would have liked to have been to move on."
West, who owns a transport business, did not feel properly prepared to face the "real" world. It is a phenomenon known to sportspeople the world over - let's call it post-football trauma.
West missed the comfort zone of football. The regimentation, if you wish.
"Once you finish playing footy, you wake up and think, 'What am I going to do today?' " he said.
"You've got this part of your life where you know what you're going to do day in, day out, and all of a sudden you have to make decisions.
"I didn't know if there was a job out there or not, but I had to make a decision to go part-time or full-time and I don't think I was in a state to make that decision because I was so, you know, everything was just moving at 100 miles an hour.
"I had a plan, but the plan was to do it in 12 months. That plan got moved forward and I had to rush to make it, and I'm pretty happy with the decision I made.
"To get involved in another club was the right move."
West admitted he was a lost soul.
"Absolutely. Read the paper back to front," he said.
"It was hard. Anyone who was at that level was very highly motivated. One thing I prided myself on was being a self-starter, I didn't need motivation before a game because what I was doing was motivating enough.
"I didn't need motivating to train because I wanted to improve, I wanted to be fit.
"But then (after retiring) I'd just go to a local cafe and drink coffee and read the paper, and try to ring up anyone who wants to have a coffee, so you'd have someone to talk to. It was scary. And I was one of the lucky ones. I played for a long time.
"So imagine doing that at 24 when you haven't got a uni degree, you didn't really do Years 11 and 12 properly because all you wanted to do was play league footy.
"You'd think, 'S---, what am I going to do? I could play local footy and get a bit of money. If I go to uni, guys my age are all working, so I'm going to go back to the minimum wage'.
"That's why clubs have to keep developing their people. It's why the draft age should be 20. That's a big issue for me. Finish Year 11, finish Year 12, get their licence, develop them. We should give 16 and 17-year-olds the best chance to get an education."
West has regained direction in his life. He began as part-time assistant coach at the Demons in December and helps former Sandringham coach and current Demons midfield coach, Mark Williams.
He manages his duties at the club while coaching the kids' basketball team, working occasionally on radio station SEN and going to football Sunday mornings and Sunday afternoons, basketball on Monday nights, all with his kids.
He is unsure if he will go full-time coaching or, indeed, if he will be offered a role.
"There are no guarantees in life. When you're 24 or 25 you know you're going to play next year and the year after. I don't know what next year will bring. Melbourne have got Round 22 and then life changes again because I'm only contracted until October," he said.
"But it's exciting as well. The phone might ring and someone might ask: 'Are you keen to coach, what do you want to do?' It's exciting at Melbourne. We have a young list and a great coaching staff."
The self-pity is long gone and the confidence has returned.
"I've really got my teeth into coaching," he said.
"I know what I want to do now and I'm hellbent on doing it - I want to coach AFL. I've certainly got a game style, I'm working on a philosophy on coaching, but having just come out of the game, I don't know what it takes to become a senior coach.
"I'd like to sit down with people who have coached, who are current coaches, so I'm trying to gather all the information. I think coaches learn all the time.
"I'm coaching on reputation of playing, not coaching on reputation of coaching. And I want to have respect as a coach."
West hopes to be ready in four years and, with a wave of the hand, dismisses the notion that great coaches must have played in premiership teams.
"I hear that all the time, that premiership players are on a different level to good players who haven't won a premiership," he said.
"That's a lie. But that's human nature.
"Right now we could name 10 players who were in the right place at the right time. We could name 100 of them.
"Robert Harvey, one of the greatest players of all time, was just in the wrong place at the wrong time and yet he was a great leader."
Back to the Bulldogs and West tells a story that is neither happy nor sad, but a jolt that football lingers for no one, not even its champs.
It was in December, and West had to drop his car off at the mechanics across the road from Whitten Oval.
"I saw all the cars there so I thought I'd wander over, saw the doors were open and walked through the concourse there," he said.
"I was standing there in a T-shirt, hat, shorts, thongs, and I must have stood there for half an hour watching the boys training and no one even saw me.
"I was thinking, 'Hey boys, I'm over here'. But they were training and I was 25 to 30 metres away.
"I had a strange feeling. They might have thought I was spying because I'm at a different club, and people get a bit touchy about watching training.
"And then I wandered out. I saw a couple of people on the way back to the car and they said, 'Hey, Westy, what are you doing here?' It was weird."
West said hello and then goodbye.
And then drove home.