Tim Boyle, a warrior from a family of couldabeens

Tim Boyle retired this year, having played only 31 games for Hawthorn in a career interrupted by injuries, including a broken leg, a broken pelvis and ruptured knee ligaments.

Born in 1984, he debuted in 2005, and with 20 games for a return of 32 goals from season 2007 – his career should have been on the up.

Alas, his body couldn’t take him all the way.

He penned this article for the Melbourne Age, recounting not so much his journey, but rather that of his grandmother and father, who were both very talented athletes in their own right with careers crueled by injury and timing.

These key paragraphs sum up the article:

“A family friend once told me that competitive sports people are like warriors, and what separates a warrior from a non-warrior is that a warrior sees everything that happens to them as a challenge, whereas others see everything as either a blessing or a curse.

Another friend said to me this year, ‘Haven’t you heard of the Boyle curse?’ It dawned on me the meaning of that warrior ethos, and how far from cursed Gran and Dad had been.

They don’t consider themselves cursed, and therefore they are warriors. Their challenge was in accepting the fate of their sporting talents with grace and turning the fervour of their blood to another cause. Both of them have.”

Tim Boyle’s career seems cruelly cut short.

In coming to deal with it, he seems to have found consolation from within his family unit that his interrupted and frustrating football career was not the final journey or destination, it was simply part of the journey.