The AFL generally tackles social issues well. It may not always get things right when dealing with them but at least it attempts to provide leadership in a world that too often leaves the task for someone else.
The recently completed Multicultural Round is a prime example of the AFL playing a leading role in promoting awareness and understanding among its players and followers.
As are the Indigenous Round and the Women In Football celebrations held each season.
All of those events tackle issues facing what might be described as minorities in the great game of Australian rules football.
Now it is time for the AFL to tackle an issue that effects its greatest asset, young men.
Just recently, a local football club experienced the loss of one of its players to suicide.
He was a well-liked young man with a leadership role among his team but sadly, for whatever reason, he chose to end his life.
For all of the good things football clubs do and for all of the social and developmental opportunities they provide, young men still choose to take their lives.
Every football club has a tale of a ‘good mate’ who felt he had no other option.
The loss of a teammate by his own hand leaves a massive gap at a football club and not just on the field.
People feel sick, they wonder what they could have done, they mourn the loss of a friend, a fellow warrior and volunteer for the cause that is a football club.
There is no coaching guide that helps a sports club through this mourning process and it prompts sadness and inward thinking which can manifest themselves in so many unexpected ways.
Following the young man’s death recently, a quick search found that there were no real services available to help the football club through this tough time, while the league itself, through no fault of its own, had no model for coping with such a trauma.
In Australia, men are at four times more risk than women of taking their own lives, which means at one stage or another, a football club will experience the tragedy of suicide.
Young men about to enter their prime and have so much more to offer are being lost to the game each year, a sport where it is often said you are only as good as your depth.
These young men are the lifeblood of the game and it is these young men who would benefit from the awareness provided by an annual Suicide Prevention round in the AFL.
Beyondblue, with its massive profile and with former Hawthorn president Jeff Kennett at its helm, is the ideal candidate to provide the support the AFL needs to organise such an event.
Society is gradually coming around to the fact that it is okay to talk about mental health but there is still a long way to go, particularly among blokes who think they are bulletproof and often resign themselves to the fact that they should ‘just get on with it’.
The AFL, one of the greatest forces for good in this nation, is in the perfect position to take a leadership role to promote awareness of this important issue and help to reduce the impact of suicide upon not just football clubs but families and communities all across Australia.
This story first appeared in The Bunyip newspaper (Twitter: P10Rob)
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