A real sporting role model: Why Jarryd Roughead is one to follow

Chris Judd once claimed that he wasn’t a role model. He may have wished he wasn’t one, but he was, all sportsmen are. Not just that, all men are.

Do we choose our role models? To varying degrees we mimic what we see at home, in school or elsewhere.

In Australia, that elsewhere is often a sporting arena, where our heroes perform. We live in a country where sporting prowess is so often – albeit incorrectly – conflated with human decency.

The deification of sportsmen is doomed to fail. Look no further than Gary Ablett Sr, Ben Cousins, Wayne Carey and James Hird.

Still, if outside of family and close friends you can choose role models, I wouldn’t look beyond Jarryd Roughead. The difference between he and many others is that he’s a good one. He always has been.

He’s the type of bloke we claim as being uniquely Australian, that special breed of salt of the earth, country kid. We pride ourselves on producing these gems, but in truth there’s not really all that many of them.

You’re lucky if you meet more than a handful in your lifetime.

Roughead’s respectful, funny, humble, decent, caring and endearingly goofy. His ego seems to be genuinely healthy and he appears to treat others well, irrelevant of the colour they wear, or that they are. I’m pointing my son at the Hawthorn No. 2.

There’s no pretension or arrogance, no frighteningly insincere, born again Christian-like smile, no bizarre acts of on-field violence passed off as white-line fever, nor a hint of anger or bitterness following a defeat.

Roughead is a natural. He’s the kind of bloke you wish you could be like, even though you can’t. Even if you hate Hawthorn, it’d be hard not to love Jarryd Roughead.

Today, in the face of a frightening illness, Roughead was still being a good role model, this time to adults, as he capably guided the public and media through his treatment plan.

He politely answered stupid questions about his football career, as if football actually matters, even though in a weird way it does.

As Roughead explained, it’s within the confines of the footy club where he feels most comfortable and having sheltered in the sanctity of a football club myself until I was thirty years old, I get that, but it’s more about mateship than sport.

Roughead has made it clear that he doesn’t want our sympathy, though it’s an entirely natural thing for us to offer.

Strangely, his illness attracts more sympathy and seems sadder than many others. An empathetic Roughead understood and respected his good mate Buddy Franklin’s illness last year where others didn’t.

He did that because that’s what quality, intelligent people do, they listen to science, reason and experts. They don’t pass judgement to satisfy their basic emotional quandaries and confusions.

They barrack for a team, not with someone’s health. No one would question a melanoma diagnosis as they might a mental illness, yet both can be equally as deadly.

I have a friend whose husband has battled melanoma for in excess of a decade. His name is Andrew, he strikes me as a real good bloke. He blistered himself senseless walking from Sydney to Melbourne last year to raise funds and awareness for the Melanoma Institute. His battle continues.

Another friend’s partner, his name was Alex, was killed riding his motorbike to work ten days ago. A kind, gentle, good bloke.

My dad had a seriously dangerous melanoma removed a few years back. Before that, Mum had one too. Dad also once suffered dreadfully from mental ill health. He didn’t choose either illness. Both could have killed him.

My dad’s a good bloke and has been a great role model, just like Andrew, Alex and Roughead have.

If ever there was proof that accident, illness and disease don’t discriminate, these good blokes are the proof. We all are the proof. It’s not only good blokes who get sick, some top-shelf dickheads do too.

But, good bloke or not, through sensibility, sunscreen or psychiatry, all men can at least try to be good role models. We owe it to the boys who will become men tomorrow. We owe it to the blokes who have already been and remain good role models today.

Blokes like my dad, Andrew, Alex and Jarryd Roughead.