Almanac Footy (Rumination): Jagga’s bitter pill

 

It’s like the much-hyped pick 3 from the latest AFL draft playing 3 quarters of pre-season in a year he’d been touted as his side’s X-factor. It’s Jagga Smith, teenage sensation, succumbing to a horrible though innocuous knee injury during his very first competitive match at the professional grade he would’ve aspired to for over a decade previously, a stretch populated by hundreds of junior games that avoided a comparable misfortune. It’s an awkwardly-aged kid who waited a year to get recruited after finishing school being left to watch his draft class in the big league from the sidelines for another. It’s one of the lightest players to take the field at Ikon Park at the weekend getting dealt the heaviest, most reverberating blow, and one of the league’s hottest talents only appearing for season 2025 in a February match played in near 35 degree heat. It’s a guy rumoured to have a bamboozling lateral step suffering an injury to that part of the knee essential for pivoting before he might’ve offered any confirmation on the MCG. It’s Sam Lalor, No. 1 pick from Jagga’s draft, breaking his jaw in the same round of practice matches, meaning both shall miss what would’ve been their hyped collision in Carlton and Richmond’s opening match.

It’s the situation when much of your own excitement towards the upcoming season, as a fan, relates to the prospect of watching Smith arrive as a Daicosian talent, and yet you uncharacteristically miss seeing any of the fateful practice match due to a cousin’s out-of-town wedding. But no pain on the wedding day; the Carlton injury report didn’t arrive ’til Sunday. An assistant coach lumped with the post-game press conference initially described as ‘nothing serious’ the gravest news to come out of Blues HQ since trusty defender Nic Newman’s busted patella. Had those attending Blues fans who reportedly roared from the Legends Stand for Smith’s first evasive step and disposal known of his injury post-match, they would have gone to nearby Zeneli’s for flowers and piled these outside the club.

But back to this elusive word. Applicable when you’re leaving the ‘recovery’ of said wedding, brother scrolling in the backseat, and he announces the Jagga Smith news with such shock as to turn Bendigo’s dry summertime streets funereal. And when you’ve literally had a conversation with a Carlton-detesting mate in the preceding week about whether you’d accept an ACL injury yourself to spare a Blues player (Sam Walsh, in the example). Admission: I’d genuinely weighed it up for a second or twelve, thinking of what my own knee might accomplish for the year, versus what a hard-running midfielder otherwise could achieve with theirs, for a whole community, before Matt arrested me with something to the effect of, “Don’t be an idiot. There’s no way.” Again, the word comes to mind when you’re sitting around in a Bendigo hospital ward later on the Sunday, bemoaning with family the Jagga development, feeling bereft for the kid and your club, as you’re across from an 87-year-old who, because of a protracted, bed-ridden hospital stint, has turned skinnier than even Smith, and now has a big scar across his belly he’s only too happy to expose. And it’s there when this patient, in a hoarse, unusual voice, lends agreement to the fact that what happened to the 19-year-old was ‘a bugger’. No doubt Grandad’s had many thoughts about mortality of late, but he nevertheless should be on the mend, should have more energy without a couple of tumours along for the ride. His blood, they say, will be better at retaining its iron. Is it then more ironic? No, I’ve overstepped, misused. Ironic is when you happen to base a whole plangent Carlton FC piece around a cheap riff off a famous song and the title of its album that also topped the charts in ’95. Life has a funny way.

 

 

To read more by Joe Sexton click HERE.

 

 

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Our writers are independent contributors. The opinions expressed in their articles are their own. They are not the views, nor do they reflect the views, of Malarkey Publications.

 

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