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An apt reflection on Ward as part of this website’s summary of this week’s AFL round.
But Callan Ward’s inspirational response to Saturday’s heartbreak at ENGIE Stadium, which looks likely to be the final act of a 327-game lifetime of service to the AFL and GWS, might be a rare exception.
Make no mistake – the 35-year old deserved better. A man known from his earliest days at the Western Bulldogs as ‘Cement Head’ has spent 18 years proving it’s possible in the modern game to be tough without resorting to thuggery, and has become one of the most admired and universally respected players in the league.
Few athletes get a happy ending in sport, but at the very least, Ward earned the right to set his own retirement date, lead the team he once captained onto the field, maybe slot a farewell goal for his trouble and d be chaired off the field at the end of his final match, win, lose or draw.
But it rarely works like that. Chris Judd’s final moments as an AFL player were being stretchered from the MCG after his knee gave way; Lance Franklin’s last match saw him subbed out early with a calf injury; Gary Ablett played out his farewell with a wrecked shoulder that he couldn’t even lift to salute a cheering crowd at the end of the 2020 grand final.
If it is, as suspected, a serious knee injury, then Ward will surely not return for another season, having spent much of this one already separated from his family for one last crack at an elusive premiership.
Ward, though, was a different kind of champion. An ultimate professional whose greatness was in his work ethic, commitment to the cause and inspiring leadership – and as he showed at three-quarter time in the Giants’ comeback win over Richmond, just hours after the cruellest of blows, he didn’t need to be actually playing to showcase all that in spades.
If there’s a right way to remember Callan Ward and all he stood for in the AFL, then the sight of him urging his teammates to lift from a 28-point deficit, and inspiring them to an unlikely win, is just as poignant as if he were given the on-field ending his standing in the game warranted.
From start to finish, he was the type of player who made others around him better. That has never been more apparent than at – we suspect – the very end.
3. If this is the end for Callan Ward … it’s a good one
In 99 per cent of cases, the sight of any player, let alone a great of the game, limping from the field for the final time with a serious knee injury would be the most brutally unjust end to a career.But Callan Ward’s inspirational response to Saturday’s heartbreak at ENGIE Stadium, which looks likely to be the final act of a 327-game lifetime of service to the AFL and GWS, might be a rare exception.
Make no mistake – the 35-year old deserved better. A man known from his earliest days at the Western Bulldogs as ‘Cement Head’ has spent 18 years proving it’s possible in the modern game to be tough without resorting to thuggery, and has become one of the most admired and universally respected players in the league.
Few athletes get a happy ending in sport, but at the very least, Ward earned the right to set his own retirement date, lead the team he once captained onto the field, maybe slot a farewell goal for his trouble and d be chaired off the field at the end of his final match, win, lose or draw.
But it rarely works like that. Chris Judd’s final moments as an AFL player were being stretchered from the MCG after his knee gave way; Lance Franklin’s last match saw him subbed out early with a calf injury; Gary Ablett played out his farewell with a wrecked shoulder that he couldn’t even lift to salute a cheering crowd at the end of the 2020 grand final.
If it is, as suspected, a serious knee injury, then Ward will surely not return for another season, having spent much of this one already separated from his family for one last crack at an elusive premiership.
Ward, though, was a different kind of champion. An ultimate professional whose greatness was in his work ethic, commitment to the cause and inspiring leadership – and as he showed at three-quarter time in the Giants’ comeback win over Richmond, just hours after the cruellest of blows, he didn’t need to be actually playing to showcase all that in spades.
If there’s a right way to remember Callan Ward and all he stood for in the AFL, then the sight of him urging his teammates to lift from a 28-point deficit, and inspiring them to an unlikely win, is just as poignant as if he were given the on-field ending his standing in the game warranted.
From start to finish, he was the type of player who made others around him better. That has never been more apparent than at – we suspect – the very end.
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