Footy Show's tribute to Troy

[Collingwood_Forever]

I just want to say that the loss of Troy affected me dearly and I thought I was getting over it until I saw the Footy Show on Thursday NIght. It was a great tribute and it brought tears to my eyes. I couldnt imagine how his family and fans are feeling. I really hope the Dees rally for him this year.

RIP Broady

 

[Kissboy]

Yeah. It was a really moving tribute. Very personal, the footage from the honeymoon etc. I appreciate that the family made that available to us.

 

[birssyboy40]

Hey guys and girls, i just saw this on the age website, and thought id post it here in case you havent read it, i thought it was pretty good, think i might go to your match on sat night just to see what they do for troy.

http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/articles/2005/03/21/1111253893587.html?oneclick=true

By Melissa Ryan
March 21, 2005




Friend, teammate. Troy Broadbridge of the Demons in action in 2004. Melbourne teammates are reflecting upon his legacy as they approach the round 1 game named in his honour.
Photo: Getty Images

NEALE DANIHER, coach

“The key characteristics that we all love about Troy was his care for the club. He was approached by the Kangaroos at the end of 2004 — probably for more money — but it was never ever a concern. Troy had a lot of care for his teammates and club. His courage and perseverance, he had overcome a bit injury-wise. He really played a terrific game in his last game. And his non-pretentiousness, he had come through the rookie list so he wasn’t a glamorous first or secondround pick, he had come through the back door and worked his arse off.

Down at Sandy when he was injured (one time), I was in the coach’s box and noticed Trish and Broady having a kick to kick outside the huddle. I said to the guys in the box, ‘this boy must be in love’.

I didn’t want to play Troy in the last game with Sandringham (the VFL grand final), I wanted to leave it for a couple of young guys. Those two weeks before, he went and joined Sandringham knowing he wasn’t going to play, but there was an illness in the end and Broady got in. Brock McLean, he wasn’t playing and there was Troy making sure he was all right with everything. He was so selfless in regards to the way he went about the footy, and he always helped out his teammates. Getting the limelight was never his way.’’

MARK RILEY, backline coach


“I got on with him pretty well because I’m quite au fait with taking the mickey out of people and he seemed to enjoy that. He invited me around to his house one night for dinner when I first came to Melbourne — because he was a very caring person — just to get to know him a bit better, I suppose. He had young Belly over there, he might have been boarding with him at the time, and I went over there for dinner and it was comfortably one of the worst meals I’ve ever had.

Last year I really developed a good relationship with him. What I liked about him too, he was injured but he gave a lot of time to Sandringham and actually worked on their match committee as a bit of a backline coach and worked with some of our young guys. Last year the things that I admired were that he had a couple of obvious deficiencies in his game and he just really worked on them. You could just see week by week he got better and better and better, to the point where it culminated in playing him on James Hird in the final, and the week before he played on Phil Matera and kept him down so he was developing into a very, very crucial weapon in our back six.

He was a young man that did care genuinely for people around him. When he smiled, it was that beaming smile. It was like sitting at a set of traffic lights, you had the big red head and big white teeth.

Now when we’re revising games or looking for a film clip all of a sudden you’ll see him, and that sort of rips at me a bit. I saw him the day before his wedding, I was heading back to Perth. He used to call me champ. I said, ‘you have a good wedding, champ’ and he said, ‘you have a good holiday, champ’, and that was it, I walked out of the meeting room at Junction Oval and I flew to Perth and he got married, and that was it.’’

JOHN STANAWAY, club trainer

“My younger son (Clint) met Trish actually when they were both working at the club doing membership, so my younger son got to know him a little bit before I did. The trainers have a fair bit to do with the boys and you could tell that he was a good athlete from the moment he started, because you can tell somebody that’s a naturally gifted athlete by the way they move so I thought this kid’s got a fair bit of promise.

As my son got to know Trish a little bit better, she introduced him to Troy and our family got to know Trish and Troy very well. We had them over for dinner a couple of times and my wife used to tell him that he was our surrogate son, because he was from Adelaide and what have you.

The shoulder injury was certainly a blow, but the knee injury, when he got that I was one of the trainers that tried to help him off the ground and I actually helped him get dressed in the club dressing rooms after the game. It was one of those awkward situations where we couldn’t say a heck of lot (as we took him from the ground) because everyone was giving directions and play was going on and we had to try to get him off the ground. He was obviously devastated and you can only try and say ‘it will be right, try and look on the positive side of things’.

With everything he did, he gave it 100 per cent. With his injuries, he was extremely positive all the time and I think that’s what got him through a lot better than most players.

LUKE WILLIAMS, teammate, groomsman at his wedding

“It’s so fresh in my mind still, it’s only a couple of months ago, I can still see his cheesy grin, smiling, and still sort of hear his voice and how he used to talk. That’s the one vision of him I see. He was a very quiet guy, you’d often walk in a room and never know he was there because he always sort of kept to himself. He wouldn’t put himself forward in the footy club environment as such, but he enjoyed it a lot. He enjoyed a laugh.

We were both on the rookie list at the same time. I don’t know how you get drawn but you end up hanging around each other and then he found Trish and he was a bit more of a recluse and very hard to get on to at times.

He was terrible (with nerves before the wedding). He was trying to remember some lines and he was going over them nonstop and he was a bit of a wreck. I was thinking it would be all right but even I was nervous for him.

At the time (Troy died), I didn’t really want to think about it (the wedding) because it was such a good day and makes you feel bad, but looking back on it I had an absolute ball and I know Troy did. That was the last time I saw him. He was the happiest man alive pretty much.

When we were playing down here we’d have a few laughs out on the ground. We share the same sort of common approach to the game where we’re not exactly really intense and both would probably rather play the game relaxed. We’d laugh about things on the ground, like, ‘how ******** was that kick!’ or ‘that was just beautiful’.

We had a laugh about his interview after the VFL grand final last year, it was absolutely terrible. They asked what’s it like to win a premiership and he said ‘oh yeah, it’s really good because I haven’t got one of these before ... except in 2000’. He’d already won one and he’d just told them that he hadn’t won one and then contradicted himself! He was a bit vague at times.’’

DANIEL BELL, teammate, groomsman at his wedding

“The first time I met him he was just giving me a lift back from training and that was the first time I really got to know him. He just seemed like the kind of bloke that really wanted to know you and he wanted to know about my life, which was good. I used to live in Hawthorn/Kew and he lived that way as well, and I didn’t have a car at that stage because I was only 17. But a couple of times — eventually he moved out to Cheltenham — he’d still give me a lift home and it was like an hour or an hour and 20-minute round trip, but that was the type of bloke, always wanting to help.

He was just a good friend to me. I could see that he was the same with everyone, even the people at Sandy. He’d always take the time to find out about their lives so he was a selfless type of person. He was always a really quiet sort of fella. I can remember in one of the last backline meetings, they were talking about a game that we’d lost last year and Broady’s just piped up out of nowhere, and said that (it was) because he wasn’t playing. It was something he’d never say (and the room burst into laughter) and it was just interesting, a really unexpected thing so you could see that he’d changed in the last couple of years with playing a few games, and he’d started coming out of his shell a bit.

(On the wedding day) It was bloody hot, it was about 40 degrees and three of the four of us were wearing vests so we were boiling. I just remember Troy was really nervous and excited at the same time when we were at his house getting ready. He’d been rehearsing his wedding vows and couldn’t really get them right because they weren’t ones where the Rev read them off, he had to make them up himself. We went over them about 20 times just before the wedding and he got most of it out but he didn’t get all of it out, I’m pretty sure. He was really happy that day.

He was just a quality bloke who was a bit unlucky. Everything was going right for him. He’d just hit the peak of his career and he played awesome in the final against Essendon. He’d just got married and everything was going well, so at least he died happy. That’s one thing to take out of it.’’

PAUL WHEATLEY, teammate, fellow defender

“I always liked playing in the backline with Broady because we were similar types of players and we played the same sort of position so it was good that if I was getting a bit of a hiding on one bloke he’d come along and we could swap over.

He was a bit of a yapper, he’d sort of just pipe up every now and then — ‘Come on guys!’ — and he’d always give his couple of words and then go back and wouldn’t say much again.

(In his final game against Essendon) I reckon he had a ripper of a game. I was playing on Hird for the first half and Hirdy got the better of me, and Broady went on to him after half-time and I think Broady probably got the better of Hirdy, and even before he was playing on Hirdy he was in really good form. I just remember a terrific game: he was running through the lines well and playing a great game of footy.

He was lightning quick. He got bronze in the 400-metre hurdles at state levels and I remember pre-season, we’d have these 150-metre sprints and we’d do them in two sets of three, and he’d run flat out in the first set and he would blow everyone away, he was just so quick. But he was the worst endurance bloke at the club, and the last set of three, he would be probably 20 or 30 metres behind in a 150-metre sprint. It would be the same in the gym, he’d just be all power, and when it comes to endurance he was terrible. But he always admitted that too and he knew it as well. We’d muck around and joke about it a fair bit.

Everything revolved around Trish for Broady. His definite love was Trisha. He had a couple of dogs and they were called Harry and Sally so he was a bit of a romantic, but I used to room with him a bit when we’d go interstate and he’d just spend a couple of hours a night — even when we’d gone away — talking to Trish on the phone. They were (made for each other). It was a beautiful wedding.’’

CAMERON BRUCE, teammate

“I remember seeing this tall, redhead lanky guy walk into the club and thinking ‘who’s this guy?’ and that’s how I first came across him. We spent a fair bit of time playing reserves together and that’s where it all started. You sort of take more of an interest in players that you start out with and you follow their careers probably a bit more closely than other players. I followed his pretty closely and took great joy in seeing how much improvement he was making.

He was the first person to ever call up someone if they were injured or if they hurt themselves at training, just to find out how they were going. Yet he had so many injuries himself and he probably would have, at that time, been going through shoulder rehab or knee rehab and he still found time to ring up. He’s the only player to ever ring my home phone and not many people have my home number, so whenever the home phone rang when I had niggled an injury at training or something, I’d think ‘this has to be Broady’.

He doesn’t work with mobiles or anything and he was a bit of an old-fashioned kind of guy, but that’s probably the biggest thing that we’ll miss, the care and the kind nature he had, and the loving nature he had around the club that really brought the players together.

We did an activity in the pre-season where you had to identify something that other players probably wouldn’t know about you and then you had to guess who it related to. We found out that Broady knew how to play the flute. You probably wouldn’t go boasting to a bunch of footy players that you can play the flute, but we found out Troy could do that. I think he could play the guitar as well so he had a bit of musical talent, but we thought that was funny when we found out he could play the flute. We only put it together because we couldn’t fit him with anything else.

“He was just a really enthusiastic guy. If he put time in, it wasn’t half-hearted. It’s something many of us can take a leaf out of his book with the way he conducted himself on and off the field, and if we put everything we’re wanting to achieve in our goals the way Troy did, we’ll be much better people for it.’’

DAVID NEITZ, captain

“When I think about Troy and the type of character he was, my first memories are of this tall skinny shy young kid stepping into the footy club and then watching him develop as a player and as a person. He worked very hard to improve himself and get better as a player and that was evident in his last few games that he played for the footy club. He just had a really quirky sense of humour. He’d pick out these really minor details or really tiny parts of a story that he’d find quite funny and just had a real quirkiness about him that I really enjoyed. I’d always have a little giggle about that little small part of a story that he found funny. He had a really good dry sense of humour.

I usually play on big Alistair Nicholson (in training drills) and would just wait for this big red flash to run in front of me or try and jump on top of me or something like that. He was pretty quick. I used to try and take him on at the track. I try to rate myself in my speed and we had a few tussles on the track and I’d like to say that I won most of them but I’d be lying.

He was really quiet and kept to himself and was really respectful of the place and where he was at, the people around him and the history of the footy club. He was really respectful of that. I sort of felt that he really wanted to earn his stripes before he really got himself entrenched into the team type things. And he did that. He was really excelling and probably achieving things that perhaps he may not have believed he had within himself but he was really coming out of himself.’’

 

[Demon ADI]

Melbourne are riding an emotional rollercoaster and i hope that all people invovled with the the club in any way, shape or form can pay their up most respects to troy on Saturday night.