A numbness descended on the football community last Saturday. The mixture of heartache and disbelief that Adam Selwood had taken his life three months after his twin brother Troy left everyone speechless.
Such tragedy was not within anyone’s frame of reference. There were no words. Collingwood coach Craig McRae, who Troy lived with in Brisbane and who worked with his younger brother Scott, broke down. Geelong coach Chris Scott, a teammate of Troy’s at the Lions and coach of Joel and Scott, said the issue was just too raw for him to speak about.
Scott, Adam, Troy and Joel Selwood at home in Bendigo in 2006.Credit: Photo: Daryl Pinder/Digitally altered image.
That theme has continued through this week as friends and family attempt to navigate difficult emotions. By midweek, West Coast teammates, past and present, had begun to come together to discuss Adam’s impact on them.
To be a Selwood teammate or colleague has always been a privilege, something Adam’s premiership captain Chris Judd articulated when he described Adam as the “perfect teammate” in a post written with empathy.
“While off the field his personality blended a hard edge with kindness and compassion, a kindness he gave to everyone else but not himself,” Judd wrote. In one sentence Judd conveyed all that was needed to be conveyed: Adam and Troy fought hard, so hard, to overcome the illness. They are being missed, desperately missed.
It’s impossible to overstate how far and deeply Adam, who turned 41 on May 8, and Troy’s deaths were being felt inside clubs throughout the AFL and beyond. Their sporting relationships extended to multiple clubs and multiple communities, as well as through the media.
Adam Selwood (right) with West Coast teammates David Wirrpanda, Adam Hunter, Chris Judd and Matt Spangher in 2007. Adam Hunter died in February.Credit: Getty Images
“What can be said?” is the dominant sentiment among those who know the extended Selwood family.
It’s mainly those who can’t avoid the topic, because of their media profile, who are left to voice the pain and attempt to respectfully articulate Adam’s challenges.
Xavier Ellis, a friend of the Selwood family, has made a media career in Perth. It left him no choice but to speak as he returned to the Triple M airwaves on Wednesday. “It’s times like this I wish I had an office job and could sit behind an email,” Ellis said on Triple M breakfast. “The three or four months that family has been through is unimaginable.”
Ellis moved from a premiership at Hawthorn in 2008 to West Coast in 2014 and the Selwood brothers, Scott and Adam, took him under their wing and the friendships flourished.
On Sunday night he had a beer with Scott, who had flown to Perth on Saturday when he heard the news, and they grieved together. Ellis’ raw description of “how empty that poor man is” was a graphic representation of the family’s anguish. He called Joel and heard the Cats’ champion’s voice break.
By the end of his radio spot an emotional Ellis shed tears.
Driving the response of those close to the Selwoods and West Coast is a respect for the grief enveloping the family, particularly Adam’s wife Fiona and their two children, Lenny and Billie and the immediate family and friends of Adam and Troy.
Geelong’s Mitch Duncan summed up the mood on the eve of his 300th game played on Thursday night when he said people were giving the family the space they needed. “We’re here to support when we need and grieve with [them] as best we can,” Duncan said.
Because of the family’s high public profile, that can be difficult.
Commentary about whether more could be done for mental health was inevitable, and mostly well- meaning. As one senior club official said: “Who doesn’t want to do more?”
Dr Ranjit Menon was the AFL’s chief psychiatrist from 2019 to 2022.
He understands everyone would like to stop such tragedies from happening, but he says the answers, despite years of research and work, are not obvious.
“What can we do? I don’t have an answer for that. I really don’t,” he said. “Athletes in Australia have better health capital – access to health care quickly, access to good health care quickly, financial means to access that etc – than any lay person. So it is not a question of having access to the resources or the availability of care. It’s just that probably [that alone] is not the key. So, then what is? Each person has a different rationale or thought process or underlying distress aspect which leads them to this outcome.”
He said a particular episode might be interrupted, but it was difficult to know what lay ahead.
“Our predictability of these things is at best an educated guess,” Dr Menon said.
Emphasising that he was making general observations, rather than specifically about the Selwood tragedy, he said there was a reason tragic news about sportspeople hit particularly hard.
Joel (left), Adam and Scott Selwood farewell their brother, Troy, at GMHBA Stadium in February.Credit: AFL Photos
“Athletes have a huge role in our life. We see them play. We see them achieve greatness, we see performance levels we can only dream of, and then to lose them to something like suicide it brings it home, it is very close to us, it is very distressing to everybody,” Dr Menon said.
“There is an approximation we have in our head that athletes are all the same because they play the same sport then they must be built the same way. That is not real. That is not true.”
Dr Menon said the collective grief of the community, which included all the organisations connected to the family in some way or another, could support the Selwood family and friends to grieve by removing unnecessary demands or intrusion.
“I think it is very difficult to find a unified way of approaching this, but overall in the bigger scheme of things I guess one hopes that maturity prevails and that we grieve with the families and, for a moment at least, step into their shoes and think how terrible that would be if it was us and what we could do to reduce [the hardship] through our own behaviours,” Dr Menon said.
On Wednesday evening, Joel posted a message on Instagram under photos with his brothers.
“Rest up. Love you brother. Look after each other,” Selwood wrote.
Looking after each other is what those inside AFL clubs have been trying to do this week as they reflected on what more they could do.
“Can we do more? Of course, but that is a continual process. You will never get to the point where this is enough,” Dr Menon said.
If you or someone you know needs support contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636. In the event of an emergency dial triple zero (000). Support is also available from MensLine on 1300 78 99 78.
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