Tom Boyd headlines gentlemanly lunch

AFL PREMIERSHIP player Tom Boyd headlined an entertaining and effective day of raising funds and awareness for men’s mental health last week.

This year’s Movember Gentlemen of Geelong lunch at Flying Brick Cider House drew a crowd of more than 200 to the 17th edition of the annual event.

All money raised will go to charities including the National Centre for Farmer Health, Lifeline, Movember Foundation, Australian Prostate Centre, Barwon Health, Beyond Blue, R U OK?, Aussie Helpers and International Association for Suicide Prevention.

Interviewed by event MC Ian Cover from the Coodabeen Champions, Boyd was self-depreciating and honest about not only being drafted at #1 by Greater Western Sydney and then being traded to the Western Bulldogs – “I’m not sure what [the Bulldogs] saw but they thought it was worth seven million bucks at the time!” he quipped – but also his mental health struggles and his eventual decision to walk away from the game.

“The first thing that started to play on me was simply sleep,” he said.

“I was doing 45km a week on the track plus all the extra training, so I was physically exhausted, but I couldn’t get to sleep at night.

“In particular, when my team lost or I played rubbish, which was about half my career, that’s where I really had my first brush with depression.

I just couldn’t pull myself out of bed for a couple of days, then obviously the merry-go-round of the football world; it just starts again every single week.”

Traded to the Bulldogs in 2015, Boyd won a flag in 2016, but continued to struggle with injury.

He said this was a large factor in his decision to retire in 2019 at the age of 23 and hand back about $2 million in his contract.

“The history is funny, because the reporting that came out after my retirement was about 400 articles that I’d retired due to my mental health, and I think that was basically because Bevo [Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge] went out and made a big song and dance about it.

“But in reality what had happened was I’d been injured with a significant back injury for probably five or six months, so I’d basically gone to the club doctors and said ‘Look, I don’t think I want to play any more with this’; this was in November [2018].”

“They said, ‘just get back to playing football and see how you feel’ and so that’s what I did… I played a couple games in the reserves, and I just didn’t want to play any more. I didn’t feel committed any more.”

Boyd is now an ambassador for Lifeline, and Movember Gentlemen of Geelong organiser David Sharp presented Boyd with a $10,000 donation to Lifeline.

“I had everything that I could have dreamed of when I was 18 and a whole heap more, and yet still I had this really challenging period of time in my life,” Boyd said.

“I was lucky enough to have support, but most people don’t.

“Supporting organisations particularly like Lifeline is really, really important to me because in your darkest moments or when things seem most bleak, you want to have someone you can talk to or someone who knows how to have that difficult conversation.”