I was actually feeling excited about what was next.” “The moment that I decided to retire, in the car park,” Boyd says, “I wasn’t feeling depressed or anxious or angry or bitter. Things were getting worse but at least something had changed: he was no longer keeping things to himself, he was asking for help.

Only a few months after the grand final, in the 2017 preseason, Boyd experienced his first panic attack. Throughout that season, Boyd had been seeing the club psychologist for anxiety and depression. “It was so loud that I couldn’t really hear it, but I felt it shaking the ground beneath my feet.” “The noise was unfathomable,” Boyd writes in his memoir. One of those goals has become iconic: swooping on a loose ball, Boyd unleashed from the centre square and the ball bounced through. In each of their four finals games, the Bulldogs were also underdogs.Īnd before 99,981 fans, Boyd played brilliantly – 14 disposals, 14 hitouts, eight marks and three goals. Also, no team in VFL/AFL history had won the premiership from seventh place. To start, the team had not won a flag since 1954. It was the 2016 grand final, and the Western Bulldogs had implausibly and romantically qualified along with the Sydney Swans.

Read part one: The unravelling of Bulldogs star Tom Boyd.Īrguably Tom Boyd’s greatest match coincided with his club’s most important.

The brave tom macdonald