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AFL star writes a book about life in the big league featuring players who abuse drugs and get kicked out of clubs - and the VERY rude title says it all
AFL star writes a book about life in the big league featuring players who abuse drugs and get kicked out of clubs - and the VERY rude title says it all

Daily Mail​

timea day ago

  • Entertainment
  • Daily Mail​

AFL star writes a book about life in the big league featuring players who abuse drugs and get kicked out of clubs - and the VERY rude title says it all

Former Sydney Swans star Brandon Jack has given footy fans a glimpse into the lives of what it's like to be a player on the fringe of an AFL side's first-grade team with his new fictional novel. Jack, 31, is an Australian author, journalist, and a former professional footy player. He played for the Swans between 2013 and 2017, making 28 appearances in footy's top flight, before being delisted by the club. Following the conclusion of his footy career, Jack turned to literature, winning an award after he published his memoirs, detailing what life is like playing pro footy back in 2021. Now, he has published his first novel, entitled 'Pissants'. The fictional book delves into the lives of AFL players contracted to a fictional and unnamed club, but are stuck on the outskirts of the first team. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Brandon Jack (@brandonjackk) It is a crude and confronting tale about the inner workings of a club, with Jack revealing that even he did not like some of the themes included in the book, but included them to keep the authenticity of what life is like at the top level. 'There are things the characters say, and things that they do, that I disagree with. When I tried to change it, it felt really fake,' he told The Guardian. 'It felt like it lost energy. Because with my experience of the football world, I know that beneath what you see on the field and in the interviews, it's all a little bit dark.' Sport runs in the family for Jack, with his father, Garry, enjoying a distinguished career in rugby league's top flight, winning 22 caps for the Kangaroos between 1984 and 1988. He also made 244 appearances for the Balmain Tigers. The characters in 'Pissants' have nicknames like Fangs, Mud, Shaggers and Big Sexy. The book sheds a light on the extent these players will go to establish themselves as a key member of the squad, from lewd inside jokes, themes of loyalty and bizarre team rituals. The group don't play all that often, instead issuing their resentment to those playing in the first grade side. The bitter players make their own rules. They kidnap a team-mates dog, abuse painkillers during sponsor events and get chucked out of nightclubs. 'The Pissants group, that core group of players that we follow, are unknowingly staring out into the void searching for meaning,' Jack explains. 'They're at their footy club, and they're getting nothing back. They're not wanted, they're not needed. So they're experiencing a kind of existential dread of: 'What is my purpose?', which they funnel through their rituals and drinking games. 'They're creating and cultivating their own meaning in the universe. That's how a lot of us operate.' The unique and innovative book explores themes of masculinity and fragility, with many of the characters putting up a front to mask emotions of loneliness and alienation. Jack adds that the humour, which shines through the book, is something he is grateful for. He adds that the comedy elements in the book also 'capture what was for me a pretty dark place at times.' 'I'm at a point now where I realise there were things in [that experience] which were seriously funny,' he told ABC. 'The reason for all my searching was that I just wanted somebody else around, to be connected. 'To be able to write this in a way that conveys both of those things was important.' One other big theme he explores in the novel is the topic of bullying. The 'Pissants' bond by the abuse they subject members of the group to. From Kangaroo Courts to cruel pranks, the group is ruthless when it comes to their team-mates. Jack says that this is very strong in footy clubs, but adds that in-jokes are also a big deal. 'Sometimes, you really want to be in on the joke, even if it's at your expense, because the alternative is loneliness, and that's almost a worse fate,' he adds to ABC. 'That's why, in my mind, these players are engaging the way they are. I think they're looking for some sort of meaning and connection to other people, and that's the way they get it.' After hanging up his boots, Jack doesn't miss playing at the top level. Instead, he revealed he's moved on from the sport, revealing that it had taken him some time to get back into running. 'It took me a while post-footy to just enjoy going for a run,' Jack said to The Guardian. 'But I've found the joy in putting the runners on, putting headphones in and just going at a slow pace, far less intense than I used to. 'Sometimes I find myself creeping up when it's meant to be an easy 5km run, sometimes I end up flogging myself. There's something I still like about knowing what my mind and body can do.'

Here are 10 new books to add to your must-read list
Here are 10 new books to add to your must-read list

Sydney Morning Herald

time6 days ago

  • Entertainment
  • Sydney Morning Herald

Here are 10 new books to add to your must-read list

From a comic satire on the world of professional AFL to queer romances; from a study of the creative chemistry between John Lennon and Paul McCartney to a memoir of life as an elite policeman, this week's books cover wide ground. Pissants Brandon Jack Summit Books, $34.99 Former Sydney Swans player Brandon Jack penned an acclaimed memoir, 28, which exposed life in the AFL machine. Some truths can't be fully imagined in non-fiction, a defect colourfully remedied in his debut novel. Pissants is a super-sweary inside job on the world of professional football, a pitch-black comic satire that takes in rivalry and camaraderie and misdeeds. There's locker room goss, sports psychology and the creeping derangements of being steeped in a culture of toxic pressures – from ultra-competitiveness to the psychotic hypermasculinity of bonding and hazing rituals. There are plenty of jaw-dropping shenanigans tinged with narcissism, and the sense of impunity that attends fame on the field, but there's also a fair whack of misery and unacknowledged woundedness. Jack incorporates bingo cards and WhatsApp chats into more conventional narrative modes, as all the dirty laundry gets an airing. AFL fans should enjoy the fly-on-the-wall-of-the-locker-room vibe, and Jack draws out the attractions of elite team sport – and much that's repugnant about how it operates behind the scenes – with brutality and hilarity. Taylor Jenkins Reid became a global publishing phenomenon with the rise of BookTok during the pandemic. Her previous bestsellers have included Daisy Jones & The Six (loosely inspired by the story behind Fleetwood Mac) and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (a romantic mystery following a glamorous Hollywood star of yesteryear). Her ninth novel combines romance with adventure and disaster in space. Astrophysicist Joan Goodwin joins the NASA space program in the early 1980s. Training as an astronaut with a team of brilliant, big personalities, she must navigate institutional sexism, a growing bond with colleagues on a dangerous mission, and budding romance. Catastrophe looms, and the action and suspense of the emergency frames a love story that delves deeply into the rigours and routines of life as an astronaut, and how trailblazing women resisted the male-dominated atmosphere of NASA in the 1980s. It's a page-turner with high emotional stakes; Reid's fans are probably producing tear-streaked TikTok vids already. Author of Ghost Wall, Summerwater and The Fell, Sarah Moss is, among other things, an expert excavator of the effects of post-Brexit politics on the British psyche. In Ripeness, the politics turn to reproductive rights, migrant identities and the rights of refugees. Edith is the daughter of a French Jewish Holocaust survivor who escaped being murdered by the Nazis when she was granted asylum in the UK in 1941. Now over 70, comfortable, living in western Ireland, Edith is troubled by her friend Méabh's attitude to African refugees (and notes it doesn't apply to displaced Ukrainians), though she's drawn into her friend's family mystery. Méabh discovers she has an unknown brother, adopted by an American family, who wants to connect with his biological relatives and find out more about his roots. The novel's action flits between this contemporary strand and a trip to Italy in the 1960s, when Edith was a nerdy 17-year-old accompanying her older sister, who is enduring an unwanted pregnancy. Moss crafts a fine balance of sympathy in her portrayal of Edith, contrasting first-person and third-person narration to interrogate how social identities are forged, how rights must be fought for, and the growing cost of complacency. Ordinary Love Marie Rutkoski Virago, $34.99 Queer romance reignites in Marie Rutkoski's Ordinary Love when teenage sweethearts Emily and Gen reunite as 30-somethings. Their lives have taken different paths since their schooldays. Emily suffers through an abusive marriage to the wealthy Jack and leaves him after a frightening episode of domestic violence at the book's outset. Gen meanwhile becomes an Olympic athlete, aggressively embracing her sexuality through a string of affairs and hook-ups with other women. The story of their adolescent courtship and the homophobia it ran up against is told in flashback, revealing Emily and Gen to be old flames with old wounds that have shaped the courses of their adult lives. Rutkovski is sharp on just how difficult it can be to leave an abusive relationship, especially when the abuser seeks to isolate the victim from support networks. A subplot involving friends of Emily fighting to help her overcome Jack's influence is so full-blooded it almost becomes the main event. Yet the intimacy and vividness Rutkoski brings to her characters' sexual life is unusual – sex writing so often goes awry – and this is a romance novel that feels refreshingly grounded, written for adults. Big Feelings Amy Lovat Macmillan, $34.99 Another queer romance from Newcastle-based Amy Lovat, returning with a second novel following her debut, Mistakes and Other Lovers. This one's billed as an 'anti-romantic comedy', and it takes place in the shadow of an idealised relationship. Sadie's obsession with finding the perfect partner comes from witnessing the passion and devotion of her parents' marriage – complete with Insta-love tropes and mad romantic pursuits and the happily-ever-after that spawned her. When she meets Chase, Sadie falls wildly in love and thinks she's found the ideal woman, but it isn't long before cynicism, neurosis and self-sabotage rear their heads, and Sadie comes to question what she really desires. Big Feelings captures the relaxed flavour of its setting on the NSW North Coast, while the somewhat unreliable narrator ties herself in comic knots over a relationship we know will break up from the beginning. The mystery is how and why, and Lovat's chaotic ride into the messiness of romance should attract lovebirds of a more sardonic and streetwise disposition, fans of Fleabag or High Fidelity among them. The key contention in this absorbing study of the creative chemistry that existed between Lennon and McCartney, is that we get them 'so wrong', largely because 'we have trouble thinking about intimate male friendships.' But, do we get them so wrong? Much of what Ian Leslie documents – the intensity of the relationship, the shared early deaths of their mothers, the immediate recognition of being soulmates when they first met at the Woolton Church fete (with Paul's flawless rendition of Eddie Cochrane's Twenty Flight Rock), the competitiveness, the bitterness and the love that bound them – is common knowledge to many. Indeed, there were few times when he told me anything I didn't already know. All the same, in its comprehensiveness, the authority with which he details the collaboration (especially contested territory of who did what, Lennon claiming much of Eleanor Rigby, McCartney likewise with In My Life), and the poise and compassion with which he brings his two magicians to life, it's a compelling dissection of the repercussions of that day in 1957 when two 'damaged romantics' met and the culture of the western world shifted. This guide to how to live a more satisfying life is, at least, more informed than most. Fabian, an Associate Professor at Warwick University, begins by distinguishing between the pursuit of happiness and the more complex and fulfilling notion of wellbeing – which embraces life, existential warts and all and a more nuanced sense of self: the good, the bad and the ugly. It's divided into three parts. A Pleasant Life, in which he delves into the wisdom of the Stoics (who seem to be roaring back into public popularity), the Fulfilling Life, about self-realisation and the idea of authenticity, and the Valuable Life, about overcoming modern nihilism. Woven into this are aspects of his own story (early depression and release through rock-climbing) and, more broadly, the positives of living in a pluralistic society as apart from religious orthodoxy. Deliberately 'popular' and, like all of these guides, reads like a talk. Few sportspeople enter the playing field facing the possibility of death like Formula One drivers. In fact, in the 1958 season four drivers died. But it's not the death-defying stunts of the drivers that Reid and Sylt are concerned with here, it's the astonishing money that goes into this international business – these days generating revenue of $3.4 billion and valued at $20 billion, the top drivers receiving around $60 million in wages. The driver's seats are individually designed and the steering wheels cost $75,000. And that's just scratching the surface. In order to trace how this came about, the authors take us back to the leisurely hobbyhorse days of the 1950s when princes and barons drove their Maseratis in competitions. That didn't last long, thanks in large part to a colourful Englishman, Bernie Ecclestone, whose name is now synonymous with Formula One. The drivers and their vehicles might capture the limelight, but this takes us into the billion-dollar industry under the bonnet. When writer/journalist Daniela Torsh's father died in 1958, she was 11 years old and believed she was Christian. What she discovered in the days following his death– she writes warmly about her father, but honestly as well in detailing the fraught nature of the relationship – was the depth of her Jewish ancestry. Her parents had met in Theresienstadt, a concentration camp just north of Prague, in the 1940s. They survived, had Daniela, and eventually immigrated to Sydney in the early 1950s. Her parents were determined that the horrors they had experienced during the war would not be passed on to their child, so they kept her Jewish ancestry a secret. Torsh's tale, told simply but effectively and frequently jumping time frames, is, among other things, a record of intergenerational trauma, of how growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust played out in her life in ways she didn't understand until she put together the pieces of her family's history. A calm retrospective voice, but one that inevitably contains tragedy, anger and deep sadness. Through Fear and Fire John Taylor (with Heath O'Loughlin) Pan Macmillan, $36.99 When John Taylor was growing up in the south-east suburbs of Melbourne he was frequently in schoolyard fights, always outraged by the injustice of the actions of school bullies. It led to joining the Victoria Police Force in 1987, then the Special Operations Group (SOG) two years later, and in 2003, the Bomb Response Unit (BRU). In many ways this is a portrait of a driven individual – his description of the physical training required to get into the SOG is exhausting just to read. And while he might be matter-of-fact in his description of defusing, say, a bomb left in a bus shelter (at the same time dismissing Hollywood myths about the process), you are always in no doubt that it is a highly dangerous occupation. Likewise, his account of his first operation with SOG. At the same time, he also goes into the effect of the job on his family: Taylor, at times, while walking with his wife, imagining threats that aren't there. If you've ever wondered what kind of person is drawn to join an elite force, this will give you a good idea.

Here are 10 new books to add to your must-read list
Here are 10 new books to add to your must-read list

The Age

time6 days ago

  • Entertainment
  • The Age

Here are 10 new books to add to your must-read list

From a comic satire on the world of professional AFL to queer romances; from a study of the creative chemistry between John Lennon and Paul McCartney to a memoir of life as an elite policeman, this week's books cover wide ground. Pissants Brandon Jack Summit Books, $34.99 Former Sydney Swans player Brandon Jack penned an acclaimed memoir, 28, which exposed life in the AFL machine. Some truths can't be fully imagined in non-fiction, a defect colourfully remedied in his debut novel. Pissants is a super-sweary inside job on the world of professional football, a pitch-black comic satire that takes in rivalry and camaraderie and misdeeds. There's locker room goss, sports psychology and the creeping derangements of being steeped in a culture of toxic pressures – from ultra-competitiveness to the psychotic hypermasculinity of bonding and hazing rituals. There are plenty of jaw-dropping shenanigans tinged with narcissism, and the sense of impunity that attends fame on the field, but there's also a fair whack of misery and unacknowledged woundedness. Jack incorporates bingo cards and WhatsApp chats into more conventional narrative modes, as all the dirty laundry gets an airing. AFL fans should enjoy the fly-on-the-wall-of-the-locker-room vibe, and Jack draws out the attractions of elite team sport – and much that's repugnant about how it operates behind the scenes – with brutality and hilarity. Taylor Jenkins Reid became a global publishing phenomenon with the rise of BookTok during the pandemic. Her previous bestsellers have included Daisy Jones & The Six (loosely inspired by the story behind Fleetwood Mac) and The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo (a romantic mystery following a glamorous Hollywood star of yesteryear). Her ninth novel combines romance with adventure and disaster in space. Astrophysicist Joan Goodwin joins the NASA space program in the early 1980s. Training as an astronaut with a team of brilliant, big personalities, she must navigate institutional sexism, a growing bond with colleagues on a dangerous mission, and budding romance. Catastrophe looms, and the action and suspense of the emergency frames a love story that delves deeply into the rigours and routines of life as an astronaut, and how trailblazing women resisted the male-dominated atmosphere of NASA in the 1980s. It's a page-turner with high emotional stakes; Reid's fans are probably producing tear-streaked TikTok vids already. Author of Ghost Wall, Summerwater and The Fell, Sarah Moss is, among other things, an expert excavator of the effects of post-Brexit politics on the British psyche. In Ripeness, the politics turn to reproductive rights, migrant identities and the rights of refugees. Edith is the daughter of a French Jewish Holocaust survivor who escaped being murdered by the Nazis when she was granted asylum in the UK in 1941. Now over 70, comfortable, living in western Ireland, Edith is troubled by her friend Méabh's attitude to African refugees (and notes it doesn't apply to displaced Ukrainians), though she's drawn into her friend's family mystery. Méabh discovers she has an unknown brother, adopted by an American family, who wants to connect with his biological relatives and find out more about his roots. The novel's action flits between this contemporary strand and a trip to Italy in the 1960s, when Edith was a nerdy 17-year-old accompanying her older sister, who is enduring an unwanted pregnancy. Moss crafts a fine balance of sympathy in her portrayal of Edith, contrasting first-person and third-person narration to interrogate how social identities are forged, how rights must be fought for, and the growing cost of complacency. Ordinary Love Marie Rutkoski Virago, $34.99 Queer romance reignites in Marie Rutkoski's Ordinary Love when teenage sweethearts Emily and Gen reunite as 30-somethings. Their lives have taken different paths since their schooldays. Emily suffers through an abusive marriage to the wealthy Jack and leaves him after a frightening episode of domestic violence at the book's outset. Gen meanwhile becomes an Olympic athlete, aggressively embracing her sexuality through a string of affairs and hook-ups with other women. The story of their adolescent courtship and the homophobia it ran up against is told in flashback, revealing Emily and Gen to be old flames with old wounds that have shaped the courses of their adult lives. Rutkovski is sharp on just how difficult it can be to leave an abusive relationship, especially when the abuser seeks to isolate the victim from support networks. A subplot involving friends of Emily fighting to help her overcome Jack's influence is so full-blooded it almost becomes the main event. Yet the intimacy and vividness Rutkoski brings to her characters' sexual life is unusual – sex writing so often goes awry – and this is a romance novel that feels refreshingly grounded, written for adults. Big Feelings Amy Lovat Macmillan, $34.99 Another queer romance from Newcastle-based Amy Lovat, returning with a second novel following her debut, Mistakes and Other Lovers. This one's billed as an 'anti-romantic comedy', and it takes place in the shadow of an idealised relationship. Sadie's obsession with finding the perfect partner comes from witnessing the passion and devotion of her parents' marriage – complete with Insta-love tropes and mad romantic pursuits and the happily-ever-after that spawned her. When she meets Chase, Sadie falls wildly in love and thinks she's found the ideal woman, but it isn't long before cynicism, neurosis and self-sabotage rear their heads, and Sadie comes to question what she really desires. Big Feelings captures the relaxed flavour of its setting on the NSW North Coast, while the somewhat unreliable narrator ties herself in comic knots over a relationship we know will break up from the beginning. The mystery is how and why, and Lovat's chaotic ride into the messiness of romance should attract lovebirds of a more sardonic and streetwise disposition, fans of Fleabag or High Fidelity among them. The key contention in this absorbing study of the creative chemistry that existed between Lennon and McCartney, is that we get them 'so wrong', largely because 'we have trouble thinking about intimate male friendships.' But, do we get them so wrong? Much of what Ian Leslie documents – the intensity of the relationship, the shared early deaths of their mothers, the immediate recognition of being soulmates when they first met at the Woolton Church fete (with Paul's flawless rendition of Eddie Cochrane's Twenty Flight Rock), the competitiveness, the bitterness and the love that bound them – is common knowledge to many. Indeed, there were few times when he told me anything I didn't already know. All the same, in its comprehensiveness, the authority with which he details the collaboration (especially contested territory of who did what, Lennon claiming much of Eleanor Rigby, McCartney likewise with In My Life), and the poise and compassion with which he brings his two magicians to life, it's a compelling dissection of the repercussions of that day in 1957 when two 'damaged romantics' met and the culture of the western world shifted. This guide to how to live a more satisfying life is, at least, more informed than most. Fabian, an Associate Professor at Warwick University, begins by distinguishing between the pursuit of happiness and the more complex and fulfilling notion of wellbeing – which embraces life, existential warts and all and a more nuanced sense of self: the good, the bad and the ugly. It's divided into three parts. A Pleasant Life, in which he delves into the wisdom of the Stoics (who seem to be roaring back into public popularity), the Fulfilling Life, about self-realisation and the idea of authenticity, and the Valuable Life, about overcoming modern nihilism. Woven into this are aspects of his own story (early depression and release through rock-climbing) and, more broadly, the positives of living in a pluralistic society as apart from religious orthodoxy. Deliberately 'popular' and, like all of these guides, reads like a talk. Few sportspeople enter the playing field facing the possibility of death like Formula One drivers. In fact, in the 1958 season four drivers died. But it's not the death-defying stunts of the drivers that Reid and Sylt are concerned with here, it's the astonishing money that goes into this international business – these days generating revenue of $3.4 billion and valued at $20 billion, the top drivers receiving around $60 million in wages. The driver's seats are individually designed and the steering wheels cost $75,000. And that's just scratching the surface. In order to trace how this came about, the authors take us back to the leisurely hobbyhorse days of the 1950s when princes and barons drove their Maseratis in competitions. That didn't last long, thanks in large part to a colourful Englishman, Bernie Ecclestone, whose name is now synonymous with Formula One. The drivers and their vehicles might capture the limelight, but this takes us into the billion-dollar industry under the bonnet. When writer/journalist Daniela Torsh's father died in 1958, she was 11 years old and believed she was Christian. What she discovered in the days following his death– she writes warmly about her father, but honestly as well in detailing the fraught nature of the relationship – was the depth of her Jewish ancestry. Her parents had met in Theresienstadt, a concentration camp just north of Prague, in the 1940s. They survived, had Daniela, and eventually immigrated to Sydney in the early 1950s. Her parents were determined that the horrors they had experienced during the war would not be passed on to their child, so they kept her Jewish ancestry a secret. Torsh's tale, told simply but effectively and frequently jumping time frames, is, among other things, a record of intergenerational trauma, of how growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust played out in her life in ways she didn't understand until she put together the pieces of her family's history. A calm retrospective voice, but one that inevitably contains tragedy, anger and deep sadness. Through Fear and Fire John Taylor (with Heath O'Loughlin) Pan Macmillan, $36.99 When John Taylor was growing up in the south-east suburbs of Melbourne he was frequently in schoolyard fights, always outraged by the injustice of the actions of school bullies. It led to joining the Victoria Police Force in 1987, then the Special Operations Group (SOG) two years later, and in 2003, the Bomb Response Unit (BRU). In many ways this is a portrait of a driven individual – his description of the physical training required to get into the SOG is exhausting just to read. And while he might be matter-of-fact in his description of defusing, say, a bomb left in a bus shelter (at the same time dismissing Hollywood myths about the process), you are always in no doubt that it is a highly dangerous occupation. Likewise, his account of his first operation with SOG. At the same time, he also goes into the effect of the job on his family: Taylor, at times, while walking with his wife, imagining threats that aren't there. If you've ever wondered what kind of person is drawn to join an elite force, this will give you a good idea.

‘We both cried': Former Swans player Brandon Jack finally opens up on family feud
‘We both cried': Former Swans player Brandon Jack finally opens up on family feud

Sydney Morning Herald

time11-07-2025

  • Entertainment
  • Sydney Morning Herald

‘We both cried': Former Swans player Brandon Jack finally opens up on family feud

This story is part of the July 12 edition of Good Weekend. See all 13 stories. I don't know what I expected of Brandon Jack's apartment, but it wasn't this. Jack, 31, is an ex-AFL player, with a famous older brother (AFL Sydney Swans legend Kieren Jack) and a famous dad (NRL Balmain Tigers legend Garry Jack). He himself was playing rugby league in the under 6s, and was signed by the Sydney Swans AFL club in 2013, at just 18. Given this backstory, it's easy to make certain assumptions about who Jack is. Even the fact that he was delisted by the Swans having played just a few dozen games; that he didn't attempt to transfer to another club; that he no longer plays any code of football at all – none of this really changes my expectations. I'm still predicting a flat filled with single-bloke chaos: PlayStations and pizza boxes and faded red footballs. Jack opens the door to my knock. He's tall, broad but slim, with big, football-battered hands. The apartment behind him is filled with light, loaded with books and unbelievably tidy. Two framed Bauhaus posters face each other above the pristine corner desk, their orange tone reflected in a vintage armchair by the window. There's freshly brewed coffee in small ceramic mugs. The carpet looks like it's just been vacuumed. There is not a Sherrin – or any ball – in sight. Jack smiles slightly. 'The closest I ever come to a flow state,' he admits as we sit down at the pale wood kitchen table, 'is when I'm reading, sometimes when I'm writing, and when I'm cleaning.' Which just goes to show. You shouldn't make assumptions – even about footballers. Chasing the dream These days, Brandon Jack is not a footballer but an author, with two books to his credit. The most recent, Pissants, has just hit the shelves. He's been writing professionally for more than half a decade, but has arguably been an author all his life. He topped HSC English at his school (Oakhill College in Sydney's Castle Hill); he wrote song lyrics and poetry and journals at the Swans, and sci-fi stories as a child. In 2021, Jack's first published book – a memoir entitled 28 (the number of senior games he played for the Swans) – caused consternation in the AFL world. A far cry from the 'goals and glory' stereotype of most footballing biographies, 28 is a book about stretching every nerve, busting your guts for years on end and ultimately not reaching the goals you've set yourself: a book about failure, and vulnerability, and thwarted dreams. As you'd imagine, it's a pretty confronting read. Jack's debut novel, Pissants, is also about football. The two books aren't intended to be read as a pair, but they do form a powerfully convincing picture of life inside an AFL club for players who occupy the weird, hidden limbo world between the reserve and senior teams. Funnier and more disturbing than 28, Pissants follows a gang of these players, at an unnamed Sydney AFL club (ahem), paving their particular roads to hell in a series of escapades that are both exactly the sorts of things you might imagine from a gang of disaffected young men (taking loads of drugs; downing unbelievable amounts of alcohol; drinking human urine) and also things you wouldn't predict (accidentally killing sausage dogs; seeking solace in the art museums of Europe; making delicate gestures of friendship via games involving fridge magnets and penis-sightings). This is the world Brandon Jack inhabited for five seasons, as he tried to make his particular football dream come true. This dream was at once totally mad and completely realistic: he wanted to be a footy legend. He imagined this legend status with great specificity: when he joined the Swans, he wrote down on a piece of paper that he planned to play 200 games, kick 150 goals and captain the team. As an indicator of how often players reach even one of these milestones: less than 5 per cent of AFL players ever reach the 200-game mark, and about 5 per cent of all AFL players end up captaining their team. The problem for Jack, however, was that he came from a family of 5 per-centers. Garry Jack, Brandon's father, played 244 games for Balmain Tigers, 17 State of Origin games for NSW, 22 Test matches for Australia, and won a Golden Boot as the best rugby league player in the world. Kieren Jack, Brandon's oldest brother, played 256 games for the Swans, kicked 166 goals and co-captained the team from 2013 (the year Brandon arrived) until 2016. Careers like these are like lightning strikes in any family – vanishingly unlikely once, let alone twice. Brandon Jack, seven years younger than Kieren, spent five seasons on the brink of breaking through at the Swans: playing reserves, or acting as the emergency player (an injury substitute) for the senior team. Occasionally, the door to the main game would crack open. But he never managed to cement his spot before it slammed shut again. In the end, he played his 28 games, kicked 16 goals and (though they lost both) captained the reserves to back-to-back grand finals. This record is better than more than half of all AFL professionals: the median number of games played by an AFL player is 19. But to Jack, it felt like total failure. 'It certainly was not through lack of effort that he didn't have an extended career,' recalls Rob Spurrs, the ex-head of physical performance at the Sydney Swans. 'He did every training session, and every part of every session, which is rare. And then he would be doing extra stuff, extra sessions, or texting me to ask for clarification or more stuff to do. He gave it absolutely everything.' The reasons it wasn't enough, of course, are as simple or as complicated as you care to make them. 'Brandon only started playing AFL when he was 15 years old,' explains his brother Kieren, to whom Brandon has always been close. 'He never played as a five-, six-, seven-year-old. So there were probably technical skills of footy in that elite environment that he lacked. But he was never a B-list player by any stretch. I mean, the fact that he played 28 games in a Swans team that was consistently playing in grand finals: that tells you a lot.' When Kieren read 28, 'I just called him and told him I loved him. I was actually in tears reading it as I didn't know how bad it had been. I mean, I'd been on the phone with him when he'd been dropped and he'd be in tears and we'd sort of work our way through it. But I was the older brother and captain of the team, and I think he also wanted to be strong and 'I'll be right.' But it was really raw.' 'He just cared so much,' agrees close friend and retired Swans player Rhyce Shaw (now coach of the Gold Coast Suns AFLW team). 'I remember, in his early games, he'd sacrifice himself – this skinny little kid, running around, putting his body on the line – he'd just do all the things that a lot of others wouldn't probably do. And maybe he wasn't as talented as many other kids, but he had that determination. But because of his name, there was an expectation that, 'Oh no, you've got to be able to succeed here. We expect you to come in and do this and do that.' And it doesn't work like that.' Shaw himself, like Jack, hails from a famous footballing dynasty: his father, brother and uncles were all stars for Collingwood Football Club in Melbourne. 'I think we're quite similar in a way: these families that we're so proud of, but we don't really like being compared to,' Shaw says. 'I didn't deal with that well in my life, and I don't think Brandon – in many ways – probably dealt with it particularly well at stages. He thinks differently from a lot of footballers, he cared a lot about his teammates and he's such a beautiful person. He tried to conform, but I think that was sometimes uncomfortable for him.' Kieren agrees. 'Growing up, he naturally liked music, was naturally interested in reading and books, and did very well at school – much, much better than I did. We could see pretty clearly, pretty early on, he was an academic who was weaved and moulded into an athlete.' Jack seems to have always been ambivalent about this moulding. He was diagnosed with type-1 diabetes as a 13-year-old, which did make playing footy more complex, but it wasn't that. 'The last time football was innocent for me was at 15, 16,' he says now. 'I loved it then – it didn't weigh me down. But then everything after that was like, 'This is your entire existence.' ' Becoming an author was, perhaps, Jack's way of reclaiming himself. 'When he wrote the memoir,' says Shaw, 'I was like, 'That is just amazing.' He's been able to express himself in a way that he never got the chance to when he was playing.' Family feud Unless you are a serious football fan – and, more specifically, a serious Swans fan – it's unlikely you really remember Brandon Jack playing football. But you might remember the off-field feud he and Kieren had with their parents, Donna and Garry, in 2016. This feud, which convulsed the sports pages, became public when Donna wrote a tweet expressing disappointment that she and Garry had not been invited to Kieren's 200th game. In 2019, the conflict was thrust into public view again, when Kieren retired from professional AFL and Rhys Jack, the middle brother of the Jack boys (he played both league and AFL at a high level but never professionally), had a letter published in a Sunday paper questioning Kieren's treatment of his parents. None of the family has ever spoken publicly about the feud – or its causes – until now. 'I felt I was not given the path to explore on my own what I wanted to do. There was a lot of anger.' Looking back on it now, Brandon Jack can assess his own feelings with surprising clarity. He grew up in a family, he explains, where success at football seemed – at least to him – like a major ingredient for happiness, and a major means of making the family proud. 'For a while, I resented football, and my family, for that – big time,' he says. 'I think I felt I was not given the path to explore on my own what I wanted to do. There was a lot of anger and negative emotions, and it was really heavy on me for a long time.' He pauses. 'But at the same time, the older I get, the more I understand families. Parents are just fumbling their way through things, doing their best. My mum would've been about my age – a year younger – when she had me, and they already had two kids. And it's like, footy's just an easy way to bring the family together. And Dad had every right to be proud of his achievements – he had a f---ing incredible career.' In fact, he says, his parents never put pressure on him to be a professional footballer. 'When I wanted to swap from league to AFL, Dad told me I could do it if I beat him in a golf chip-off. He had no short game, and I did beat him, and he was like, 'You can do whatever you want.' And he would have said that anyway.' These days, though Brandon's still not in touch with Rhys ('That's the longest estrangement, and one that I just don't really have any thoughts on at the moment'), the weight he carried about his parents has lifted. 'A while ago there just came this day, and I was like, 'All right, I'm ready for this.' ' He went to see his mum and dad; his dad opened the door, 'and we both cried straight away. Mum had made a platter,' he smiles, 'because that's Mum, and we just sat in the kitchen, and I didn't say anything for half an hour. It was my first time being back at my family home in six years.' Kieren Jack and wife Charlotte are also back in touch with Donna and Garry. 'For Brandon, I think the books have certainly helped him in being comfortable with the person that he is,' says Kieren. '[Writing's] helped him reconcile himself to his footy career – that it didn't have to be a 300-game career to be a success; that he didn't have to do that to be a family member. I think being an uncle has also helped.' Kieren and Charlotte have a two-year-old son, Alfie, and are now expecting twins. '[Alfie] was part of the reason we wanted to reconnect, too.' Mending the rift, Kieren adds, 'has helped all of us. It's small steps, but we're in a much better place now, which is great.' As it happens, Brandon Jack actually FaceTimed his parents the night before our interview. 'They've got no idea what Pissants is about,' he admits. Well, surely your dad will have some clue, I say. Jack laughs. 'Oh yeah. He'll be like, 'This isn't raunchy enough. You should have seen the shit in the '80s.' ' He shakes his head. 'Oddly, I think Dad's thinking about a book himself – a ghost-written book. He was like, 'Are you interested?' And I was like, 'You couldn't afford me!' ' Helen Garner endorsement In one respect, writing is a lot like football. When it's done well, it looks effortless. But in fact, producing anything that's readable and original is actually ridiculously difficult. There are at least as many unsuccessful writers in the world as there are unsuccessful footballers; it's just that most of us never witness their failure. 'I sucked as a writer for a long time,' says Jack matter-of-factly. 'But the one thing I hang my hat on from my footy career is that even when I wasn't playing [in the senior team], I was still a really hard trainer. I think there's a work ethic and a stubbornness, I don't know, bullishness that I got from football that didn't serve me there, but when it comes to book writing, it's been helpful.' He pauses. 'Also, you deal with a lot of rejection as a writer. And in footy, I had that feedback every week of, 'You're not good enough this week. You're not good enough this week.' So when I started submitting op-eds and stuff – I mean, the rejection stings – but it would never stop me. I just kept going because I was used to it.' He grins. 'It's funny – that turned out to be a valuable skill.' While he was at the Swans, Jack also began studying at the University of NSW, and after his delisting he completed his arts degree while working for a creative agency, Quip Brands. 'Brandon was actually the first writer I ever hired,' recalls Quip founder Keeva Stratton. 'He was recommended to me as this sort of poet guy, ex-AFL player, and I was, 'Oh god, no! I need a high-quality writer.' It's terribly judgmental, but I had worked with former AFL players before, and they hadn't really struck me as creative types.' Loading But she decided to trial him writing pieces for fundraising campaigns. 'He more than surprised me. He was brilliant; an absolute asset. The campaigns he wrote did exceptionally, exceptionally well. He had his own voice and natural ability – and he just got better and better.' 'I love that it's a craft, a trade,' says Jack of why he was drawn to writing. 'You can see yourself getting better – that mastery thing. And it scratches a certain itch in my brain that I think creatives have, where you have to make this certain thing, you just want it in the world.' He looks momentarily worried. 'But I also grew up in a very successful household, and success has always been a really important thing to me. So, even though sometimes I wish it wasn't, and I wish I could do things without relying on external validation, part of the reason I love writing is that I love people reading my work. I genuinely loved writing Pissants, but I didn't write it to put it in a frigging drawer. I want loads of people to read it.' While he was at Quip, Jack also began writing op-ed pieces for newspapers and online news sites. By the time he got in touch with publisher Jane Palfreyman about writing a book, she knew who he was – and not only because she's a Swans fan. 'We met for coffee, and we talked about a book of personal essays,' she recalls. 'At that meeting he said there's no way he wanted to write about football – he was done with that world. But then he found his football diaries.' 'I was moving house and I found them,' recalls Jack. 'I hadn't looked at them since I was delisted, and I was like, 'this is good writing; this is much more powerful than what I've got.' So we ripped up the essays – which was a 90,000-word book – and Jane had to repitch the memoir to the publishers, and there were a few weeks where I was like, 'I might not have a book deal anymore.' But I wrote 28 pretty quickly, in a few months.' It was a similar process with Pissants. Once again, Jack was trying not to write about football. 'When I started writing, I hated, f---ing hated football,' he confesses, lifting both hands. 'But then, it's what I know, right? I know that world. And that group in Pissants, that core group, I would say they exist at every club. And you would have no idea who they are because they're not playing. It's like at any workplace: there's a group of disgruntled people who aren't having success. But I understand that group – and it's more interesting to me than the chemistry of the successful team. You need characters who you can sympathise, empathise with, and who are kind of shit-kickers.' Loading Pissants is the story of these characters, told in their own words. It's not a novel for everyone, maybe, but it has something: no less an Australian literary star than Helen Garner wrote an endorsement of it. 'The footballer language knocked me around with its fantastical crudity and wildness,' she confessed. 'Yet under its foul-mouthed, laughing bravado lies deep wounds, a humble and endearing loneliness that moved me.' 'I wouldn't have used the word lonely, but I love that it was used,' says Jack. 'And when I look at it, actually it kind of hit me: 'Oh yeah, when I was at the club, it was my lonely time.' Every character in the book is lonely. Every character is scared of something: of not being part of the group or not being part of the footy club. That loneliness is why they seek comfort in each other.' Could Jack have written this novel, I wonder, if he hadn't had the experience he did at the Swans? 'No,' he says after a pause. 'It wouldn't have felt as authentic.' He shrugs, smiling apologetically. 'I just don't want to have any bullshit: I just want to try and tell the truth about things. And this feels very authentic to me.' Solitary life These days, when Brandon Jack's not doing his own writing, he's working for Transport for NSW writing and designing web pages. He works mostly from home. 'I live a pretty solitary life,' he explains. 'I live alone; I pretty much work alone. I'm not part of a footy team any more.' To prove that writers can in fact be wild and crazy socialisers, we go to Jack's favourite pub for lunch: the Shakespeare, a 19th-century, reassuringly unreconstructed pub just off the light rail route in Surry Hills. Wandering in among the ornate tiles and hallucinatory carpet, Jack orders steak with the offhand expertise of a man who knows the menu by heart. There's something self-sufficient about him in this context: a kind of observant detachment. 'I'm a wallflower,' he acknowledges: 'In a group setting, I will say nothing. I just feel like the things people say in real life are so much better than anything I could make up in my head, and I want to hear them.' This is a valuable skill in a writer, but not always a comfortable one – for others, or yourself. Now that Pissants is about to be released, he's trying hard to maintain the borders between life and art. 'When I did 28, I wrote it for other people to recognise themselves in, and to help people. Pissants, I wrote because I genuinely enjoyed writing. It was f---ing fun to write. But I'm not trying to educate people, or show up issues, or tell people what they should think. I just want a lot of people to read the book, and enjoy it.' In some ways this is a shame. Pissants is full of issues that affect young men, and Jack is that rare thing: a young man who understands the worlds of professional sport and modern masculinity, has written about both, but is not beholden to either. As such, he has interesting things to say – for example – on the issue of AFL clubs' efforts to encourage life after football for the men in their charge. 'I reckon the buy-in [for planning post-football careers] is f---ing small,' says Jack baldly. 'I was one of only a couple of guys who went to uni when I was at the Swans. I did one subject a semester, and every time footy got too serious I'd drop the subject.' What does he think of putting an age limit on the draft of young players, then? 'Do we go towards the US college system?' he asks rhetorically. [In the US, players must be three years out of high school – and are often college graduates – to be eligible for the professional draft]. 'I think it's too hard. There are so many people who are 18 and are genuinely ready for AFL. The main thing they'll do in their life in a highly-paid field is play AFL for a few short years. Can we deprive them of part of that chance?' 'You gather any group of young men and there's going to be issues with mental health.' So how does he feel, finally, about how to address the mental-health challenges facing players, many of them young, with no experience of life beyond the football bubble? The sudden death in May of Adam Selwood, only three months after the suicide of his twin brother and ex-Brisbane Lions player, Troy, has rocked all codes of football, and reignited the debate about what more can be done. Jack looks genuinely pained. 'I mean, a mental-health round, great. As long as it's not just 'Speak up.' [An official AFL phrase used to encourage mental-health awareness.] We know you should f---ing speak up: I've known it since I was 15. But I wonder about CTE injuries [chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated head trauma]. I don't know the ins and outs of that, but if your brain can't function, then putting your hand up is not going to fix anything. Although, to the AFL's credit, they're doing a lot more to protect the head these days.' He looks down. 'I also think that the problems involving young men and mental health are not confined to the AFL. You gather any group of young men and there's going to be issues with mental health.' Jack himself sees a psychologist, and takes antidepressants. 'Yeah, yeah, for sure,' he says easily. 'I've been going to a psych once a month for eight years – the AFL Players Association still pays for it, actually, which is great. And I take antidepressants, which I started about a year-and-a-half ago.' Interestingly, despite the years of counselling, the possibility of antidepressants was never raised: it was only when Jack asked his GP specifically about them that the conversation began. 'No one suggested it,' he explains. 'I've really thought about this: why hadn't it come up before? Maybe it's just, it's a stigma, and we don't talk about it. Maybe I was waiting for someone to say you need them. And when I got them, the first month was dreadful – I felt really screwed up. But I got really lucky in that the first one I tried worked, and since then, it's really helped. Really helped.' No escape from anxiety Years ago, after he'd stopped playing football, someone asked Brandon Jack how he felt about footy. That, it seems, remains a relevant question. Jack still has anxiety dreams about football. 'I have this one heaps: I'm going back to play footy at the Swans on the first day of the preseason. And I haven't trained, or I don't want to be there or something, but I've got to go. And I'm the age I am now, and I'm like, 'What am I doing here?' And then I wake up and have this relief.' He pauses, thinking. 'I honestly think I lived that way, with that anxiety, from 18 to 23.' Perhaps unsurprisingly, in his waking hours, Jack no longer plays any football at all. 'I retired a couple of years ago. My knees are …' he catches himself. 'I was going to say my knees are stuffed, but the truth is, I never escaped my game-day anxiety. On a Saturday morning, if I had football that afternoon, I would be anxious in a way that I recognised from being a child. And I just wanted to not feel that on weekends any more.' Loading He tried to get past it, he explains, but 'no matter how many strategies I came up with, I would go out there and plant my feet on the ground before a game and be like, 'It doesn't matter,' all this stuff – it just didn't work.' He puts a hand to his stomach. 'Still even talking about it now, I get a nervousness. It doesn't matter what level – I could go play local touch footy and I'd still have it.' Watching football, he adds, is different – then he has the relief of knowing it's not him out there, and he can just enjoy the game. But he doesn't deliberately turn on the TV on winter weekend afternoons. Instead, he's just as likely to be sitting on the floor of his quiet, light-filled flat, thinking about a different kind of goal. He's starting to try his hand at writing a collection of short stories, he says; he's thinking about a sequel to Pissants. 'Writing is a skill,' he concludes as we leave the pub, 'a beautiful skill, that you can spend your whole life getting better at.' Which seems like a pretty good way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

‘We both cried': Former Swans player Brandon Jack finally opens up on family feud
‘We both cried': Former Swans player Brandon Jack finally opens up on family feud

The Age

time11-07-2025

  • Entertainment
  • The Age

‘We both cried': Former Swans player Brandon Jack finally opens up on family feud

This story is part of the July 12 edition of Good Weekend. See all 13 stories. I don't know what I expected of Brandon Jack's apartment, but it wasn't this. Jack, 31, is an ex-AFL player, with a famous older brother (AFL Sydney Swans legend Kieren Jack) and a famous dad (NRL Balmain Tigers legend Garry Jack). He himself was playing rugby league in the under 6s, and was signed by the Sydney Swans AFL club in 2013, at just 18. Given this backstory, it's easy to make certain assumptions about who Jack is. Even the fact that he was delisted by the Swans having played just a few dozen games; that he didn't attempt to transfer to another club; that he no longer plays any code of football at all – none of this really changes my expectations. I'm still predicting a flat filled with single-bloke chaos: PlayStations and pizza boxes and faded red footballs. Jack opens the door to my knock. He's tall, broad but slim, with big, football-battered hands. The apartment behind him is filled with light, loaded with books and unbelievably tidy. Two framed Bauhaus posters face each other above the pristine corner desk, their orange tone reflected in a vintage armchair by the window. There's freshly brewed coffee in small ceramic mugs. The carpet looks like it's just been vacuumed. There is not a Sherrin – or any ball – in sight. Jack smiles slightly. 'The closest I ever come to a flow state,' he admits as we sit down at the pale wood kitchen table, 'is when I'm reading, sometimes when I'm writing, and when I'm cleaning.' Which just goes to show. You shouldn't make assumptions – even about footballers. Chasing the dream These days, Brandon Jack is not a footballer but an author, with two books to his credit. The most recent, Pissants, has just hit the shelves. He's been writing professionally for more than half a decade, but has arguably been an author all his life. He topped HSC English at his school (Oakhill College in Sydney's Castle Hill); he wrote song lyrics and poetry and journals at the Swans, and sci-fi stories as a child. In 2021, Jack's first published book – a memoir entitled 28 (the number of senior games he played for the Swans) – caused consternation in the AFL world. A far cry from the 'goals and glory' stereotype of most footballing biographies, 28 is a book about stretching every nerve, busting your guts for years on end and ultimately not reaching the goals you've set yourself: a book about failure, and vulnerability, and thwarted dreams. As you'd imagine, it's a pretty confronting read. Jack's debut novel, Pissants, is also about football. The two books aren't intended to be read as a pair, but they do form a powerfully convincing picture of life inside an AFL club for players who occupy the weird, hidden limbo world between the reserve and senior teams. Funnier and more disturbing than 28, Pissants follows a gang of these players, at an unnamed Sydney AFL club (ahem), paving their particular roads to hell in a series of escapades that are both exactly the sorts of things you might imagine from a gang of disaffected young men (taking loads of drugs; downing unbelievable amounts of alcohol; drinking human urine) and also things you wouldn't predict (accidentally killing sausage dogs; seeking solace in the art museums of Europe; making delicate gestures of friendship via games involving fridge magnets and penis-sightings). This is the world Brandon Jack inhabited for five seasons, as he tried to make his particular football dream come true. This dream was at once totally mad and completely realistic: he wanted to be a footy legend. He imagined this legend status with great specificity: when he joined the Swans, he wrote down on a piece of paper that he planned to play 200 games, kick 150 goals and captain the team. As an indicator of how often players reach even one of these milestones: less than 5 per cent of AFL players ever reach the 200-game mark, and about 5 per cent of all AFL players end up captaining their team. The problem for Jack, however, was that he came from a family of 5 per-centers. Garry Jack, Brandon's father, played 244 games for Balmain Tigers, 17 State of Origin games for NSW, 22 Test matches for Australia, and won a Golden Boot as the best rugby league player in the world. Kieren Jack, Brandon's oldest brother, played 256 games for the Swans, kicked 166 goals and co-captained the team from 2013 (the year Brandon arrived) until 2016. Careers like these are like lightning strikes in any family – vanishingly unlikely once, let alone twice. Brandon Jack, seven years younger than Kieren, spent five seasons on the brink of breaking through at the Swans: playing reserves, or acting as the emergency player (an injury substitute) for the senior team. Occasionally, the door to the main game would crack open. But he never managed to cement his spot before it slammed shut again. In the end, he played his 28 games, kicked 16 goals and (though they lost both) captained the reserves to back-to-back grand finals. This record is better than more than half of all AFL professionals: the median number of games played by an AFL player is 19. But to Jack, it felt like total failure. 'It certainly was not through lack of effort that he didn't have an extended career,' recalls Rob Spurrs, the ex-head of physical performance at the Sydney Swans. 'He did every training session, and every part of every session, which is rare. And then he would be doing extra stuff, extra sessions, or texting me to ask for clarification or more stuff to do. He gave it absolutely everything.' The reasons it wasn't enough, of course, are as simple or as complicated as you care to make them. 'Brandon only started playing AFL when he was 15 years old,' explains his brother Kieren, to whom Brandon has always been close. 'He never played as a five-, six-, seven-year-old. So there were probably technical skills of footy in that elite environment that he lacked. But he was never a B-list player by any stretch. I mean, the fact that he played 28 games in a Swans team that was consistently playing in grand finals: that tells you a lot.' When Kieren read 28, 'I just called him and told him I loved him. I was actually in tears reading it as I didn't know how bad it had been. I mean, I'd been on the phone with him when he'd been dropped and he'd be in tears and we'd sort of work our way through it. But I was the older brother and captain of the team, and I think he also wanted to be strong and 'I'll be right.' But it was really raw.' 'He just cared so much,' agrees close friend and retired Swans player Rhyce Shaw (now coach of the Gold Coast Suns AFLW team). 'I remember, in his early games, he'd sacrifice himself – this skinny little kid, running around, putting his body on the line – he'd just do all the things that a lot of others wouldn't probably do. And maybe he wasn't as talented as many other kids, but he had that determination. But because of his name, there was an expectation that, 'Oh no, you've got to be able to succeed here. We expect you to come in and do this and do that.' And it doesn't work like that.' Shaw himself, like Jack, hails from a famous footballing dynasty: his father, brother and uncles were all stars for Collingwood Football Club in Melbourne. 'I think we're quite similar in a way: these families that we're so proud of, but we don't really like being compared to,' Shaw says. 'I didn't deal with that well in my life, and I don't think Brandon – in many ways – probably dealt with it particularly well at stages. He thinks differently from a lot of footballers, he cared a lot about his teammates and he's such a beautiful person. He tried to conform, but I think that was sometimes uncomfortable for him.' Kieren agrees. 'Growing up, he naturally liked music, was naturally interested in reading and books, and did very well at school – much, much better than I did. We could see pretty clearly, pretty early on, he was an academic who was weaved and moulded into an athlete.' Jack seems to have always been ambivalent about this moulding. He was diagnosed with type-1 diabetes as a 13-year-old, which did make playing footy more complex, but it wasn't that. 'The last time football was innocent for me was at 15, 16,' he says now. 'I loved it then – it didn't weigh me down. But then everything after that was like, 'This is your entire existence.' ' Becoming an author was, perhaps, Jack's way of reclaiming himself. 'When he wrote the memoir,' says Shaw, 'I was like, 'That is just amazing.' He's been able to express himself in a way that he never got the chance to when he was playing.' Family feud Unless you are a serious football fan – and, more specifically, a serious Swans fan – it's unlikely you really remember Brandon Jack playing football. But you might remember the off-field feud he and Kieren had with their parents, Donna and Garry, in 2016. This feud, which convulsed the sports pages, became public when Donna wrote a tweet expressing disappointment that she and Garry had not been invited to Kieren's 200th game. In 2019, the conflict was thrust into public view again, when Kieren retired from professional AFL and Rhys Jack, the middle brother of the Jack boys (he played both league and AFL at a high level but never professionally), had a letter published in a Sunday paper questioning Kieren's treatment of his parents. None of the family has ever spoken publicly about the feud – or its causes – until now. 'I felt I was not given the path to explore on my own what I wanted to do. There was a lot of anger.' Looking back on it now, Brandon Jack can assess his own feelings with surprising clarity. He grew up in a family, he explains, where success at football seemed – at least to him – like a major ingredient for happiness, and a major means of making the family proud. 'For a while, I resented football, and my family, for that – big time,' he says. 'I think I felt I was not given the path to explore on my own what I wanted to do. There was a lot of anger and negative emotions, and it was really heavy on me for a long time.' He pauses. 'But at the same time, the older I get, the more I understand families. Parents are just fumbling their way through things, doing their best. My mum would've been about my age – a year younger – when she had me, and they already had two kids. And it's like, footy's just an easy way to bring the family together. And Dad had every right to be proud of his achievements – he had a f---ing incredible career.' In fact, he says, his parents never put pressure on him to be a professional footballer. 'When I wanted to swap from league to AFL, Dad told me I could do it if I beat him in a golf chip-off. He had no short game, and I did beat him, and he was like, 'You can do whatever you want.' And he would have said that anyway.' These days, though Brandon's still not in touch with Rhys ('That's the longest estrangement, and one that I just don't really have any thoughts on at the moment'), the weight he carried about his parents has lifted. 'A while ago there just came this day, and I was like, 'All right, I'm ready for this.' ' He went to see his mum and dad; his dad opened the door, 'and we both cried straight away. Mum had made a platter,' he smiles, 'because that's Mum, and we just sat in the kitchen, and I didn't say anything for half an hour. It was my first time being back at my family home in six years.' Kieren Jack and wife Charlotte are also back in touch with Donna and Garry. 'For Brandon, I think the books have certainly helped him in being comfortable with the person that he is,' says Kieren. '[Writing's] helped him reconcile himself to his footy career – that it didn't have to be a 300-game career to be a success; that he didn't have to do that to be a family member. I think being an uncle has also helped.' Kieren and Charlotte have a two-year-old son, Alfie, and are now expecting twins. '[Alfie] was part of the reason we wanted to reconnect, too.' Mending the rift, Kieren adds, 'has helped all of us. It's small steps, but we're in a much better place now, which is great.' As it happens, Brandon Jack actually FaceTimed his parents the night before our interview. 'They've got no idea what Pissants is about,' he admits. Well, surely your dad will have some clue, I say. Jack laughs. 'Oh yeah. He'll be like, 'This isn't raunchy enough. You should have seen the shit in the '80s.' ' He shakes his head. 'Oddly, I think Dad's thinking about a book himself – a ghost-written book. He was like, 'Are you interested?' And I was like, 'You couldn't afford me!' ' Helen Garner endorsement In one respect, writing is a lot like football. When it's done well, it looks effortless. But in fact, producing anything that's readable and original is actually ridiculously difficult. There are at least as many unsuccessful writers in the world as there are unsuccessful footballers; it's just that most of us never witness their failure. 'I sucked as a writer for a long time,' says Jack matter-of-factly. 'But the one thing I hang my hat on from my footy career is that even when I wasn't playing [in the senior team], I was still a really hard trainer. I think there's a work ethic and a stubbornness, I don't know, bullishness that I got from football that didn't serve me there, but when it comes to book writing, it's been helpful.' He pauses. 'Also, you deal with a lot of rejection as a writer. And in footy, I had that feedback every week of, 'You're not good enough this week. You're not good enough this week.' So when I started submitting op-eds and stuff – I mean, the rejection stings – but it would never stop me. I just kept going because I was used to it.' He grins. 'It's funny – that turned out to be a valuable skill.' While he was at the Swans, Jack also began studying at the University of NSW, and after his delisting he completed his arts degree while working for a creative agency, Quip Brands. 'Brandon was actually the first writer I ever hired,' recalls Quip founder Keeva Stratton. 'He was recommended to me as this sort of poet guy, ex-AFL player, and I was, 'Oh god, no! I need a high-quality writer.' It's terribly judgmental, but I had worked with former AFL players before, and they hadn't really struck me as creative types.' Loading But she decided to trial him writing pieces for fundraising campaigns. 'He more than surprised me. He was brilliant; an absolute asset. The campaigns he wrote did exceptionally, exceptionally well. He had his own voice and natural ability – and he just got better and better.' 'I love that it's a craft, a trade,' says Jack of why he was drawn to writing. 'You can see yourself getting better – that mastery thing. And it scratches a certain itch in my brain that I think creatives have, where you have to make this certain thing, you just want it in the world.' He looks momentarily worried. 'But I also grew up in a very successful household, and success has always been a really important thing to me. So, even though sometimes I wish it wasn't, and I wish I could do things without relying on external validation, part of the reason I love writing is that I love people reading my work. I genuinely loved writing Pissants, but I didn't write it to put it in a frigging drawer. I want loads of people to read it.' While he was at Quip, Jack also began writing op-ed pieces for newspapers and online news sites. By the time he got in touch with publisher Jane Palfreyman about writing a book, she knew who he was – and not only because she's a Swans fan. 'We met for coffee, and we talked about a book of personal essays,' she recalls. 'At that meeting he said there's no way he wanted to write about football – he was done with that world. But then he found his football diaries.' 'I was moving house and I found them,' recalls Jack. 'I hadn't looked at them since I was delisted, and I was like, 'this is good writing; this is much more powerful than what I've got.' So we ripped up the essays – which was a 90,000-word book – and Jane had to repitch the memoir to the publishers, and there were a few weeks where I was like, 'I might not have a book deal anymore.' But I wrote 28 pretty quickly, in a few months.' It was a similar process with Pissants. Once again, Jack was trying not to write about football. 'When I started writing, I hated, f---ing hated football,' he confesses, lifting both hands. 'But then, it's what I know, right? I know that world. And that group in Pissants, that core group, I would say they exist at every club. And you would have no idea who they are because they're not playing. It's like at any workplace: there's a group of disgruntled people who aren't having success. But I understand that group – and it's more interesting to me than the chemistry of the successful team. You need characters who you can sympathise, empathise with, and who are kind of shit-kickers.' Loading Pissants is the story of these characters, told in their own words. It's not a novel for everyone, maybe, but it has something: no less an Australian literary star than Helen Garner wrote an endorsement of it. 'The footballer language knocked me around with its fantastical crudity and wildness,' she confessed. 'Yet under its foul-mouthed, laughing bravado lies deep wounds, a humble and endearing loneliness that moved me.' 'I wouldn't have used the word lonely, but I love that it was used,' says Jack. 'And when I look at it, actually it kind of hit me: 'Oh yeah, when I was at the club, it was my lonely time.' Every character in the book is lonely. Every character is scared of something: of not being part of the group or not being part of the footy club. That loneliness is why they seek comfort in each other.' Could Jack have written this novel, I wonder, if he hadn't had the experience he did at the Swans? 'No,' he says after a pause. 'It wouldn't have felt as authentic.' He shrugs, smiling apologetically. 'I just don't want to have any bullshit: I just want to try and tell the truth about things. And this feels very authentic to me.' Solitary life These days, when Brandon Jack's not doing his own writing, he's working for Transport for NSW writing and designing web pages. He works mostly from home. 'I live a pretty solitary life,' he explains. 'I live alone; I pretty much work alone. I'm not part of a footy team any more.' To prove that writers can in fact be wild and crazy socialisers, we go to Jack's favourite pub for lunch: the Shakespeare, a 19th-century, reassuringly unreconstructed pub just off the light rail route in Surry Hills. Wandering in among the ornate tiles and hallucinatory carpet, Jack orders steak with the offhand expertise of a man who knows the menu by heart. There's something self-sufficient about him in this context: a kind of observant detachment. 'I'm a wallflower,' he acknowledges: 'In a group setting, I will say nothing. I just feel like the things people say in real life are so much better than anything I could make up in my head, and I want to hear them.' This is a valuable skill in a writer, but not always a comfortable one – for others, or yourself. Now that Pissants is about to be released, he's trying hard to maintain the borders between life and art. 'When I did 28, I wrote it for other people to recognise themselves in, and to help people. Pissants, I wrote because I genuinely enjoyed writing. It was f---ing fun to write. But I'm not trying to educate people, or show up issues, or tell people what they should think. I just want a lot of people to read the book, and enjoy it.' In some ways this is a shame. Pissants is full of issues that affect young men, and Jack is that rare thing: a young man who understands the worlds of professional sport and modern masculinity, has written about both, but is not beholden to either. As such, he has interesting things to say – for example – on the issue of AFL clubs' efforts to encourage life after football for the men in their charge. 'I reckon the buy-in [for planning post-football careers] is f---ing small,' says Jack baldly. 'I was one of only a couple of guys who went to uni when I was at the Swans. I did one subject a semester, and every time footy got too serious I'd drop the subject.' What does he think of putting an age limit on the draft of young players, then? 'Do we go towards the US college system?' he asks rhetorically. [In the US, players must be three years out of high school – and are often college graduates – to be eligible for the professional draft]. 'I think it's too hard. There are so many people who are 18 and are genuinely ready for AFL. The main thing they'll do in their life in a highly-paid field is play AFL for a few short years. Can we deprive them of part of that chance?' 'You gather any group of young men and there's going to be issues with mental health.' So how does he feel, finally, about how to address the mental-health challenges facing players, many of them young, with no experience of life beyond the football bubble? The sudden death in May of Adam Selwood, only three months after the suicide of his twin brother and ex-Brisbane Lions player, Troy, has rocked all codes of football, and reignited the debate about what more can be done. Jack looks genuinely pained. 'I mean, a mental-health round, great. As long as it's not just 'Speak up.' [An official AFL phrase used to encourage mental-health awareness.] We know you should f---ing speak up: I've known it since I was 15. But I wonder about CTE injuries [chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated head trauma]. I don't know the ins and outs of that, but if your brain can't function, then putting your hand up is not going to fix anything. Although, to the AFL's credit, they're doing a lot more to protect the head these days.' He looks down. 'I also think that the problems involving young men and mental health are not confined to the AFL. You gather any group of young men and there's going to be issues with mental health.' Jack himself sees a psychologist, and takes antidepressants. 'Yeah, yeah, for sure,' he says easily. 'I've been going to a psych once a month for eight years – the AFL Players Association still pays for it, actually, which is great. And I take antidepressants, which I started about a year-and-a-half ago.' Interestingly, despite the years of counselling, the possibility of antidepressants was never raised: it was only when Jack asked his GP specifically about them that the conversation began. 'No one suggested it,' he explains. 'I've really thought about this: why hadn't it come up before? Maybe it's just, it's a stigma, and we don't talk about it. Maybe I was waiting for someone to say you need them. And when I got them, the first month was dreadful – I felt really screwed up. But I got really lucky in that the first one I tried worked, and since then, it's really helped. Really helped.' No escape from anxiety Years ago, after he'd stopped playing football, someone asked Brandon Jack how he felt about footy. That, it seems, remains a relevant question. Jack still has anxiety dreams about football. 'I have this one heaps: I'm going back to play footy at the Swans on the first day of the preseason. And I haven't trained, or I don't want to be there or something, but I've got to go. And I'm the age I am now, and I'm like, 'What am I doing here?' And then I wake up and have this relief.' He pauses, thinking. 'I honestly think I lived that way, with that anxiety, from 18 to 23.' Perhaps unsurprisingly, in his waking hours, Jack no longer plays any football at all. 'I retired a couple of years ago. My knees are …' he catches himself. 'I was going to say my knees are stuffed, but the truth is, I never escaped my game-day anxiety. On a Saturday morning, if I had football that afternoon, I would be anxious in a way that I recognised from being a child. And I just wanted to not feel that on weekends any more.' Loading He tried to get past it, he explains, but 'no matter how many strategies I came up with, I would go out there and plant my feet on the ground before a game and be like, 'It doesn't matter,' all this stuff – it just didn't work.' He puts a hand to his stomach. 'Still even talking about it now, I get a nervousness. It doesn't matter what level – I could go play local touch footy and I'd still have it.' Watching football, he adds, is different – then he has the relief of knowing it's not him out there, and he can just enjoy the game. But he doesn't deliberately turn on the TV on winter weekend afternoons. Instead, he's just as likely to be sitting on the floor of his quiet, light-filled flat, thinking about a different kind of goal. He's starting to try his hand at writing a collection of short stories, he says; he's thinking about a sequel to Pissants. 'Writing is a skill,' he concludes as we leave the pub, 'a beautiful skill, that you can spend your whole life getting better at.' Which seems like a pretty good way to spend a Saturday afternoon.

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