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It would have been pointless to treat round one 2022 like any other game, because it wasn’t. My cancer recurrence happened seven months prior, during which I had played this contest over and over in my head. I went for a walk that morning, listening to music during my stroll around the park, and found myself nearly crying because I was so close to the goal that had sustained me. I must have looked like an idiot.

I didn’t know what to expect. The first half of my career, these clashes against the Tigers all went the same way. We were shit and they were very good, and so it would be a tight tussle until three-quarter-time, and in the nervous energy over what we thought was a chance at winning, we would falter and fold, or their class would prevail and they would win by four goals. It was almost a script. But this was a new era. New culture. New version. Hopefully a new story.

I was just grateful to be playing. Grateful to even run out there. And then, in the second quarter, the ball came towards me near the centre circle, a stab pass into the middle, which I marked. I leaned off my line a little, feigning a handball, trying to sell enough candy to coax a twitching Shane Edwards off his mark. This was the first year of the controversial “stand” rule, and I’d already spotted something to exploit. If you could tease the man on the mark into shifting, even one step, you could take your 50-metre penalty and run.

In the end, it wasn’t needed. Tom Lynch came from behind my left shoulder trying to get to Adam Saad, but the big man made the mistake of getting too close and coming through the protected area, in violation of another new rule tweak designed (and strictly enforced) to give the player with the ball maximum space. The umpire blew his whistle and I already knew I’d be having a shot. I tucked the Sherrin under my arm and trotted slowly inside our forward 50.

Sam Docherty splits the sticks in that memorable first game of 2022.Getty Images

As I set myself in front of the goal face, I had none of the big moment stuff you might expect in my head. I was not thinking this would be life-changing or iconic or somehow representative of anything. I simply followed my goalkicking routine, because that was me. Process and perform. My life could be chaos – illness, awards, reviews, pregnancy, pain – but I always had the ability to leave all that on the other side of the white line. Maybe that was the secret sauce in my career. I never got lost in the weeds on the field.

And so, seven minutes and 53 seconds into the second quarter, I lined up and took 10 clean steps – I couldn’t have kicked it any better. The ball didn’t deviate as it split the sticks.

People still talk to me about that moment to this day, actually, stopping me in the street to share how it gave them chills, how it made them think of a loved one with cancer – someone who survived or who had died – and how something as simple as chipping a footy through the uprights could become a beacon of hope. Others tell me about how they were just going through a hard time in their lives and that goal shone a little light into their personal darkness.

The game itself was tight until the third quarter, and then, instead of Richmond finding a way to pull clear, it was us who ran away with the four points.

If I’ve made my path from chemotherapy to an AFL field seem seamless or smooth, then let me clarify: that’s not at all how it was. Chemo is essentially designed to take your immune system down to zero – it completely smashes you – but once it’s over, you get markedly better and better and better.

Docherty at Carlton training in 2021, having undertaken chemotherapy for cancer treatment.AFL Photos

I felt reasonable again pretty quickly, but I wasn’t ready for an elite training environment. Truth be told, I probably wasn’t even ready for that connection camp. I was properly crook, and I looked it too.

I probably had a little stubble on my head, but that was all. I weighed maybe 74 kilograms, and I had to get back to around 85 before Jack Russell would even let me run. That meant low intensity exercise, starting with body weight squats and calf raises, trying to build my strength up to the point where I was healthy enough and strong enough that I could relieve the tension on my joints and handle the heavy work of rebuilding muscle mass.

There were other challenges, even after I got back to full fitness and strength. One of the possible side effects of chemo is numbness or tingling in your extremities. I had it, so I played that entire year with the pads on the end of my fingers numb and tingly, as were the soles of my feet. All season long, I couldn’t quite feel the ball in my hands, beyond the weight of the thing. But the lack of touch in my soles was a bigger concern, because of my history of knee injuries.

In order to land properly and avoid injury when you’re running, you need something called proprioception. We all have it. It’s the sense that allows you to know where your limbs are in space. Sensing where your feet are at any given moment, and therefore where and how they will land on the ground, is one of the most important tools for preventing ACL injuries. Having a lack of sensation in the bottom of your feet is pretty far from ideal.

I had minor calf strains all year, but I played through them. I did a calf halfway through the pre-season, in fact, which threatened to derail my return match. I just didn’t let it. I was focused on making it through everything and into finals. It honestly seemed like every game meant more that year – like I couldn’t take anything for granted – so there was no time for a rest.

At least that was the way I saw it; the club, it turned out, had other ideas.

In January, before the season began, I got a tap on the shoulder for a meeting with our new CEO, Brian Cook, who had been there all of three weeks. I’d never spoken with him before. Vossy (coach Michael Voss) was there too, who had been at Carlton for just a couple of months. And Brad Lloyd, our long-time general manager of the football department. They sat me down and shared their common thought: “For your health and wellbeing, we think it’s best that you’re not captain of the club or part of the leadership group this year.”

Co-captains Sam Docherty and Patrick Cripps lead their team out on to the field in 2021.Getty Images

I was stunned. I hadn’t expected this conversation, but I computed the give up the captaincy, allowing Crippa (Patrick Cripps) to lead solo, flanked by a few fresh faces like Charlie Curnow and Jacob Weitering and Sam Walsh. New voices for a new era. But the bit that really hit me – and really hurt me, if I’m honest – was being asked to leave the leadership group.

I’d just gone through the hardest thing I’ve ever experienced in my life, and I was already coping with great uncertainty. Taking me out of the players’ leadership group – where I could be part of the conversation about what we were doing and why, and help set the direction for the boys – seemed almost cruel. They believed they were doing me a favour – they argued that I would still be viewed as a leader but wouldn’t have to bear the attached responsibility – but honestly it felt like something that gave me purpose and joy was being taken away.

Perhaps naively, I had thought that if something like that were going to happen, there’d at least be a conversation about it: Hey, this is what we think, tell us what you think and let’s come to a mutual decision about what’s best for everyone. I actually went back in for another meeting the next day to plead my case or have that negotiation, but their plan was set in stone. I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that two people I hardly knew were making a decision about my life, and claiming it was the best thing for me, without knowing anything about who I was, alongside one person who did know me well and therefore should have known better.

Every time I punched the info into my head it felt like an error. Yes, I’d been ill – but I was also 28. I wasn’t some veteran in decline. I’d averaged 24 touches a game in 2021 before my syndesmosis tore under a pair of Crows. I had so much to give. It was impossible not to roll negative thoughts around in my head. Do they not want me in there because I’m the guy who speaks his mind? Is this part of a broader plan to reduce my role in the side? Has my illness stamped my papers as a liability?

I learnt to live with my new reality, in which calendar invitations to certain meetings stopped appearing, and I was on the outside of something I used to help drive. All I could do was concentrate on the things I could control. That will be familiar to anyone whose identity has taken a blow, who’s been jolted out of a familiar rhythm, who’s lost their job or their sense of self. My solution was to focus on my own performance and continue to lead with my actions.

Personally, I felt like I was on fire. By almost any on-field metric, it was my best-performed season. I was flying again. I felt incredibly proud of it, too, taking a perverse joy in managing my discomfort to achieve difficult things.

When the season was over, I finished second to Crippa in the B\&F – and this was the year he won his first Brownlow Medal.

You might remember it for the two-match suspension he was given in round 21 for a high hit on Callum Ah Chee. Carlton engaged noted Queen’s counsel Chris Townsend to lead an appeal, arguing that Crippa had been denied “natural justice” in his initial hearing.

An “error of law” was found and Crippa got off, meaning he was eligible to play, and then he went and earned three votes in the final match of the year, winning the medal by a single vote. Had the suspension been upheld and Crippa not played that game, Lachie Neale would be a three-time Brownlow Medal winner right now.

What it Takes by Sam Docherty.

A funny, albeit less well known sliding-doors moment?

Had Crippa not played, I would be a two-time Carlton best-and-fairest winner. I never let him forget that, either! We do a lot of speaking functions together, and I take the piss out of the fact that I was robbed of my medal not by Crippa but by some fancy QC!

This is an edited extract from What It Takes by Sam Docherty, with Konrad Marshall (Simon \& Schuster Australia). On sale from July 28.

Docherty will be a special guest on Monday’s Real Footy podcast.

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