Sam Docherty always believed that his body would signal when it was time to retire. He faced two battles with cancer, underwent three knee reconstructions, and dealt with numerous serious injuries, including damage to his toe, shoulder, and even an eye. In his last AFL match, an accidental knee to the nose from Hawthorn’s Calsher Dear left him playing with a tampon in his nostril to manage the bleeding.
Ultimately, it was his mental state that led to his decision to retire. His final season with Carlton proved to be taxing. He was dropped from the team twice, and the team struggled significantly. Coach Michael Voss faced criticism, and Docherty received feedback from senior staff that he needed to improve his demeanor at the club. Feeling disrespected and confused, he was informed shortly before announcing his retirement that the club would not renew his contract.
A year later, Docherty finds relief in being away from the internal politics and pressure associated with a prominent club like Carlton. He no longer endures constant physical pain, nor does he have to question whether he can safely lift his children during swimming classes or enjoy a night out. However, he acknowledges a sense of adjustment, a familiar emptiness that many retired athletes experience.
“That process-driven, elite-athlete lifestyle, with clear goals, and with everything mapped out – it could be all-consuming at the time,” Docherty shares. “But it’s also something I find myself missing in retirement. And I miss that really clear purpose, that overarching picture of who you are and where you’re going when you’re a sportsperson.”
Docherty openly admits to having an obsessive and at times addictive nature, which has manifested in various ways, from completing 400-meter sprints between chemotherapy cycles to the intensity of his rehabilitation efforts, as well as grappling with a gambling issue.
Reflecting on a Turbulent Career
Reflecting on the past fifteen years, Docherty succinctly describes it as “As an athlete, they’re great traits to have at times, but they can also be incredibly unhealthy,” Shortly after joining Carlton from Brisbane in late 2013, he was in a high-altitude training camp in Arizona when he received the devastating news of his father Eddie’s death from a heart attack at the age of 53. Eddie had been a gate ranger at Phillip Island, tasked with protecting penguins from harm.
His first serious knee injury occurred in November during a training session at a poorly maintained local dog park. Initially, he felt no pain, but the sound of his knee giving way was unmistakable—like a large elastic band snapping. It took time for everyone to realize the severity of the injury. Nearly a year later, while competing against Charlie Curnow in a practice drill named “They definitely helped me in my ability to get back from hard things, especially my obsession with the level of detail, that ability to flick the switch when required. I was able to go to levels in a high-performance environment that few others were willing to, because of my obsession with it. But it got me in a lot of trouble as well.” he sustained another injury, mistakenly believing he was fine. While out shopping, he received the news that he would miss yet another season. Bill Knowles, a leading expert in reconditioning, informed Docherty that he was a JCA—“Obviously life’s been pretty hectic,” “joint compromised athlete” Knowles warned him. “You will never come out of this,”
Health Struggles and Triumphs
At the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, Docherty discovered a lump on his testicle. He described it as “You’ll have to do things differently to everyone else.” resembling the fat cap on a steak. Following surgery to attach a prosthetic testicle, Docherty noted it felt like a hard squash ball. A year later, the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes, lungs, and stomach, requiring four cycles of chemotherapy.
During Victoria’s strict lockdown, he was not permitted to have visitors. Friends and family would leave food at his front door, and they communicated through a partially open window. Docherty lost significant weight and all his hair, likening his appearance to Gollum from Lord of the Rings, “a pale, smooth sickly creature”
He also underwent a 10cm incision in his abdominal wall, resembling a C-section. Standing in front of a mirror, he remarked that it looked as if he had been in a knife fight. Throughout this ordeal, the club requested he take a pay cut to create salary cap space for Fremantle midfielder Adam Cerra, and they later asked him to step down from his captaincy and leadership role, advising him to prioritize his health.
A Memorable Return to Football
Six months after his first chemotherapy cycle, during a match against Richmond in front of 72,000 fans, Docherty experienced one of his most treasured moments in football. “But I’d been at rock bottom. “To look at me – severely underweight, with no hair on my body, having been barely able to run, few would have believed I could have been able to play the most elite level of football and perform. I’d had so much football taken away from me, I was just desperate to play. But it was more than that. It was so crazy, so strange, but so satisfying to be representing a large cohort of people I’ve never actually met. Here I was, a frontman for something bigger than me.” he recalls. “I went into footy thinking being successful was winning best and fairest awards, playing 300 games, being All Australian,”
“And I walked away with a completely different definition – one that was more to do with me as a person, the amount of people I impacted positively, the hope and drive I gave others.” he states.
Docherty ultimately finished second in Carlton’s best and fairest award that year, just behind captain Patrick Cripps, who also secured his first Brownlow medal. “I went into footy thinking being successful was winning best and fairest awards, playing 300 games, being All Australian,” he reflects. “And I walked away with a completely different definition – one that was more to do with me as a person, the amount of people I impacted positively, the hope and drive I gave others.”
- What it Takes by Sam Docherty with Konrad Marshall is published by Simon & Schuster and released on 27 July.
