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Fremantle Dockers star Nat Fyfe on dealing with injuries, premiership dreams, pilates and being grateful

Nat Fyfe has brokered a deal with the devil. The Fremantle superstar always dreamt of winning an AFL premiership, and transformed himself from a skinny kid into a footy powerhouse who won two Brownlow Medals by playing a combative game which took him to places few are prepared to go. While that approach has made him a future Hall of Famer, the human body isn’t designed to constantly accept punishment. Two broken legs, multiple concussions, shoulder and back surgery, soft tissue problems and then a foot injury this year would test anyone’s desire to keep paying that price. But Fyfe finally feels healthy again and while he understands that life after footy will pose physical challenges, he’s sacrificed too much to walk away without the premiership pay off. Fyfe doesn’t mince his words when talking about what life after footy might be like. “It’s going to be fairly grim I would have thought,” Fyfe told The West Australian. “The one that scares me more is the concussion/head stuff but if you put both of those into a package and allow them to control you for too long, you just go nowhere. I’m making deals with the devil now that I’ll pay for down the track I am sure. “But it’s probably going to be an element of I’ll just have to continue putting work into my system until my last breathing days. It’s somewhat possible that’s the answer anyway. “I’ve had nearly 30 operations playing professionally. There was a patch over the last two years where getting out of bed every day just felt so measurably more difficult than it did for the previous decade and I thought, if this is a look at what the next 50 years of my life is going to be like, then I’m not sure I’ve made a good decision so far professionally. “But, excitingly, as the wheels of time do their thing and I’ve continued to put some work in, I’ve actually started feeling, better and better and better and I’ve now started playing again. I’m waking up in the morning and going to sleep at night not as exhausted, not as achy, my joints are feeling better each week. “That’s given me a look that if I stop at the end of my career and stop doing work, I am going to get sore and things are going to be quite challenging. But If I keep chipping away and putting a little bit of work in and staying active, fit and balanced, there’s no reason I can’t live in a pretty good space for the rest of my life.” When fit, Fyfe has been an AFL superhero. Between 2012-2019, Fyfe polled Brownlow Medal votes in more than half of his games. His ratio of best-on-grounds to games remains the best of any current AFL player. But even the greats get brought back down to earth with a thud and Fyfe admits the self doubt after injury had been just as difficult to deal with as the physical pain. “Without realising it, your own ego gets built up to this space that if I’m not a great football player, people aren’t going to like me,” Fyfe explained. “Even if you have got the awareness to understand that’s not real, it is there. Then you go back to just being humbled and Joe Regular in terms of what you’re able to put out physically, and even in your own work place you are thinking gee, I don’t know if I belong here. That’s really a challenging space. “But what I found is, once you do get humbled and everyone can see the challenge you’re going through, it endears you to them and they almost start barracking for you again.” Fyfe credits his belief in pilates for both helping to build a rehabilitation program to keep him playing, and providing confidence that training after retirement will reduce the daily aches and pains. An ambassador for STRONG Pilates, Fyfe has thrown his support behind their national community day on Saturday as part of International Men’s Health Week. People can bring a male for free as part of a partnered work out. Fyfe could have become bitter about the direction his career took in recent years. Robbed of the opportunity to play the game he loves, he watched from the sidelines as the group he’d captained through a re-build played finals without him. Yet Fyfe has a different outlook and after signing another two-year contract which keeps him at Fremantle until the end of 2025, he just hoping the devil holds up his end of the bargain. “If you have a look at my career, I’ve been pretty lucky,” Fyfe said. “I’ve played 200 games, I’ve played big finals and been captain of the club. I’ve had a great run if you look at everyone else. So I’m pretty quick to pull myself up if I start competing in the victim Olympics. I don’t want to be that person and it doesn’t serve you anyway. “I do believe in fairytales. I like long games. I like to put my head down and wait for the pay off in the end. It feels like this story is there to be written. “That’s what drives me every day to get out of bed and keep doing what I’m doing. I love what I’m doing. Two years is plenty of run time.”

The West Australian exclusiveFremantle Dockers star Nat Fyfe on dealing with injuries, premiership dreams, pilates and being grateful

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Fremantle Dockers star Nat Fyfe on dealing with injuries, premiership dreams, pilates and being grateful