From an arm “cut in half” to two delistings by the same coach, to not even being allowed to take his boots home – Glenn Manton had a lot of mountains to climb in his AFL career.

Manton, who played in Carlton’s 1995 premiership team, reveals his story on This is Your Sporting Life for Tobin Brothers – celebrating lives.

“(After high school) my life was really spiralling out of control. I’d gone away from the idea of being Glenn Manton the person and I’d embraced the idea of becoming Glenn Manton the footballer,” he said.

“That didn’t work so well for me because my authentic self is very, very important and I took on values and motivations which I thought a footballer had to display and the end result was me standing on Sydney Road having cut my arm in half.

“I was taken off to the hospital and an English surgeon standing at the foot of my bed said that I was a fake, a phony, a fraud, he said he was going to perform surgery on every other person in the hospital there that night, and that I would be the last person.

“He said it was my job to think about who I wanted to be as a person because he thought I was being a rather ordinary characterisation of myself.

“I was left in a very treacherous position, what do I do next? I promised myself that night, and I’ve carried out the promise every single day for the rest of my life, stand in front of the bathroom mirror and ask myself – are you fair dinkum?”

Manton found himself on Essendon’s list, but never could quite get Kevin Sheedy’s tick of approval.

“On the back of having my arm basically torn to shreds, I rehabbed, I made my way back to the Essendon under 19s, somehow I was named captain,” Manton said.

“I knocked on the door of Kevin Sheedy’s office because he invited me to come in and talk to him – I’d imagined he was going to celebrate what I’d achieved – but instead he said there’s the door, you’re delisted, you’re not good enough to play here.

“I rode back to my house, reset goals, reset my direction – Kevin Sheedy redrafts me, he has me back, I then spend the next three years of my life working towards playing consistent AFL senior footy.

“Sheedy asks for me to knock on the door again at the start of 1995 and I was so naive and foolish, I can honestly say I believed I was in the top three performers of that preseason and I thought he was going to celebrate that, and instead he delisted me again.

“So all of a sudden I’m off the football radar at the start of 1995, I don’t have a team, the Essendon Football Club wouldn’t even let me take my boots home.

“I said you know what, I’m not done here. Before you know it, Carlton take a chance and they draft me in that preseason draft and I end up standing on the MCG at the end of that year as a member of the Carlton Football Club’s premiership team.”

Manton ended up playing 157 games for Carlton between 1995 and 2003.

This is Your Sporting Life, proudly brought to you by Tobin Brothers - celebrating lives every day.

Listen to Glenn Manton's chat on This is Your Sporting Life with Peter Donegan in the player below, thanks to Tobin Brothers: