"Life is not always a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well." - Jack London.

For a time in my life, all footy players smelt like bubblegum. When I was a kid, a packet of footy cards always included a piece of cheap, jaw-breaking pink gum, the smell of which lasted for years, even if the taste didn't. My footy cards were precious to me and I spent hours studying and obsessing over them.

Tom Williams: an always interrupted career. Credit:Getty Images

Being from the country meant my access to AFL players was very limited. At our school fete in 1991 Craig Starcevich set up a handball competition in the school car park and I stood back and stared at him for too long. I wasn't sure if he was real. Sometimes my Dad would take us to Waverley Park to watch a game from the outer, but for the most part, my connection with the AFL was watching games or highlights at home on the television. Footy players were superheroes to me, they were from another place, and I would watch the marks they took and the goals they kicked in awe and wonder. They inspired me in the truest sense of the word.

It's hard to keep that sense of wonder as you get older, your perspective is forever altered, the smell of bubblegum fades a little. The thrill of witnessing a high pack mark is something that never leaves you, but I have found the things that inspire me have changed a bit since the '91 school fete. This game is brutal, both on the body and on the heart. In that regard, no one has walked a more painful football path in my time at the Bulldogs than Tom Williams. The pain he has put his body through has been immense, the anguish in his heart has been at times, hard to watch.