Empathy, from the Greek empatheia – em (into) and pathos (feeling) – is a kind of travel. “It suggests you enter another person’s pain as you’d enter another country, through immigration and customs, border crossing by way of query,” writes Leslie Jamison in The Empathy Exams.

But how do you enter the world of Majak Daw, a man who comes from a place very few of us understand firsthand – from fleeing a Sudanese civil war as a young boy, to being found in the murky waters of the Yarra a week before Christmas last year with the horrific injuries that come from a 6ft 5in man nudging 100kg hitting the murky water from the height of the Bolte Bridge.

While we can barely begin to know from where Daw has come, it is difficult not to regard his return to football this weekend as the best story the AFL has to tell in 2019.

Earlier this year, it was all Daw could do to walk. He had 15cm rods inserted in either side of his pelvis. When he had recovered to leave his hospital bed, he was restricted to walking laps of Arden Street. Then he worked the leg press. And then small jumps. Only then did he begin to run again.

“It’s something I never thought he’d do,” former Kangaroo Brent Harvey told SEN earlier in the week. “It’s miraculous to see he can run properly and then to be physical and run and jump and get pushed off the ball.”

Harvey recalled going to the hospital and seeing Daw unable to walk. “I went back a week later, and he still couldn’t walk and all my local friends, who don’t know a lot about football, asked me if he’ll play again and I said he’s got no chance.”

And this is before you contemplate the mental journey that Daw has had to take, compounded by living in a city that places an AFL footballer at the centre of public life – one, as Daw has experienced, which places you in the middle of social media hatestorms.

Majak Daw sits in the stands at the JLT Community Series match St Kilda. Photograph: Quinn Rooney/Getty Images

At a preseason game against St Kilda, in the early days of his recovery, Daw was photographed sitting with the son of teammate Jed Anderson. Here was a picture of a man regaining his sense of self right in front of your eyes, yet it was all that a pathetic ball of hate of on Facebook could do but post: “What a frightening experience for the youngster. Face to face with a gorilla.”

In this toxic culture of degradation and hate, it feels as if we are a country running up a sizeable empathy deficit. This is why we must not forget sport’s true promise of bringing people together, and part of this is its power to heal.

For all their faults, football clubs can provide an environment where everyone works together and provides an enormous sense of purpose. They provide young men and women with a sense of meaning, belonging and having a real purpose.

And this is something football clubs now understand. In the previous collective bargaining agreement the AFLPA mandated that each club was to have a full-time person working in the player development space. And one of the key principles of the current agreement is player development and wellbeing.

Earlier this week, Daw acknowledged that he was fortunate to have the entire football club behind him. While much of the focus was deservedly on North Melbourne’s head of conditioning Alex Moore, much of it comes from the supportive environment within the club’s walls.

Through the courage of footballers such as Dayne Beams, Tom Boyd and Jack Steven, who have all spoken of their mental health battles, an increased number of players are now seeking professional help, from psychiatrists and psychologists. Clubs are responding to this by investing significant sums through their welfare programs to deal with the mental health of their employees. The league is also looking to appoint a head of mental health and wellbeing to manage the implementation of a proactive mental health program.

This is a significant journey for the AFL and the young men who play the game to have made. Just this week, Wayne Schwass recalled a painful 12 years of “lying, hiding and pretending” that he was happy and healthy, when he was paralysed with fear and wanting to end his own life.

The cumulative welling up many of us experienced watching Daw’s media conference suggests that for all the issues that have plagued our game just this year – from thugs belting the intellectually disabled to former footballers taking offence at being called out for making vile jokes on sexual assault – there are enough of us to redress an empathy deficit.

To this, the final word on the journey of Majak Daw should go to North Melbourne captain Jack Ziebell.

“For him to be able to get out and back on the green stuff playing the game he loves, it brings a smile to everyone’s faces.”