Page 4 of Fever Dream
casey
I’ve always been a planner. As a kid I used to write myself big, lofty goals up on my whiteboard and then dedicate every ounce of my time and energy chasing them down, like a hunter caught up in the thrill of a chase. Finding the energy for the chase has never been the problem. I have droves of it. Multitudes. A literal embarrassment of riches of excess energy.
No, the real challenge lies in ensuring that vast abundance of excess energy is focused in positive, constructive and beneficial ways.
There have been a few minor detours and a couple of unexpected hazards along the way but so far, my life has mostly all gone to script.
Case in point: Goal number one had been acceptance to the fancy private school with the country’s best record of turning out football stars. The problem with goal number one was that neither of my parents earnt the kind of coin that could fund the lofty school fees charged for admittance. So I’d had to go the scholarship route which had comprised numberless football clinics and jumping through a hundred different hoops until I was finally given the keys to the hallowed halls.
The downsides of being the scholarship kid were that, one, everyone there knew I was the scholarship kid, and two, there was an expectation that I would put in the required effort that had bequeathed me that scholarship in the first place—and not just on the football field. But I had the talent to silence the snobbery and just enough smarts to scrape through the other classes.
Goal number two: being named number one draft pick.
Here’s the rub though. Turns out, being the league’s number one draft pick isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Throw in winning the AFL’s Rising Star award in my first year of playing and then being named captain of the Player Association’s top twenty-two under twenty-two in my second year, and, well, let’s just say that a certain amount of debilitating expectation follows in its wake.
The one thing I hadn’t planned on? Battling this never-ending adductor strain that kept me sidelined for three games last season and which is still causing me grief.
The other thing I most certainly hadn’t planned on? Leaving my first team in my hometown of Melbourne to throw my lot in with the AFL’s newest franchise, the East Coast Fever. Friends back home still cannot believe my decision and really, on paper it does look questionable, if not completely idiotic. I was a big-name player, a rising star, a marquee crowd darling with big endorsements, even bigger sponsorships and a bright future ahead of me.
Being drafted into the Elsternwood Dragons, the biggest team in the AFL’s heartland of Melbourne, was a dream come true and had certainly ticked off goal number three on that list of big hopes and dreams I’d set for myself on that whiteboard back home.
But that was before the adductor strain meant I spent a full day after every game in recovery. Half of that time was in and out of ice baths and on treatment tables. I was sick of living inconstant pain which was already starting to hamper my game. I’m pretty sure I’ll be hobbling on crutches by the time I’m thirty at this rate. And it’s only getting worse.
The Elsternwood Dragons made the finals last season, and we’d made it through two rounds before we came up against the Brighton Titans, a fitter and faster outfit who unceremoniously bundled us out of the finals race.
That was bad enough. But then I’d received a phone call from quite possibly the last man on earth I had expected to hear when Mick Brabham, hall-of-famer, living legend of the game and inaugural coach of the East Coast Fever, had spoken my name down the line.
I’d almost laughed him off, but he asked me to hear him out and something about the sincerity in his tone, plus the fact you never hang up on a legend of the game, had me stalling. He’d asked how the treatment for my adductor strain was going. I hid my surprise that he even knew about my injury problem before giving my standard dismissal. The club had taken great pains to suppress the story about my strain, and I knew better than to give credence to the rumours.
But Mick Brabham had spoken of a new, groundbreaking treatment that the Fever had access to, had spoken in a way that made it sound like this injury could be treated, fixed even, rather than just patched up week in week out. It was enough to make me stop and listen.
Adding to the Fever’s lure, one of my best mates, Sonny Ingram, had been drafted by the Fever two years ago. We’d gone to that fancy school together and been in the same top ten draft. I’d been sad to see him go, had even felt sorry for him when his name had been called out by the Fever which had forced him to up and move interstate. But Sonny loves it at the Fever, raves about the team whenever we catch up. Sonny and his almostreverent devotion to Mick Brabham was another factor why I stopped to listen.
The media circus went bananas when I finally signed with the East Coast Fever. Nobody saw this move coming, least of all me, and I am still dealing with the fallout. My Dragons teammates were quick to label me a traitor and the legion of fans that had so adored me swiftly turned on me.
As the league’s newest franchise, the Fever has considerable salary cap concessions, giving them a war chest to lure the top talent from the southern states. They were able to offer me a salary which means I am earning as much as the biggest stars of the game and I’m sure you don’t need me to spell out how well that went down with my old club.
But funnily enough, that salary increase did not even factor into my decision to move cities.
Nor had the other factor, the one I had originally considered a downside. You see, not everybody up here in Rugby League heartland knows who I am. And those that do don’t give much of a damn about the politics behind the league’s most promising young player pulling up stumps from a big, successful Melbourne club with a hundred years of history and throwing in with the new franchise who only managed seven wins in their last three seasons.
Yeah, on paper it seems ludicrous.
But right now, walking into the club’s training rooms to meet my brand new, fresh-from-Tottenham Hotspurs-physiotherapist is solidifying all the reasons for why I jumped ship.
Harrison Thornfield is not what I was expecting. He’s young, objectively hot—if you’re into that sort of thing—and his British charm is instantly dizzying. He smiles this one perfect smile at me, dimple out, brown floppy curls constrained by a thin red headband, a sparkle in a pair of chestnut brown eyes that areadmittedly just this side of distracting, and I know we are going to get along just fine.
Dean Hampton, our club’s numero uno fitness trainer, has just left me in the very capable looking hands of Harrison Thornfield right as Ben McLean takes his own running leap and leaves the two of us all on our little lonesomes. On our own. Just the two of us. The clubhouse is ours this morning too as it’s Thursday, the traditional day of rest and relaxation.
I have no need for days off. Not when I have an aching adductor strain and the chance, just one blessed chance, of making it go away. Nope, for a chance at a pain free game of football I will give up every single day off for the rest of my life.
I can see my medical file splayed out on the desk in front of Harrison so at least I know I don’t have to start up the same conversation I’ve had with about twenty other physicians and medicos of various degrees and specialties. But Harrison just smiles that disarming smile at me, slides the files and the x-rays and MRI scans into a neat pile, and puts them back away in the filing cabinet.
He has my attention.
Allof my attention which isn’t actually all that easy in Casey Calloway world.
“Let’s go,” Harrison says to me, rising to his feet and drawing the other part of my attention to his tall and slender physique, ever so slightly disappointed to note he has maybe an inch or two of height on me. Height has always been a bit of a sore point with me, having peaked at a millimetre shy of six foot. I’ve made it work for me, of course, because for every tall midfielder, a team needs the smaller inside players who will scrap for every loose ball and go home with dirt on their knees.
