Blue skies ahead. Jack Opteynde has left the dark days behind him and is looking forward to a bright future in the game he loves … Australian Rules football. 86389 Picture: STEWART CHAMBERS
By DAVID NAGEL
Famous Liverpool manager Bill Shankly once said. “Some people believe football is a matter of life and death, I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that.”
The Casey Cardinia finals series kicks off this weekend and while these words will ring true for those involved at the competing clubs, they will have particular relevance for one brave young man who is a winner before a ball gets kicked in anger.
Gazette sports editor David Nagel caught up with a prodigious young talent, who almost had life, and football, taken away from him.
“I DON’T know what I’d do without footy, I love it and think about it all the time.”
Those are the words of Berwick footballer Jack Opteynde, a 17-year-old with a special gift for playing football. It’s a gift that will see him play in this week’s Casey Cardinia senior elimination final against Beaconsfield and a gift that was almost taken away by the act of a cowardly thug.
It’s Saturday 29 October, 2011, and life was good for Opteynde, then 16, after he’d been invited to pre-season training with the Dandenong Stingrays after a standout year with the Berwick under-18s. It was another small step in Opteynde’s dream of making it to the big time of AFL football.
“I was with a friend at the Berwick Leisure Centre when some trouble makers turned up. There were a lot of scuffles and a bit of fighting going on,” Opteynde said.
“I said to my friend that this is not the sort of place we want to be, and that was it, the next thing I knew I was in the Monash (Medical Centre) at Clayton for two and a half weeks.”
Opteynde had been smashed over the head with a glass bottle, full of sand, and received a fractured skull and bleeding on the brain. Playing any sort of football, never mind at an elite standard, was the furthest thing from his mind.
“I couldn’t be bothered doing anything and I just had constant headaches,” he said. “I didn’t want to move and some days I couldn’t be bothered talking. That was the lowest point and all I could think about was getting back to football.”
Although there was no surgery required, doctors sat down with Jack and his father Rudy and told them that it would be a wise move if he didn’t play football again.
“While the doctor was talking I was smirking at dad, there was no way anyone was going to stop me playing football,” he said. After four more weeks at home Opteynde began a courageous and committed fight-back that had only one satisfactory destination – getting back on the footy field.
“I started with some little walks and then over Christmas I started jogging,” he said. “We’ve got a holiday house in Rye and over summer I just ran laps of the footy ground, just counting down the days until pre-season training started again.”
Opteynde started his Stingrays pre-season a few months late, in early February this year, and was initially involved in limited contact. He was also training on a revised program with the Berwick under-18s and was understandably sceptical when he made his return, against ROC, in round two.
“At the start I just didn’t want to get hit but now I’ve got to the stage where I don’t even think about it anymore,” he said. “I’m pretty sure I’m back to 100 per cent.”
Opteynde, an apprentice plumber, is back working full-time and trains three nights a week as well as enduring a beach rehab session with the Stingrays on Sunday mornings. His inclusion, along with former junior team-mates, Chris McKay and Joseph West has added a fresh look to a Berwick side that had looked tired and jaded.
“Senior footy, I absolutely love it,” Opteynde said. “It’s just so much quicker than under-18s and playing with blokes like Paul Vanschilt and Madison Andrews, who I look up to, is fantastic. Everyone at the club has been great but really I’ve done all this for myself, I just wanted to get fit and play footy again, I just love it.”
