Kangaroo Sophie Abbatangelo wants to start a conversation about mental health and AFLW.
It’s an issue that has been thrust into the spotlight this season after the tragic loss of GWS Giant Jacinda Barclay in October 2020. Barclay was 29 and the first active AFL men’s or women’s player to take his or her own life.
But while conversations about mental health have gained increasing prominence in the men’s game, it’s an issue yet to gain the same traction in AFLW.
“There has been a lot of talk about mental health in the men’s game,” says Abbatangelo.
“I think that’s great, because men have been the ones [traditionally] to suffer in silence. Women have been known to be better at communicating their feelings. But that’s not always the case.”
Abbatangelo’s own battle with mental health issues started when her mother was diagnosed with stage four ovarian cancer in 2009, just one year after she finished high school. At the time, Abbatangelo was studying at TAFE and playing basketball at a high level.
“I used to finish class and go sit with Mum while she had chemotherapy. Seeing someone you love so much go through that is crippling.
“I started effectively mourning Mum’s loss while she was still alive, mourning how she would never come back to her former self.
“That type of prolonged grief is incredibly isolating, but people don’t really talk about that kind of grief openly.”
After nine agonising years living with cancer, Abbatangelo’s mother died in 2018, just before her daughter made her AFLW debut.
“Playing AFLW and not having her there to see me experience it or to watch me live out a dream that she once saw in me is what I’ll miss the most,” she said.
Over the last 12 months of her mum’s life, and while she played VFLW for Melbourne University, Abbatangelo went through a separation, was the primary carer of her two children and nursed her Mum at home.
“I think every day I was just in survival mode,” the now 30-year-old says.
“I look back now and wonder how I coped, how I managed to keep my kids emotionally and physically happy and healthy and keep my own head above water.
Following her mum’s death, Abbatangelo said she had to “start over”.
“When Mum died a large part of me died too. I had to learn to feel joy again, learn to open up to people, to have a simple conversation again,” she said.
Mental health balancing act harder than ever
The 2021 AFLW season presents unique challenges to player welfare.
Since the competition’s inception, AFLW players have struggled to juggle competing priorities, with low wages and six-month contracts meaning many work year-round (including during the season) to earn a living.
This balancing act has become harder again in a pandemic season that has already required one club — the Giants — to “hub” in Albury and then interstate for over a month. Other clubs are likely to follow suit to ensure this year’s competition — unlike the last — can finish with a Premier.
During the pre-season, players were forced to get creative to return to clubs physically and mentally fit, with Kangaroos captain Emma Kearney telling Nine newspapers that some used “wheelie bins as squat racks, while others re-purposed various household items to complete their exercises”.
Abbatangelo recounts a similarly chaotic preparation. During Melbourne’s extended lockdown in 2020, she home-schooled her two children, including seven-year-old son Hendrix who lives with both ADHD and central auditory processing disorder (CAPD).
“To have to stay at home with the kids from sun up till sun down, without tools to help educate them, was by far the most challenging thing I’ve done,” she says.
With her mental health “spiralling”, she reached out to the Kangaroos’ club doctor for support.
“That was a really hard thing to do,” says Abbatangelo.
But she now realises it was necessary. Subsequently, the AFL and club have set her up with a psychologist and psychiatrist, which she describes as an “amazing” support.
The Kangaroos have a qualified psychologist and welfare coordinator present at each training session, while players fill in regular wellness surveys to allow the medical team and coaching staff to know how their players are tracking.
Abbatangelo would like to see such support standardised across the competition — particularly for those just starting out.
Her own story, she says, also shows that it can be difficult to identify who is struggling.
“Some people assume that those who experience mental illness are shy and withdrawn, but that was not the case for me,” she says.
“I know a lot of people will be shocked to know I suffer from mental illness, because I can be quite confident and bubbly and sometimes carefree, but mental health doesn’t discriminate.
“There is a saying that goes something like this: be kind always because someone is fighting a battle you know nothing about.”
