Of the 48 senior games of footy I played for the Werribee Football Club, I reckon approximately 36 of those were in my last 2 years, 1992 and 1993 and I have Dick and Rick Hoyt to thank for that.

I arrived at the club at the back end of 1988 having moved to Hoppers Crossing, a relatively new suburb adjacent to Werribee and bought a house with my then fiancé Robyn. The next 3 years consisted of a roller coaster ride of injuries and rehabilitation from soft tissue injuries to a double hernia which required follow up surgery.

Compounding the injuries was a fractured relationship on the home front which I take full responsibility for. All in all, life wasn’t too flash and it was only a matter of time before Robyn had had enough and bolted, leaving me alone in a “cesspit” of suburbia and self-pity.

I had a dog, a beautiful male Doberman, Sigfreid (named after the wonderful KAOS villain in Get Smart) who loved to get out and run but I was either recovering from injury or too depressed to do anything. I remember I would often forget to clean up Sigfreid’s turds in the backyard and after a couple of weeks I’d go out the backyard to confront these giant landmines with a shovel and bag, then cop abuse from neighbours disgusted by the stench and my accompanying apathy.

In 1991, I watched my teammates play in a losing VFA Grand Final. They played very well and at that point, I came to the realization that I was so far off getting back to where I once was as a player that I considered rugby union as an option. I’d played it in the Army with moderate success as a 5/8th but I was prepared to clutch at any straw in order to break the string of bad luck.

With that ridiculous thought in mind, I retired to the couch in the loungeroom to ponder my sporting future. At 28 and running out of time in a professional sense, sitting on the couch eating chips, drinking beer and smoking whilst being glared at by an angry exercise-starved doberman, probably wasn’t the best start to my goal setting.

Then the sliding doors moment. I was lying on the 3-seater couch one Sunday afternoon in October 1991. I’d just finished my second packet of Doritos and a block of Cadbury chocolate when the “Wide World of Sports” came on. It was hosted by the late great Max Walker, and in this show, were the highlights of the Hawaiian Ironman. The highlights were flashed to the viewer in 10 minute “vignettes” over the 3-hour period of the show.

I’d never seen the Ironman before so I slowly moved from the horizontal to the vertical, brushing off Dorito crumbs as I went. For those like me who knew little of the race, it’s 3.8km swim followed 180km bike and 42km (marathon) run. All that in +35 degree temperatures and 80% humidity. Ridiculous, right? For the record, the winner was 5 x-time legend Mark Allen and second was Australia’s Greg Welch who went on to win it a couple of years later.

But it wasn’t the elite athletes that caught my attention. Dick Hoyt, a 50-year-old from Boston lined up at the start of the swim leg with his 19-year-old son Rick in a rubber boat connected around Dick’s chest. Rick, suffering from cerebral palsy since birth, was about to be towed 3.8km in a rubber boat, sat at the front of a bicycle and peddled 180km then pushed in a wheelchair 42km by his 50-year-old father who up until 14 years ago, never even done a fun run. Sure Dad!

As each vignette was shown, the more my appetite for junk diminished and a smile started to appear on Siegfried’s face. By the time Dick finally sprinted to the finish line pushing an ecstatic Rick in the darkness of the Hawaiian evening, I was beside myself, crying like a child hugging a now a compassionate and relieved dog that knew I’d finally seen the light!

All the self-pity and insipid outlook that had been hanging over me for so long simply disappeared that afternoon. From that point I trained like never before. The dog and I spent hours running the Werribee Racecourse and did hill running in the You Yang Ranges between Werribee and Geelong. We had our own cross country track alongside the Werribee River and an ugly suburban 4km track around the neighbourhood that became a time trial.

From a personal view, I had the best 2 years of my career and only had one bad soft tissue injury that cost me 5 weeks in 1993. Most importantly my mindset had changed dramatically and no longer did I feel sorry for myself. In the space of 2 years having watched a grand final from the sidelines I was fortunate to play in a winning one in 1993 thanks to The Hoyts.

In the 26 years since that fateful Sunday shoveling Doritos into my gob, I have shown the following video many times in a corporate environment and it’s never failed to get the appropriate response…one of deathly silence and a few sniffles

(goto 34 secs in!)

Dick and Rick have devoted their lives to their not for profit foundation and have completed 32 marathons. A statue of both of them sits at the start of the Boston marathon.

Their website is http://www.teamhoyt.com