Geelong Advertiser |
IN a strange way, footy may have inadvertently saved the life of young Bell Park recruit Will Sloss.
Sloss was playing a practice match for the Geelong Falcons in early 2011 when he backed into a pack with typical courage and copped a knee flush into his back.
The pain lasted for weeks and when physiotherapy failed to find the cause or ease the discomfort, Sloss was sent for an MRI scan.
Suddenly everything changed. A tumour, the size of an orange, was sitting on his seventh rib.
The on-field collision had ultimately irritated the tumour, drawing attention to its presence.
"My doctor said that knee would have irritated it and if that hadn't have happened, there may have been a few more months of not knowing it was there," Sloss said.
Now 19, Sloss is a picture of health and has emerged as one of the young guns of Bell Park's premiership push in his first year at the club.
"In some ways I feel like I've missed a year of footy, but in some ways I feel pretty lucky in the end," Sloss said.
"It was a long year, I've learnt so much from that year. It can bring you down, but in the end it was a big learning curve.
"I got the wrong diagnosis two times," he said.
"At first they thought it could be bone cancer."
He was then told the tumour may have been an aggressive form of cancer with dim long-term prospects.
When his father Bill, who is a doctor, could not assure him everything would be fine, fear set in.
That anxiety only became worse when he was forced to spend five days without tests because of a conga-line of public holidays where the Easter long-weekend clashed with Anzac Day.
"My dad's a doctor," he said. "The whole time when we thought it was possibly the worst, I could just tell from the way he was reacting that it was pretty bad."
Complicating matters was the awkward positioning of the tumour, meaning he had to undergo several rounds of keyhole surgery so that an adequate sample could be removed.
From there, the correct diagnosis came. It was Hodgkin's lymphoma.
Further scans revealed the cancer had spread and half a dozen tumours were scattered around his body.
"But the good thing about Hodgkin's lymphoma is that it's pretty treatable with good treatment if you get onto it early," he said.
"As soon as we got told what it was, Dad was relieved a lot and that gave me a lot of confidence, that he could suddenly say to me that it was going to be OK.
"Because originally, he couldn't say to me that it was going to be OK, because he knew it might not have been.
"But when he knew it was treatable, it was a massive relief."
That's when the next battle began.
A scar on his right collarbone is a lasting reminder of an operation to remove one of the tumours.
Every second Monday for eight months he underwent chemotherapy.
By November 2011, all the tumours were gone.
"Because I wanted to get back into footy in 2012, my doctor, who I was really close with, thought that may not be possible because I got really unfit and the heart and lungs were affected by the chemo," he said.
"She thought I shouldn't be doing a pre-season because of how my heart was, so, during that pre-season, I was quite often checking how my heart was, how my lungs were and I was given a special routine for the
pre-season."
Sloss was an admired teammate and classmate at Geelong Grammar well before his health battle.
He had been voted into the leadership group of the footy side in 2011, just before he was diagnosed with cancer, and continued to stay involved with a role on the sidelines during his treatment.
"That's why I loved being at school. All my mates were around me," Sloss said.
"They'd know how I was feeling and I could just forget about it and laugh."
Sloss's footy comeback for Geelong Grammar last year was a powerfully emotional moment.
He was elevated to captain, was fit for the first match of the APS season and led the side to a strong campaign.
"It was pretty good," he said of his comeback game. SLOSS'S link to Bell Park came through Brett Campigli, a long-serving member of the Dragons' coaching committee.
When Grammar graduates Dylan Weir, Tim Austin and Sloss were looking for a Geelong Football League club this season, Campigli showed them the way to Hamlyn Park.
"I'm loving it," said Sloss, who played junior football at Geelong Amateur.
"It's a great football culture. There's lots of stars there and plenty of older guys you can learn off."
Sloss has cemented a regular spot in the Dragons' best 22 as the club seeks to make its fourth straight grand final.
It's a remarkable feat for someone who missed a season of footy and is still only a teenager.
While he was recruited as a midfielder, such is the strength of the Dragons' on-ball brigade that he spends his time at the feet of Stephen Paulke and Ben Bucovaz up forward.
"He is dangerous up forward and is quite elusive and also very good over his head for his size, which people may not know," Dragons co-coach Tim Sheringham said.
"He's still young and when you consider how much footy he's missed, he's doing very well.
"Speaking to Adrian McCartney, who coached him at Geelong Grammar, he says 'you need to get him into the midfield, he's a ball magnet and really elusive'.
"We weren't sure how the Grammar boys would go this year, whether they were up to it, but they've more than earned their stripes.
"He does all the right things. He trains hard and is going to be a very good player.
"We want to get him more into the midfield and he's definitely part of our plans for September if everything continues as it is."SLOSS is down to one test every six months to ensure he remains in the clear.
When he is not running around in the green and white jumper, he is studying a Bachelor of Environments at Melbourne University, focusing on urban planning and architecture.
And he maintains his infectious positive outlook.
"It's helped me with everything I do from now on," he said of his 2011 battle.
"It's given me massive perspective in life."