Bulldogs premiership skipper Easton Wood has proven once again that he is the ultimate clubman by giving up a huge payday on a guaranteed contract to retire instead.
The 32-year-old defender was contracted for the 2022 season, but is retiring because he does not want to let his teammates down next year, with his body battered after playing in 188 bruising games since his debut back in 2009.
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“No matter how much I was getting paid next year, if I felt like I was just rocking up to get a pay cheque, knowing that ‘jeez at any moment if I pinged a string or I got dropped that I could just pull the pin’ and leave the club high and dry, I’d feel sick about that,” Wood told The Age.
“I don’t think I’d be able to ever reconcile that, no matter how much was coming back the other way.”
Wood managed 15 games in 2021 and was in Luke Beveridge’s grand final side, but admitted he first considered retirement after suffering a hamstring injury against Port Adelaide in Round 9, his third hamstring injury of the season.
“You know how there’s the definition of insanity of doing the same thing twice and expect a different response? I was thinking, is that where I’m at and have I already crossed over? What’s going to change? That kind of incident rocked me a little bit,”
he said.
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“I thought that was my body saying it wasn’t kind of up to the demands of AFL.” Wood said.
“You kind of catastrophise straight after the event and you kind of have to bottom out before you can come back up. I was confronting that idea of, ‘am I done?’ And then after a few days, and you let the emotions settle a bit you go, ‘no I’m not, it’s Round Nine, it’s only a grade-one.’
“[But] once that idea was planted in my head it was kind of hard to avoid thinking about it.
“The great thing was I kind of made a deal with myself that I’ll do everything I can to get back and if it goes again then that might be it. But if it doesn’t I’ll try to eke out as much [as I can].”
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Drafted with the 43rd pick in the 2007 draft, Wood retires having played a pivotal role in a moment Bulldogs fans will never forget five seasons ago when he stepped in for the injured Bob Murphy to lead the side to a drought-breaking premiership
The high-flying defender finishes having made one All-Australian appearance and won one club best and fairest, with both coming in 2015.