Retirement sits well with Anderson who left no stone unturned

You won't find many deeper thinkers than 2021 Swan Medallist Frank Anderson and he's come to terms that his body was never going to let him reach his football dreams, and that's why his decision to retire aged just 25 sits comfortably with him.

Anderson will always look back on his football career with a lot of what ifs. There's the what if he got an opportunity from one of the host of AFL clubs that showed interest in him and the what if his body ever allowed him to have that elusive 'golden season' of just staying healthy.

Then there is the great what if over what if his knee didn’t give way after the best season of his life in 2021 where he would go on to win the Swan Medal as the fairest and best at Swan Districts, and one of the best on field before the injury in the elimination final against West Perth.

However, Anderson can now console himself with the knowledge that his body just wasn’t going to play ball along with a football career.

The signs were there in his teenage years when hip dysplasia first caused him problems, and those hip problems continue to this day. To the point where Anderson's attempted return in 2023 had to end with his retirement because of the hip and knee surgeries he would require just to play again.

The body made retirement decision obvious

At the end of the day, once Anderson played a reserves game against Subiaco back in Round 7 and could barely walk for the next two weeks and couldn’t kick a football still a month later, he knew there was just no point putting himself through this torture of continuing to play football.

"It comes down to the fact that the work I need to get done to my body just meant I didn’t really have a choice," Anderson said on the 'We're Alright' podcast.

"I need to go in for more surgery on my knee if I wanted to keep playing, I need to go in for more surgery on my left hip and I was having some of those struggles in 2021 where I had to go to great lengths to deal with the pain.

"I'd had five cortisone injections in 2021, I was having four naproxen 1000mg tablets and it was a chemist at my house. But it got me up to play and now, I just can't keep putting my body through it. I need a full reconstruction of my knee again because there's still a crack in my femoral head so I need surgery to repair, and there's cartilage repair I need and there's a tear in my meniscus.

"So that would have been all this season out because of that and I also need to get surgery on my left which would put me out for all next season, and I'm not willing to go through those cortisone injections to continue playing.

"So it would have been this season and next season out as well, and then after missing two and-a-half years I was just weighing up that it wasn’t going to be worth it. The decision was made easier because I know I can run in straight lines no issues at all and that's the direction I want to go in post footy."

Making the final decision to retire

Initially after undergoing the knee reconstruction following the injury sustained during the 2021 elimination final, Anderson wasn’t sure if he would want to attempt a football return at all.

However, the desire to give it one last crack and to play under Andrew Pruyn is what swayed his decision to give it a try.

"I didn’t want to finish how I did in 2021, you can't walk out on footy like that and you want to go out on your own terms. So this year the ultimate goal was to disregard the negative connotations that I had towards playing footy and how I finished, and coming back to a point where I could play again."

While Anderson will never regret the decision to attempt the comeback, the way he pulled up after running 15km for 14 possessions in Round 7 of the reserves against Subiaco made the decision a no-brainer that chasing the football dream no longer was worth the pain.

"I'm a bit of a perfectionist with what I expect of myself and it soon became obvious I was never going to be able to have the impact I hoped in the senior team," Anderson said.

"That was OK because we have so many good players in the team so I didn’t have to come back to be the player that I was, but playing one game a month was never going to be acceptable. I played a game against Subiaco and then the week after I couldn’t walk.

"I came back to the club the following week and still couldn’t run so that was two weeks' post-game, and then the week after starting jogging a little bit. I tried to come back the fourth week after and still couldn’t even kick, and I was just thinking how far off I was mentally but my body is so cooked.

"That's when I realised there was a direction I could go in other aspects of my life and I just weighed all of that up."

Journey to Swans

Looking back and Anderson had played some impressive VFL football in his lone season at the Northern Blues in 2019 on the back of playing most of his football previously at South Croydon in the Eastern Football League.

On the back of that and when he didn’t get drafted by an AFL club, Anderson was looking for a fresh change and initially it was the SANFL he had his sights on until Swan Districts' GM of football operations Phil Smart got in touch.

"I had played one season in the VFL at the Northern Blues and that was Sam Fisher and Jesse Palmer who have come to the club as well," Anderson said.

"So I played a season there and went OK, and the story went that I was fairly close again to being picked at the end of the year. I'd gone to the draft camp and had a couple of medical screenings with a few different clubs, and I spent a weekend in South Australia speaking to some clubs over there.

"I was going to sign with one of them and I also was talking to Brisbane and Fremantle, and a couple of AFL clubs before going on that weekend. I had a good weekend there and definitely thought I could live here but on the flight home I actually sat next to one of the recruiters to Fremantle inadvertently.

"He was asking what my plans were and he told me not to play SANFL because he'd get me set up at one of the WAFL clubs. Pretty quickly after I had a message from Smarty at Swans, then talked to him and spent a weekend over here, Doc and the boys took me out and from there I made the decision that it was a place I felt really comfortable at, and away we went."

Getting close to AFL opportunity

There were several occasions over the past five years where Anderson felt like getting an AFL opportunity was a genuine chance.

There were times where his hip problems robbed him of the chance when they showed up in the medical examinations, but the cruellest blow of all could very well have been the ruptured ACL suffered in 2021 when he was at the peak of his powers.

"The thing was I was consistently talking to three or four clubs in each of those draft chances over the years. The first was in 2018 when I had spoken to three or clubs, then the mid-season draft probably even more clubs because I was the new kid to the VFL and still pretty young," Anderson said.

"Then at the end of that year again, I spoke to a handful of clubs at least and I felt I was a fair chance even though I hadn’t played that much. That was the end of 2019 and then in 2020, it obviously didn’t go that great for me here at Swans and that probably didn’t help but then in 2021, I thought I was really close.

"I'd had a medical with three different clubs but the problem was because of how bad my hips are put together, I kept failing the medicals. The saddest part was I felt the best chance was going to be at the end of 2021 because I'd had a good season, we made finals and then I had a good game in the final until I popped the knee.

"I was pretty confident going into that end of year that I was a good chance here. So there was probably five times over the journey where I felt I was a chance and I kept getting told the club was interested, but it just didn’t happen.

"I don’t regret any of it and I take solace from it because it was never up to me, and I did everything I could. I literally could not have done any more and for whatever reason my body just didn’t want to play along with me over the time."

Why the move west

While Anderson had decided he wanted to leave Melbourne for a fresh start to life and his football at the end of 2019, it wasn’t initially Western Australia he was set on but now he couldn’t have asked for it to turn out better.

"It was at a good time for me to try something a little bit different. I had been in the Melbourne bubble for a while and I've got a bit of a perspective on life that you have to go spread your wings somewhere else other than the place you grew up in," he said.

"It was a really good way to leverage the work I'd done in Melbourne to benefit me going forward, and the other side of that was that it was attractive to move to Perth.

"The biggest factor, though, was probably the footy development because I was one of five guys playing on the Carlton list any week, and any given week I might be out of the team no matter how well I played the week before.

"I knew that I needed a change and I didn’t want to play against the VFL team who had looked after me so well that season, so I felt the best thing was to try a different and it was literally as simple as that."

First impressions of Swan Districts

Anderson wasn’t quite sure what to expect from Swan Districts when he signed on and then he was even more unsure once he arrived for the 2020 season and was joining the wooden spooners from 2019, but in the end he quickly fell in love with the club and the people involved.

"Honestly I was taken back a little bit with the standard of training early on and when I signed with the club I didn’t even check the history of how they went last year," Anderson said.

"Then I realised that it was 4-14 after I had been here for a couple of weeks and I thought I was coming into a club with a fair bit of work to do, but the other side of that was that off the field it was very similar to South Croydon.

"It was a blue collar club with a massive supporter base and a good bunch of boys, and I just thought it was home straight away. Honestly off field it was similar to what I was used and on field it was a good little challenge, and it was nice to walk into a team where I could have a role and be backed in to do my thing.

"Then there's the pressure that comes with that but I was so upset with my output after that first season in 2020, and that was probably the springboard to having the good year in 2021."

The growing pains of 2020

Anderson had a good season in the shortened COVID campaign of 2019 even if he judged himself harshly for his performances, but he does feel he built some momentum by the end to set up what was to come in 2021.

"For me footy is a really simple game and I've loved it because it rewards the people who do the most work," he said.

"I just wasn’t able to do the amount of work I knew that I needed to in 2020 but I did string a couple of good games together at the end of the season. That was after getting a cortisone injection that I should have done sooner, and then after the last game against East Fremantle I had the hip surgery booked in for the Monday.

"Then it wasn’t until the end of February the next year that I started running again for 2021 and then I could get a real go at it. I knew how to prepare and it was a snowball from there, but the only thing I do regret is that I never got that golden season where you do the whole pre-season, full season of playing properly and I just don’t know how that could have gone. It's so elusive to get that season."

Why 2021 went so well

Anderson delivered a brilliant 2021 season at Swan Districts in a team that made its return to finals where he was the best player on the way to winning the Swan Medal, and being named to the WAFL Team of the Year.

For him, it was a whole combination of things of finding a way to deal with the pain he was in with his hips, being in a good and happy place away from football, and then the environment at the football club that was behind it all.

"The other side of 2021 was that I was feeling really comfortable with the group. The boys took me in really well after probably not getting the chance to spend enough time with the boys coming into 2020 that I'd wanted to," Anderson said.

"In 2021, I was just a lot more relaxed and I wasn’t going out there trying to be the best player anymore, I was just enjoying it. I was having a really great time with the business on the other side of the field and I've realised with footy that it can't be the hardest part of your week because then you won't play well.

"It needs to be something you do outside of the hardest part so I was dialled in with my work at the gym getting everything sorted, and I had got myself into a meticulous routine with training, preparing and eating so I was doing everything single thing I could. Then I'd get here on Saturday to play and I knew I was going to play well because the pressure was off whereas in 2020 I was chasing tail."

Future beyond football

Football in Perth might not have quite worked out how Anderson hoped, but life has certainly come together and without question it's going to be where he continues to live because of the lifestyle he's fallen in love with, the split work life he has and with his next goals in life on a physical front.

"I've got a little bit going on in Perth. I work at a Rio Tinto mine site in the drill and blast team so that's a really fun space that I stepped into after the year I had not playing footy, and thought I'd just do something completely different out of the health and fitness sector," Anderson said.

"They look after me up there from a Tuesday to Tuesday, and then I'm home for a week where I run a gym studio. I've also signed up for the 70.3 Ironman down in Busselton in December and I will give that a good rinse.

"The difference between running in a straight line over a distance for me or having to change direction is just out of control, and I'm already ramping up that training and it's something I've wanted to do for a very long time."