ABOUT three years ago, while he was studying at the police academy, Stewart Devlin came down with pneumonia. It prompted him to do something about the golf ball-sized lump under his right arm, which for months he'd convinced himself was the innocent legacy of a career's worth of football knocks. "You could always come up with a reason why," he says.
His mother and sister are nurses and they packed him off for a biopsy. It revealed Hodgkin's Lymphoma. He was 33 and thought, "Well, that's footy done then."
Devlin was lucky. Most of the cancerous nodes were cut out and a seven-week course of radiotherapy took care of the rest. At his Williamstown training station, he was soon fit enough to give in to the urgings of his new workmates to "come and have a kick".
"They coaxed me into playing for Seddon," Devlin recalls with a laugh. "We were terrible, got flogged every week, (by) 40 goals. I'd never played in a side like that." As painful as the floggings were, he still found that special something that sustains footballers at all levels, a commonality, a togetherness. "As much as it was disappointing, I still didn't mind it. We had a kick, the boys I played with were all good fun."
Seddon's marble-ring of a ground was a blessing for old legs — "you didn't have to run far" — and he might still be there now if the club hadn't collapsed into the arms of Yarraville in a merger at the end of 2006.
Devlin is modest and understated. He concedes he was "probably one of their better players", but only because they didn't have much to work with. He also liked the fact that, with the exception of a couple of teammates, no one was aware of his football past. To them, he was just the bloke playing on the ball who had a bit more of an idea than the rest. For a change, Devlin didn't have to explain what happened after he went to Geelong at pick five in the 1990 national draft.
BACK then he was an 18-year-old who spent his weekdays surrounded by schoolmates and weekends fenced in with men, playing senior footy for Horsham. He played very well, winning back-to-back premierships before he was old enough to drive.
Shane Heard and Peter Hickmott, old Essendon men, were coaching, and he loved their contrast. Heard taught him speedball training, discipline and obedience; Hickmott encouraged him to pin his ears back and have a go. He'd played well in the old Shell Series, a round-robin of footy's young guns held at Waverley, and gone close to best on ground in Horsham's big grand final win over Warracknabeal. From relative obscurity, he was suddenly a top-10 prospect.
On draft day he was at home, on the wheat and sheep farm at Longerenong, near Horsham. He'd taken the day off school, happy to go into hiding. Eight or nine clubs had made contact the previous year, telling him they were keen. Nothing had come of it. "I was gun shy," he says.
Just after lunch, a newspaper reporter phoned and broke the news: he'd been drafted by Geelong.
A week later he sat his year 12 exams, then the Cats came calling: recruiter Billy McMaster, his successor Stephen Wells, and reserves coach Graeme Gellie. The meeting had echoes of Essendon swooping on a 15-year-old Tim Watson in Dimboola; perhaps it was something in the Wimmera air.
"Mum and dad thought they were just coming down to talk, and before the night had ended I took a duffel bag with some clothes in it and was in the car and gone. We didn't talk about it for many years, but mum was shocked. She didn't expect it to happen like that."
Devlin had no idea of the world he was stepping into, nor did he care. "I just wanted to play footy." For the first time in his life, he discovered it wasn't that simple. Placed in share accommodation, he hated his first house, then moved in with other new boys, 1990's No. 1 draftee Stephen Hooper, Byron Donnellan and Hooper's girlfriend. He longed to feel at home, but comfort never came.
"The whole two years I was looking for something that wasn't there. I dunno what it was, but I didn't enjoy it, didn't enjoy the lifestyle, everything about it. Looking back now, I was probably too young. But I couldn't be told."
He fronted for his first pre-season training session underdone, running having taken a back seat to study. There was Billy Brownless, Gary Hocking, Barry Stoneham, Paul Couch, a bloke named Ablett. Life as a Cat began with 20 x 400-metre sprints.
Devlin played three or four practice matches, then in the night series in Adelaide, and further afield against West Coast at Subiaco. "Then I got the flick, and that was basically the year for me." Having played on a flank, changing on the ball, he found himself shunted to the back-pocket in the seconds — footy's last chance saloon. His competition for a midfield berth included Couch, Hocking, Mark Bairstow, Andrew Bews. "I was going to find it pretty hard to get in there."
"Toby" Bairstow was good to him, Hocking too, but relationships were largely at arm's length. "There's still competitiveness there, you don't want to give up your spot to some upstart who doesn't know what he's on about."
His first and lasting memory of Gary Ablett was a practice match at Deakin University, playing in the forward line and leading, then leading again, after Ablett had marked more than 60 metres from goal. "I was thinking, 'I might get a pass here', but he didn't even look at me. I thought, 'Who's this bloke'?" A post-high goal was all he needed to know.
He enjoyed training, not least seeing the great man doing "things other people wouldn't even try". But the structure and rigidity challenged his instincts. "It got to the stage where I didn't want to go for the footy because I thought, 'I'm going to make mistakes here, I'm going to end up on the pine (bench) again'."
Midway through his second season, coach Malcolm Blight called him in. Devlin reckons it was probably only the second or third conversation they'd had. "Where are we at?" Blight asked, telling him they'd had high expectations; what could they do to help them be realised?
He asked for a more familiar role up the ground, and for three weeks was on a wing and in the best players. Gellie told him he was close to a senior call-up. He was in the squad of 24 one week and back in the back-pocket in the twos the next. "I knew my footy at Geelong was all but over."
As much as he was shattered — "a 20-year-old kid who'd been crushed and thrown out with the garbage" — a massive weight was lifted. "You feel like you've let down all these people — your family and friends who've got massive expectations of you. But there was also a, 'Thank Christ'."
He holds no grudges, conceding that, given the jewels he had at his disposal, Blight "didn't have to worry about developing someone like me". Lists were 52 players' deep, stretching towards 60 with supplementaries.
"It wasn't like he couldn't find another six-foot midfielder, they were a dime a dozen."
Devlin became a "footy bum", pursued by clubs in the bush and across the border. He had an injury-addled season with Norwood, and when a promised job never materialised moved home-ish to Warracknabeal, winning the league best and fairest in 1995.
Then the phone rang again, and Hawthorn invited him down to train. He was wary, but took a fortnight off work, headed to town and found his feet itched as soon as they touched the Glenferrie turf. "I was probably ready to play league footy by then."
But Peter Knights was sacked as coach, the recruiting staff followed him out the door, "and it all fizzled out".
At 23 he was coaching Donald, and later Horsham Saints. His big-league experience taught him what not to do. "I didn't like berating, and I didn't see how it encouraged players to be players. As much as you've got to have discipline as part of a group, it is a game, and you've got to enjoy it."
Watching kids develop gave him great satisfaction, and made up for not fulfilling an ambition to coach a premiership; Devlin's teams lost "four or five" grand finals, one by a point, another by two.
He's done with coaching, happily busy with work and kids, but is still going around. He's been in the North Footscray midfield the past two seasons, although one day this year the full-forward was crook and Devlin filled in. He had 10 to three-quarter-time, and finished with 18.
He used to wonder, what if the ball had bounced this way instead of that? "I might have made it, played 20 games, and that would have been the end of me anyway. Or you can be James Hird, drafted at 79 the same year, and be a superstar."
On draft day, Devlin reckons the number beside your name has no bearing on where you'll end up. "Whether you're drafted first or you're drafted last, once you're there you've got the same chance as the next bloke."