Jack Duncan thought skateboarding was easy until the day he took a bet and landed in intensive care, he tells Tom Smithies
For more than two decades Jack Duncan has held the knowledge of how close he came to dying before his ninth birthday, and the stroke of luck that saved his life.
In the year since his son Orlando was born, that feeling has been thrown into even sharper relief for Wellington Phoenix’s goalkeeper, understanding now the suffering of his parents as he lay in intensive care for 10 days and another three weeks in the care of Sydney’s children’s hospital.
Certainly there was silence among his new teammates at Wellington Phoenix as his answer to a request from new head coach Giancarlo Italiano for a story that defined him was to recite the tale of the $20 dare that almost killed him.
Maybe it’s this knowledge that explains why Duncan has always seemed a particularly calm footballer, even when the fates have conspired against him – such as suffering a freak injury in a semi-final and missing the A-Leagues Grand Final.
Or, indeed, leaving Newcastle after almost 100 games over three spells because the head coach told him he wasn’t wanted – not long before the head coach, Arthur Papas, himself then quit. But as he runs through these twists and turns, Duncan keeps looking for the silver linings, even in the day when a skating challenge in Kareela in southern Sydney went horribly wrong.
READ MORE ON KEEPUP
NEW CHAIRMAN ANNOUNCED: Stephen Conroy’s opening letter to A-Leagues fans
SQUAD LIST: Young Socceroos name squad for blockbuster friendlies in Spain
HAPPY DAYS: The Fonz sends message to Ange after press conference joke
“Me and my best mate, we used to skateboard if we weren’t playing soccer or we weren’t at the beach,” Duncan recalls for KEEPUP.
“He dared me to go from the top of his street, which was a pretty sharp kind of right-hand turn and so I didn’t make the corner and hit some rocks. There was also a cut-off street sign pole so I don’t know exactly what I hit but it turns out I ruptured my kidney.
“I didn’t know at the time because there were no visible injuries, I hadn’t pierced the skin. I just had grazes on my hands and just felt pretty beaten up and bruised.
“I went home and was lying in bed trying to have a rest and sleep off the pain. I got up to go to the toilet and I fainted twice.”
Fortunately that sounded enough alarm bells for Duncan’s parents to take no chances, and drove him straight to hospital. Subsequent scans began a rapid chain of events.
“My parents realised that something was really wrong and rushed me to hospital where I had an emergency blood transfusion because I had massive internal bleeding,” Duncan says.
“I had to spend the next 12 days in intensive care and 30 days in total at Randwick Children’s Hospital.
“I think I might have played like the last 10 minutes of the last game of the season in the U12s at Sutherland Sharks that year, and I wore a protective brace around my chest, around my rib cage, for the next year or so.
“The scary thing is, and it’s probably something that’s changed me as a person – it changed my skateboarding career for sure! – is that if I’d gone to sleep as I intended, I would have died during the night, from the internal bleeding.
“We had a cultural day here (at Wellington) a couple of weeks ago and we were asked to tell a story that maybe has shaped your life in either a positive or negative way.
“I was old enough that I remember it quite vividly and I always say that I knew from the moment I started rolling down the hill that I’d got my line wrong and this was going to end badly. It always plays in my head whenever I tell that story.
“I think now I reflect maybe a bit more on what my parents were going through at the time, having become a dad.”
The arrival of Orlando certainly made Duncan think about a few things differently, not least making him realise the new incentives he had for planning out his career.
“I’ve got a one-year-old son, and he’s a massive motivation for me to have a long career, for him to see me as a professional footballer,” Duncan says.
“That’s a really proud part of my life at the moment, being a dad. He’s a massive motivation in a different way, to provide for him and for my wife. But also for him to see me as a professional footballer and enjoy the little things like having a kick around after a game on the field, that drives me every day.
“He’s at a really good age at the moment, he’s lots of fun. He’s running around the house and picking up his words so it’s funny to hear him just come out with some random stuff.”
The career path idea is an interesting one, for it has allowed Duncan to realise that at 30 he is a senior player in any dressing room, but needed a fresh sense of drive to seek out a new challenge. That was why he walked away from the Jets, despite having a year left on his contract, and even moved countries in search of a chance to be first-choice keeper again.
“That was one of the main factors in my decision, even though I had another year there (at Newcastle) and a good contract – to push myself into a new environment.
“I guess it’s probably a move within my career that I haven’t really made yet, I moved from Newcastle to Perth when I was quite young and I knew at that time that I was going to be behind Danny Vukovic.
“From there, it’s either been in Newcastle or overseas where the environment is a little bit different anyway. So to change clubs within the A-League at this point pushes me outside of my comfort zone.
“New goalkeeping coach, new way of looking at myself and my game.”
Not everything changes, though. The eight-year-old best mate whose dare nearly ended catastrophically is still around, and helping to create memories that are far more positive.
“Yeah, he was the best man at my wedding,” Duncan says with a smile.
“So we’re still mates, definitely.
“I think he ended up giving me that $20, too.”
