Respected St Kilda veteran Bradley Hill has revealed that he wanted to leave the club during a dire period when he lost all passion for football. In fact, things became so grim for the First Nations star that he was turning up to games even though he did not want to set foot on the field.
Speaking to gun interviewer Hamish McLachlan on Unfiltered, Hill gave a rare insight into how his career was spiralling to a premature end, but then saved by Ross Lyon.
“I’d sit in my car. I’d get emotional before the game. I didn’t even want to go out there,” Hill revealed to Seven.
“Probably in 2021 and 22, sort of struggled a little bit with a little bit of noise. Obviously, I came over here (to St Kilda from Fremantle) with a big contract, wasn’t performing at a high enough level, putting probably too much pressure on myself,” Hill told Unfiltered.
Hill is a three-time premiership player at Hawthorn. He moved to Fremantle for the 2017 season, played with the Dockers for three years, then headed back to Victoria to join the Saints for the start of 2020. Hill has always played the game with a smile on his face, but mounting pressure soon got to him. He said he had never really put pressure on himself and just liked playing with energy and fun.
“I didn’t even know what anxiety or stress or anything (like that) was,” he said. “I didn’t even think it was real ...”
Then, in 2022, things became hard. Brett Ratten was coaching, Simon Lethlean was appointed, controversially, as CEO, and Ratten would later be sacked at the end of the season.
“(There was) a lot of stuff going on, wasn’t enjoying footy, like didn’t want to rock up to training some days, like I just found it real hard,” he said.
“To be honest, I wanted to get out of the place (St Kilda). I wasn’t enjoying footy, I didn’t really like footy, and I wanted to get out of St Kilda at that stage.”
He revealed that he caught up with his former coach Alastair Clarkson a few times during this period, who knew he was struggling. And he also chatted with Lyon, who at that time was working in the media.
“I still had that good connection with Ross ... (I told him) I want to get out of there, he was sort of like, ‘Well, this is what you’ve got to do.’ He could tell, I sort of opened up to him about everything,” Hill said.
Hill said there had been some “noise” at the time that Lyon might be returning to St Kilda to again coach the club.
“So, when I knew Ross was getting the job, it was like I’m fine here. I’ve got Ross, I’ll feel like I’m going to be safe. He knows how I felt (and I knew he would) make it a good environment again. I’m so glad that happened. He was able to come in and, yeah, I got the love for the game again.”
McLachlan asked: “Did you lose all motivation to play footy?”
Hill replied: “Yeah, I haven’t really talked about this too much to people ... but like I used to go into games like I don’t want to play. I’d sit in my car. I’d get emotional before the game. I didn’t even want to go out there ... how can you perform if you don’t want to play? Even now I’m getting emotional by talking about it. I found that probably the toughest time. Like even one time I rang (former teammate) Isaac Smith, telling him I didn’t want to come into training ... I kept it to myself, I didn’t really even talk to people close to me about it ... so yeah, that’s probably the hardest part of my footy journey.”
Hill also spoke about another emotional time in his life when his daughter, Harriet, became seriously ill and was placed in an induced coma. Harriet was just a one-year-old in 2023 when she woke with a croup-like cough and was taken to hospital.
“I can’t imagine as a father, there’s many more terrifying experiences,” McLachlan said, himself a father who went through a difficult time when his daughter, Milla, was diagnosed with West Syndrome when she was just eight months old.
“It’s crazy how it happened,” Hill said about his daughter. “So Sam (his wife) put her down for a morning nap. And then she woke up at 10 o’clock in the morning, and had that croup, that barky sound, and then it got real bad really quick.”
Sam called the club and Hill was told the news. “I go home, ambulance was there, and they took her straight away to the hospital,” he said. “I go to the hospital, they settled her down a little bit, got a bit of breathing stuff on her, and I ended up coming back to training.”
Hill had been at training for about 10 minutes when he got another call, this time from a nurse. “Sam couldn’t talk because she’s like crying and (the nurse) explained to me they’ve going to have to put Harriet in an induced coma because the steroids aren’t working ... So I go straight back (to the hospital) and it was like the worst feeling ... Sam was sitting somewhere else (and) I had to walk past where all the doctors were, and the rooms, I had to get to where Sam was, and I (saw) Harriet like in the chair with all the tubes and stuff.
“I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is like the worst thing,’ your child put in a coma and put to sleep and all these tubes and everything hanging off her ... She was in it for like four days ... it was the worst four days ever. I always think, like, why does it happen to young kids, you know? Like, it’s the saddest thing.”
