Alex Quigley: The Strength of the Spur
- Nov 10, 2016
- 4 min read
For 20-year old VU Western Spurs forward Alex Quigley, footy has been a second home, a shelter and a school. Over the six years that she has been living with depression and anxiety, her teammates have supported her. Footy has done a lot for Quigley. Now, she has turned to the game she loves to help others living with mental health issues.
“Footy is kind of seen as a sport where no one talks about their feelings. I feel like someone needs to get in there and promote mental health.”
On October 15, the national youth mental health foundation Headspace held a charity footy match that featured two sides comprised of male and female VFL players and Headspace volunteers. Quigley was a tireless fundraiser for the match, raising hundreds of dollars in the weeks leading up to support the cause.
“[Headspace staff member] Maddy Haydar was organising the event and she knows it’s something I’m really involved with,” says Quigley. “I jumped at the opportunity to do that because it’s a really good organisation.”
Headspace have also offered Quigley a role in the inaugural girls’ team for the Collingwood Knights, a club for disadvantaged youths playing in the Reclink Football League run by Victoria Police, Youth Support and Advocacy Service, Cohealth & City of Yarra that Headspace is also involved in.
“It’s something I really want to get involved with more in the future. I’ve been talking with them about doing some more volunteer work there. It’s something I hold pretty close to my heart; I’ve been affected by suicide and the depression and anxiety I’ve gone through myself.”
From the beginning of her career at the Sunbury Lions’ Youth Girls, Quigley was touted for big things but her progress has been threatened by her battles off-field.
“I’ve struggled with it for about six years. It became worse at the end of my Youth Girls career because there was a lot of pressure on me. I was being told I could be the next big thing and I wasn’t telling anyone about the problems I was having.
“I couldn’t cope with anything and I went through a really, really tough time. I didn’t think I would go back and play footy anymore and at one stage I didn’t even know if I wanted to be here or not.”
Quigley was reluctant to open up about what she was going through, given that to her friends she was such outwardly a “strong, confident, happy” person. It wasn’t just the thought of her close friends and family being confronted by what she was enduring; the AFL Victoria Women’s Academy was extending invitations to players with the potential to make the inaugural AFL Women’s competition.
“What would the coaches think? Would they not want to pick me if they knew I was struggling with things like that?”
Reassurance arrived in September last year in the form of Sydney superstar Lance Franklin’s announcement that he would miss his side’s finals campaign as he struggled to deal with a chronic mental health condition.
The impact of Franklin’s publicised mental health issues on the Australian public was two-fold: not only did the realisation hit home that even a swaggering, seemingly bullet-proof Superman like Franklin could be affected by mental illness but the Swan’s readiness to honestly speak about what he was going through removed much of the uneasy stigma often associated with depression and anxiety. Quigley watched on and saw a precedent that she could follow.
“Obviously, he went through his struggles and he’s as big as you can be. When you see him and his mental struggles that he went through, and at the same time I was going through similar things, that really helped me.
“The best thing I’ve ever done was get help. I told people, told my mum and dad, told my friends.”
Ultimately, Quigley could always rely on her home away from home at the Spurs with her teammates and coach Debbie Lee.
“I’ve never had a coach that I could actually tell these things to,” says Quigley of Lee, the women’s football legend and Melbourne Female Football Operations Manager. “When no one else knew, she knew all these things and was helping me.
“At the Spurs, to see all your mates just brings you back up and you go home feeling great.
“Now that I’ve come out the other end stronger, I want to advocate and be a spokesperson for anyone that’s struggling as well.”
Just as Alex Quigley the person is older than her years, Alex Quigley the footballer has shouldered far more than the average 20-year old. In her formative years as a senior player at the Spurs, she was never mollycoddled on field or off as her bottom-placed side endured week after week of torrid defeats. Quigley had to grow up fast to survive what was a testing time: in the Spurs’ darkest days, financial woes threatened to bring the curtain down on the club entirely.
The inaugural VFL Women’s season in 2016 marked the beginning of a reversal in the Spurs’ fortunes. The competition expanded to bring in four new sides from the Division below and victories soon followed, but more important was the increased cohesion, structure and purpose the Spurs were showing against the opponents that had held them down for so long. Every sign of potential was underlined when they defeated Diamond Creek – who had played in the previous four Grand Finals and held the respect of their peers as one of the teams driving women’s football – by 35 points in Round 14. Quigley was best afield with five goals: the youngster who had found as much strength in her side as they had found in her had led the way.
“I’m really happy with where I’m at today. Better than ever.”
And whether she’s talking about her football or her own mental wellbeing, she’s right.
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