Josh Growden was devastated when after three years in Sydney, he was told the GIANTS no longer needed him. When he thought about what that time had given him, he knew there was more good than bad: the chance to move away from home and learn how to look after himself, a whole new group of friends, and time on an AFL list, living as a professional athlete.

But the bad things were really bad. A horribly broken leg that took almost a full year to overcome. Two lots of hip surgery. So many weeks and months in rehab that he started to forget why he loved the game. Growden was one of the very first players the GIANTS signed up, and was there from the start. But his injuries meant he never got to do the one thing he was there to do – play a game for the AFL team – or find out how good he could be.

“It was rough. All that time in rehab. We had new guys coming in and getting playing time and I was thinking ‘man, I’ve been here all this time and these guys are going ahead of me.’ When you’re injured you feel like you’re falling behind and you can’t catch up,” Growden said.

“It was tough but that’s how it was and that’s just how it went for me. It was a pretty easy choice for them to cut me, I would say. I was devastated to leave my teammates behind and come to the realisation that it was probably the end of my football career was also really hard. It was a tough thing to come to terms with because I was still so young. But when I think about what’s happened since, it was kind of meant to be. If I hadn’t been injured, I wouldn’t have done what I’ve done.”

Let’s start there. Growden loved American football as a teenager, and the idea of going to college in the US had always appealed to him. When he was delisted he thought about going home to Adelaide to play in the SANFL and try again; he was still only 20, after all. But the injuries had left him feeling drained and deflated. He was ready for something new. So, he moved to Melbourne, joined the ProKick Australia punting program and after just nine months had a scholarship offer.

Growden spent four years at Louisiana State University, studying human movement and punting for the football team. He spent another year in West Virginia, where he started his Masters, before coming back home. A trip back to the US and Canada last month – to trial at the Canadian combine and try to win a spot on a team there – was cut short after it was called off because of the coronavirus outbreak and Growden started feeling anxious to get home.

“I was there a week,” he said, “and things just started to feel really sketchy. I pretty much got there and came straight back home. So that’s all up in the air now. I was keen to have a crack and it would have been pretty good to play over there and live in Canada for a while, but I’ll have to wait and see. If there’s no more football, I’m OK with that. I’m ready to move on with something new now.”

The college experience was an incredible one. Massive crowds at every game. A huge number of teammates to get to know and spend time with. A chance to travel around the country and stay with friends all over the place. A great education that Growden will now look to continue at UTS in Sydney. It’s what he thinks he would have missed out on had his AFL career dragged on for another year, two or three. “I had the time of my life,” he said. “It got me excited to play sport again and I honestly had the best time. I’m so glad I did it.”

His role as a punter was completely different to anything he had done playing AFL as a kid. “It’s very mental,” he said. “It’s almost all mental. You never know how many kicks you’re going to get and it all happens so quickly when you do. You can’t get them back when you make a mistake. The offence gets three opportunities to get a first down and if a receiver makes the wrong step people might not notice, but everyone notices a punt that doesn’t go very far, or something like that. There’s no chance to make up for anything. You kick, and then you’re done.

“What I found is that I dramatic improvement in my first year training for it, and once you get to America you have to get used to people running at you, which is hard to emulate over here. And the whole atmosphere takes some getting used to as well. I found I got to a point in my first year or two where I was getting better and improving all the time. And from there it was just a matter of trying to be consistent and do what I could. I was just trying to get through in my last year, to be honest.”

The thought of training to play AFL now feels like a distant one. “My body’s a lot bigger than it would have been if I kept playing footy, knowing the amount of running the guys are doing these days,” Growden said. “I feel like I’ve been doing crossfit for five years with the workouts we did in college. We did a lot of Olympic lifting and the furthest we’d ever run was 100 yards. You might do 16 of those with a minute break in between and that was it.

“The good thing was I got to avoid putting load through my broken leg, let that heal and get some confidence back in that. I haven’t been hit, haven’t had any injuries so I feel really good. My body definitely needed the break and I was lucky I found a sport that just suited me.”

It's six and a bit years since Growden was delisted, at the end of the GIANTS’ second AFL season. As badly as it ended, he has fond memories of the start: being chosen as one of the 12 17-year-olds that the club wanted to sign, along with Jeremy Cameron, Dylan Shiel, Adam Treloar and others. Moving up just a few months later, after school finished, to start training for the club’s 2011 NEAFL season. Being coached by Kevin Sheedy. Living at Breakfast Point with all his new teammates, with Mel and Craig Lambert there to look after them. Growden was there for a lot of the firsts: the new jumper, the new theme song, the first ever AFL game. It was fun to feel part of all that.

“I can remember guys like Chad Cornes and Luke Power coming, and thinking ‘wow, how good is this?” he said. “I didn’t get to go through the draft like most kids my age, but to get there a year early and get that head start was pretty sweet, just a good opportunity. We had some tough times with where we had to train and things like that, but it was fun. It was like being on a team with 30 of your best mates.

“I really had no idea what to expect. All of us were just going with the flow and we had a good time and we had this feeling that the good times were to come. And to be part of a whole new club coming together was pretty good too. In that year before we played in the AFL, exciting things were happening all the time and they’re the good memories to look back on.”

Growden injured his leg late in 2011, and the hip operations early and late in 2013 meant   he never really got going. He had never felt all that encouraged by how he was going before then, though. He felt a little inhibited by some of the highly-rated kids drafted with or just after him and looking back, thinks he lacked the confidence to really push himself forward. 

“I didn’t think I was the greatest player, but I did lack a bit of belief coming into a group like that,” he said.

“I’d played state footy against some of those guys and I knew they were really good. So, I was trying to work out whether I belonged, and in 2012 I couldn’t really develop at all which made it tough. It sucked because a lot of guys were getting a game. 'Sheeds' was really keen to give everyone a go, at least for a game or two. He was good like that, making everyone feel part of it, and I missed out on that, but oh well. The whole experience was still worth it.

“When I went to America people kept asking me whether I missed home. And I said to be honest, not really, I’ve been away since I was 17. Footy didn’t work out but with everything I went through, it allowed me to grow up and get some independence and work out what I was meant to do.

“It didn’t work out the way I’d dreamed about when I was a kid, and I did lose that passion, but I loved my time at the club. They looked after me, I loved the people I met, and it set me up for life. It led me to punting and to where I am today. I don’t think I would have gone down this path if not for footy. It’s worked out how it was meant to and I’m grateful for that.”