From a young age, Collingwood ruckman Darren Jolly learnt how to deal with the bigger bodies on a football field. Growing up in Lexton in Victoria’s west, Jolly kicked off his junior football career as an eight-year-old mixing it with the under-16s. "We would get flogged every week, but in the younger days it was just about running around and having fun with my mates. Back then, and actually it’s still like this, but they only had under-16s, reserves and seniors because obviously it's the kind of league that doesn't have enough kids around Lexton to fill a team."

As was the tradition in Lexton, Jolly’s parents would drive him to football while his two older sisters played netball. "We would get up and every single Saturday we would go down to wherever footy was. We would hop in the car, my sisters would play netball and I would play footy and once I got a little bit older, I think I might have been 15 or 16 when I would play under-16s and seniors in the one day."

Toughing it out with men at age 15 wasn’t easy, but it fuelled Jolly’s passion for footy and earned him an invitation to play with the North Ballarat Rebels. "Each week I would be getting beltings around the ears and punch-ups and the blokes would go in hard and that gave me a taste of what to expect, and I enjoyed it. I was coping OK against men, and I supposed that toughened me up a little bit."

Jolly missed out on being drafted from the Rebels and instead joined North Ballarat in the VFL. After a couple of years, Jolly was presented with another opportunity to play AFL, a chance he nearly let slip. "I was asked by Melbourne to come down for a six-week try-out for the rookies. I think I was in my third-year apprenticeship as a kitchen-maker, and I said 'no' at the time because I knew of other guys who had given up their jobs and went and tried out and didn't make it, and then they didn't really have a job to come back to. About a week out from the rookie draft, they rang me again and asked if I wanted to come for an interview. I asked to get the day off from the boss, and they pretty much told me then that they would love to pick me."

After playing second-fiddle to Jeff White at Melbourne, Jolly made the move to Sydney with his girlfriend at the time, Deanne. "We weren't married at the time and obviously didn't have kids. In the five years that we were in Sydney, we got married and had two children, and played in two grand finals and won one of them. Scarlett was born the day before the 2006 grand final so it was a huge year; I don't really remember much of that grand final."

At the end of last year, Jolly and Deanne made the decision to move back to Melbourne, and the ruckman was lucky enough to be traded to Collingwood. "When we moved to Sydney we had no children and we were travelling 10 times a year. Once Lily came along, it really got hard on my life to be able to cope with the two of them and on my wife when I was away with really zero family support in Sydney. My mum and dad could probably only come up two times a year, and Deanne's parents only one or two times a year so it was really hard."

Jolly has now been happily married for four years and has two little girls Lily, 18 months and Scarlett, 4, who keep him busy when he’s not playing footy. "I love to come home and play with my little girls. Obviously my oldest isn't really into footy yet and she understands that I play footy. It's great to come home and walk in the door and get a big cuddle and kiss from them and sort of forget about the footy and just remember the sweetest things in life away from footy. I like taking them to the park or doing things with them that they have never experienced before and watching them doing it. Whether it's teaching them to ride a bike or taking them to the aquarium or the zoo or even just simply wrestling with them on the bed."

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The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.