The man at the centre of a controversial moment during the 2018 AFL Grand Final has opened up about the surprising way he dealt with death wishes from some social media users in the aftermath of his unfortunate on-field moment.
Alex Woodward, aged 32, played two matches for the Hawthorn Football Club during his professional footy career.
His time in the top flight was hampered by injuries, with the promising Hawks star agonisingly rupturing his anterior cruciate ligament five times between 2012 and 2019.
He was delisted by the Hawks in 2016 and went on to play for Collingwood in the VFL, but the string of knee injuries caught up with him, ultimately culminating in his decision to hang up the boots.
However, he continued to play a role at the Magpies, with the 32-year-old going on to become a water runner. He would notably be embroiled in a highly controversial moment during the third quarter of Collingwood’s 2018 Grand Final defeat by the West Coast.
Nathan Buckley’s side were leading the Eagles by four points with seven minutes left to go before three-quarter time.
Former Hawthorn player Alex Woodward (pictured) has opened up on the ‘crazy’ way he disarmed online trolls following the 2018 AFL Grand Final
While the West Coast pressed forward, Taylor Adams would recover the footy inside the Eagles’ forward 50.
He looked to steady things by chipping out to Jaidyn Stephenson, who got free to collect a mark on the edge of the D. But the Pies utility was blocked off from claiming the mark by Woodward, who had inadvertently ran directly across Stephenson’s line to the footy.
The ball would instead be claimed by West Coast roaming midfielder Elliot Yeo, who gratefully took the mark and prodded his set shot straight between the middle sticks.
It would be a vital score as the West Coast went on to secure a five-point victory thanks to Dom Sheed’s last-gasp kick.
For Woodward, the game is a difficult subject. During an episode of Channel 7’s What Could’ve Been podcast, the former footy player opened up about the barrage of horrendous abuse that he received in the wake of the match.
‘It was probably the onslaught afterwards that I wasn’t really prepared for, and nothing that I’d really been exposed to at that point of my life,’ he told the What Could’ve Been Podcast, speaking on the 2018 Grand Final.
‘Keyboard warriors and these people online, where there’s no real filter, can say what they like and there’s no real consequence.
‘The worst of it was enough to bother me.
Woodward had been sent death wishes online by some trolls after he appeared to clash with Jaidyn Stephenson during the 2018 AFL Grand Final, preventing the Collingwood player from taking a mark
Woodward had been working as a runner for the Pies during the match, but was left distraught after Collingwood suffered a late defeat by the West Coast Eagles
‘It was sort of before a time when it was getting called out as well. If someone says something now, it gets put on X or put on Instagram, and it’s shared everywhere, and it sort of cancels them straight away. I was fighting my own battles for a while.’
While he was not prepared for some of the comments, he revealed how he brilliantly kept his cool to ‘disarm’ the disgraceful trolls.
‘My best action was to own it; I made a mistake, so I’m going to own it, take it in my stride,’ he said.
‘I wouldn’t say it was pleasant knowing there were messages in my DMs and emails and stuff saying I should unalive myself, that type of stuff. Multiple hundreds of people — it was in the hundreds.
‘You might think I’m a bit crazy, but some of them I just replied to. I just replied to them, saying, and this is as simple as it was, but I said: “I’m sorry that you feel that way, I’ll try to be better”, and that was basically the gist of it. Almost like disarming them again.’
In fact, his responses even led to some of the trolls performing a U-turn on their vile messages.
‘A lot of them actually came back with an apology, which is not what I was asking for; I just wanted it to stop.
‘That was my approach — I wouldn’t really recommend it to everyone, because it is a little bit different, but that’s how I handled it.’
Stephenson (left) had began his footy career playing for Hawthorn, but his time in the top-flight was cut short after he succumbed to five ACL injuries
After being delisted by Hawthorn he would go on to join up with Collingwood’s VFL side
Woodward even revealed that he copped abuse from some people he knew.
‘The frustrating part was that some of those messages were from people I knew. Whether I met through work or school, or social stuff. So those ones I wasn’t as kind with the response.’
Seven years later, Woodward is still recognised by many Collingwood fans for the controversial Grand Final moment.
And he admits he still deploys the same tactic to ‘disarm’ fans and open up a conversation with them about the matter.
‘Every now and then, if I’m at a Collingwood game, people might recognise me for the wrong thing,’ he explained.
My personality is I’ll have a chat with them. Rather than say something behind my back, tell me how you feel.
‘I’ll try and have a chat with them and have a conversation around it. (It) disarms them.’
Reflecting on the incident itself, Woodward, who was 26 at the time, owned the mistake, admitting that he needed to be more alert in the moment.
Woodward opened up on the horrific abuse he received following the Grand Final
The former Hawthorn player explained that runners are taught to ‘commit to the direction you’re running in’ in order to get out of the way of the footy.
‘I just put my head down and ran to the other forward pocket. I was just trying to get out of the way but I didn’t know Jaidyn was behind me,’ he explained.
‘I didn’t really know what else I could’ve done in that moment.’
A heartbreaking moment was caught on tape in the changing rooms after the match as a teary-eyed Woodward was seen being embraced by Pies coach Buckley in the changing rooms at the MCG.
‘On the way off I started getting pretty upset about it and I went straight to one of the locker rooms in the MCG where they keep all the food, and I just locked myself in there with one of my mates who came down,’ he explained.
‘Bucks came in, credit to him, he put his arms around me really quickly, and there’s footage of that as well, because that was just before I went into the little cabinet area.
‘I just went straight back in there, and he got around me again and just took all the blame off me.’