Dani Laidley

By Konrad Marshall ... There's an almost daily discomfort that creeps into the task of journalism, which few practitioners would deny. Even a colour writer ...

“All in all, it’s my story - the highs, lows and in-betweens - and I’m proud to share it. Sometimes I felt it was so therapeutic, and other times it was like I was getting beaten over the head,” she says. Her management company - TLA - has a 15-page itinerary of interest, from media interviews to corporate speaking gigs and talks in correctional facilities, to a formal book launch on Thursday in the Long Room at the MCG. Once, that might have been all too much for Dani - another series of sugar hits before another crash - but she lives in the present now, walking on the beach and making time to breathe. And don’t underplay the emotion and care and empathy,” she adds. I didn’t want to coax and nudge and probe and push any more - I needed to do the opposite. I remember near the end, how “the DLs” (Danielle Laidley and Donna Leckie) found an old suitcase to add to the decorative collection of such suitcases we keep, and how I accidentally interrupted them while they were painting a surprise “thank you” message on the outside, in pink and blue and white, the colours of the trans community. There was her tempestuous mother, “Mad Carmel”, and her father David, the roofer who was injured and drank and ultimately kicked Dani out of home when she was 12. I remember sitting in the offices of her agent in Hawthorn, and being handed a copy of her manuscript - a bound set of loose and chaotic pages featuring dates and places, anecdotes and nicknames. The day we began working in earnest - a sunny November morning last year - we sat in her apartment and she told me about her childhood in the Balga backblocks, and her immediate family, and the tone was oh so dark. “And after that, everything was on the table. We worked on a book together all summer long - Don’t Look Away - a memoir that charts an extraordinary Australian life, growing up poor in Perth, mastering the indigenous game through stoicism and grit, and reaching the zenith of the sport as a player before the all-consuming nature of coaching almost swallowed her whole.