IN AN emotional and raw interview, Collingwood premiership midfielder Dayne Beams has detailed the huge strain he was under during the 2017 and '18 seasons.
Philip Beams, Dayne's father, died in February, 2018, after a prolonged battle with cancer.
"The 2017 season was just … it was just sort of like hell for me. It was just like blow after blow after blow. It just wears you down. The doctors are so blunt about it," Beams, 30, said in the latest episode of Last Time I Cried, brought to you by AIA Vitality.
Dayne, who returned to Collingwood at the end of 2018 after four seasons with the Lions, said his father's health deteriorated extremely quickly ahead of that final season in Brisbane.
"2017 was hard because he was diagnosed again in October and they gave him three years. In a follow-up appointment in November, it went to one year, and then he has a follow-up appointment again in December and it went to six months [life expectancy].
"In January he was given three months and then he died on February 28. In the space of four months it went from three years to dead. It was so quick and I'd never seen anything like it."
Beams said he had a very special connection with his father that galvanised when he was young and his parents divorced.
WATCH DAYNE BEAMS IN PART 1 OF LAST TIME I CRIED
An emotional Dayne Beams opens up in a special two-part series of Last Time I Cried, presented by AIA Vitality
Watch Now"He loved everyone. He had so much more living to do. He was only 56. My wife was pregnant with our second kid ... and Carter was only born a couple of months after him dying. I wanted to call him Philip."
To honour his father, Dayne said there was still one thing he wanted to achieve on a football field.
Beams, who stepped away from football indefinitely last December after his first season back at the Magpies due to his mental health battles, is determined to pay tribute to his father by playing for local club Mulwala Football Club.
The 2010 premiership player and former Brisbane skipper said he was intent on playing for the New South Wales Riverina club.
"I wasn't old enough to remember him playing footy, but everyone tells me how good he was. He won seven best and fairests and Mulwala Football Club and the best and fairest is named after Dad.
"I'd love to go and play back at 'Mul' where dad played, purely just to pull on the jumper. I'd love to play where he won seven best and fairests and the medal's named after him, it's something I want to do eventually, but at the moment I'm not thinking about football.
"It will be something I do, though."
