His teammates looked like they'd just witnessed a car crash. He wore Kurt Tippett like a glove in the frantic closing stages and still had 12 intercept possessions for the match. By 2014, his seventh season with the Tigers, he was an All Australian defender.The accolades, though they were many, could only tell part of Rance's story though. Now she can't give him a funeralMick disappeared, aged 18, in 1973 – his family want to stop the 'blanket of grief' happening to othersTruck company manager charged with manslaughter over crash that killed four police officersThe story of hydroxychloroquine tells us everything that's wrong with 2020Analysis: Governments are facing tough questions on how this has gone so terribly wrong. Alex Rance's church has weighed in on his abrupt retirement from football, saying the Richmond premiership defender's decision was personal and not dictated by his religion. Those early seasons were often clunky, the brain not quite in cahoots with the hulking body, and confidence clearly an issue.Naturally, as is the case with most young key position players, time was the greatest healer. What we didn't know was that his AFL career was over too.It's easy to forget Rance's inauspicious start to life in the league, but it took several years for his assortment of gifts to properly align.
Feb 16th, 2020. Those that do — like the sudden-death round 23 match against Sydney in 2014 — are among the very best individual games of the era.On that evening, Rance single-handedly clung to life as the Swans came storming home in the last quarter. He's flirted with premature retirement before, and even though he opted against it on those occasions, the notion alone proved he was only ever operating on his own schedule, doing things his own way with the bigger picture always in mind.Which might explain the resilient smile on the first Thursday night of the season. It probably explains the reflective ease with which he strolled around the MCG this September, Richmond jersey on and cap turned backwards, after his teammates had won a premiership without him.And it definitely explains why everything about this decision feels right. Rance has spoken openly about the challenges of balancing his career with his faith. It was everything great about Alex Rance and confirmed suspicions he was more than a little special.He could have had a Norm Smith Medal too, had the Crows put up more of a fight in the 2017 grand final. The knocks on Rance seem to be that he exaggerated contact to win the odd free kick and he and his backline were exposed by a well-executed plan by Collingwood and Mason Cox in the 2018 prelim.Others simply say he is overrated. Alex Rance was a generational defender who embodied the best of a bygone era and ushered in a new one, but even in his shock retirement, he was always uniquely himself. “The way I play conflicts, but the way I lead conforms,” Rance told The Stack Report in 2018. Feb 16th, 2020 .
Alex Rance heading to Nepal in next career move. He was a total defender, a hybrid of styles and eras, a throwback to days gone by and somehow still ahead of his time.One-on-one, there was nobody better in the game. "Now I feel is the right time for me to put the same time and energy into other areas of my life that need it and to prioritise the more important things to me, such as my spiritual growth, my family and friends.
Former Richmond premiership star Alex Rance has revealed his next move after announcing his retirement late last year.Rance is set to embark on an adventure through the Himalayan mountains in Nepal.