IN 1982 I played every game of the season for Richmond until I dislocated my shoulder in the second semifinal and missed the grand final.

The word harrowing best describes the emotion when you are forced to sit on the sidelines while your teammates spill their blood for victory in a final.

It is nothing short of torment.

I have arthritis in that shoulder now, but the pain of missing that grand final runs deeper and still sits in my chest, alongside other grand final losses and life regrets.

It’s never fun to re-open old wounds, but right now I feel for a young man who has just had his season snatched from him. A season in which his club is headed for finals and perhaps a campaign deep into September.

At 31, Lynden Dunn has played 196 games. He hasn’t played a final at either of the two AFL clubs he’s belonged to and after rupturing his ACL last weekend he won’t play again this year.

Today he can only think of the immediate, about the rotten luck of an injury and the surgery and physio required to heal it. But as the weeks roll on and Collingwood makes a beeline for a top-two finish, the realisation that he’ll be a passenger on that journey will hit him like a truck.

He has perhaps sat in the stands before in September and imagined what it’s like to play a final. Imagined the adrenaline rush of running on to the ground and hearing the cacophony of a big crowd.

Imagined the increase in intensity in the one-on-one contests. And imagined singing the club song, victorious.

Now he’ll be part of the crowd. Part of the support crew on the outer circle of the team huddle. No matter how much the team tells him he helped get them this far, he’ll know he wasn’t one of the players toiling for a win on that day.

It’s the mental anguish that tears you apart. Most players can put up with the physical pain, but the isolation of injury, especially at the pointy end of the season, darkens your mind.

Bob Murphy admits that as great a day as it was when the Bulldogs won the 2016 premiership, his absence from the field will ache in his heart forever.

He played on the next year, but as the Dogs’ season deteriorated, the captain’s enthusiasm waned, as he was further denied the chance to win his own medal.

It’s a harsh reality for players and coaches. Best-laid plans come unstuck in sport with untimely injuries, a drop in form, or plain bad luck.

I feel for the players who put so much in, to have it all taken away in a single moment through injury.

Coaches plan during pre-season around what the year may look like. As the weeks progress you reprogram, working to the strengths of your team against the strengths of your opponents. As soon as you get a sniff of finals you start to cement positions in your mind.

When Plan A goes awry through injury, it’s disruptive to move to Plan B let alone Plan C, but that’s sport.

There are 39 players in the league listed as “season over”. Seventeen of them are from clubs in the top eight and eyeing off finals. That’s a lot of disruption and heartache.

Reece Conca has played three finals in his 100 games for Richmond, but he missed the most important one — the winning grand final.

When he dislocated his ankle last weekend and lay in agony on the ground, I bet the pain of the injury wasn’t the only pain he felt.

His teammates felt it too, as they gathered around him on the stretcher — “not again”. It’s traumatic. It’s not fair.

He might come back, and I hope he does, but there’s a lot of work to be done between now and then.

Callum Mills, at only 21, is the fabric of Sydney. The Swans are fighting for a top-four finish, but felled with a foot injury he can only think, “what could have been”.

Hamish Hartlett, who would be a permanent part of a Port Adelaide team that is gaining momentum, is left to ponder what might be after suffering a season-ending knee injury.

Adam Treloar, in his third season with the Magpies, needs time to recover from a serious hamstring injury.

There are seven weeks after today until finals. Time isn’t his friend.

Perhaps for someone such as Esava Ratugolea it won’t necessarily feel like a tragedy to miss Geelong’s run at September because this is only his first season in the AFL.

It will sting but he’ll expect to have that chance again. And maybe with the Cats he will. But it’s hard to make finals, even harder to win them.

That’s why the likes of Tom Scully and Toby Greene would be getting anxious about a return from injury.

Greater Western Sydney has fought its way out of a slump to jump back into the top eight. After the disappointment of the past two seasons, eliminated in preliminary finals, the maturity of the group should match the drive, which makes anything possible.

Scully and Greene would be desperate to be part of it. They’ll move heaven and earth to be in the team to be part of a grand final berth. Any footballer would.

Life is full of opportunities and it’s what you make of them that counts.

Sometimes though, those opportunities are forcibly removed from your grasp and you can’t do anything except create a new path to walk on.

Lynden Dunn might be feeling all sorts of pain right now, and it won’t disappear in a hurry, but from this he’ll also gain strength and resilience.

And it’s these character traits that make the best footballers in September.