James Ellis calls time on his senior football career after playing more than 200 games for Henty

The 32-year-old played more than 200 games for the Swampies and earned the respect of not only his team-mates but opponents right across the Hume league.

Ellis was denied the send-off he deserved when COVID cut the 2021 season short but he has no regrets about the timing of his retirement or what he achieved during 15 years in the red and white.

The lion-hearted defender played a key role in their 2014 premiership and helped the Swampies finish last season sixth on the ladder.

"I feel very proud," Ellis said. "As you get older, you start to realise how small a part of your life football is but when you're playing, you feel like it's everything and that it's going to last forever.

"It's a big part of your life but sitting here at 32, hopefully I've got many years in front of me.

"I'm very satisfied. I got to win a flag; yes, I would have loved to win more but I'm grateful to win the one.

"We had very successful juniors, won multiple premierships in both 14s and 17s and I played with some fantastic people.

"When I first started playing senior football, we were successful but then we had a number of years when we really struggled. I went right through that period and I remember a game against Jindera when they beat us, 201 to one. That's always stuck in my mind.

"One of the big things that made 2014 so rewarding was that we had so many locals and adopted locals, blokes who had played for a number of years, and a lot of them went through those times.

"We kept picking up the kids coming into the under-17s, accumulating them and all of a sudden we had these 20-year-olds that had played 50 or 60 matches, taking them into a grand final and it was just the right combination.

"We had a couple of very good coaches and very good players in Jamarl O'Sullivan and Brent Piltz and the group was so tight.

"I believe it was so tight because of those tough times.

"If you'd won flag after flag or even competed in finals, I don't believe the group would have been as tight as it was in that window of time.

"It definitely made the fruit a lot sweeter."

Ellis, who needed a knee reconstruction at 18, underwent further surgeries on his wrist, shoulder and face - after sustaining a broken cheekbone and eye socket - throughout his career.

"My body was probably better going into last season than it had been in the past but it was more those underlying things after four operations from football," he said.

"You can't keep expecting your body to do what you want it to do. It wasn't that every year was getting harder but it was taking more effort to get the same results.

"Last year I lost the competitiveness and drive to train.

"It wasn't so much game day because you always get that 'white line fever' but the desire to want to push at training and lead by example wasn't there any more.

ALSO IN SPORT:

"I've always said I wanted to retire pretty early because I didn't want to take too much out of my body and realistically, that was going to be at 30.

"It got extended by a couple of years because of the year off and Heath Ohlin coaching, but it's the right time now."

To say Henty will miss Ellis is a major understatement.

"He's been one of my role models over the years," new Swampies coach Dan Hore-Smith said.

"That's not just footy but the way he conducts himself off the field.

"He's one of the guys I've always looked up to because the way he carries himself is brilliant.

"I was away for a fair few years but what he's done for Henty, every time I looked in the paper Jimmy was there in the top six and he never missed a game.

"He's so durable and the way he talks to the juniors, I think he was always ahead of his time in that regard.

"He started so young and even his committee side of things has been huge.

"I can't speak highly enough of him and everyone out here would be the same."

Final word goes to the man himself.

"Henty's in a really good place," Ellis said.

"The club's got back to the point where there's 21 mates wanting to play together and that's a big difference even to three or four years ago."

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: