Tommy Talks podcast<\/a>, Rankine revealed the guilt drove him to a \u201cvery, very dark place\u201d and said he wanted to quit footy.<\/p>\n\u201cYou have to go real, real low to be able to look at yourself in the mirror and really self-reflect and make some adjustments and bounce back,\u201d Rankine told Tommy Sheridan.<\/p>\n
You can watch Rankine break his silence on the saga in the player above.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was in a very, very dark, very, very low place, but then again, that belief in me was \u2018you are going to bounce back, you are going to be better, you aren\u2019t a bad person, you can still come out and do the best you can, this isn\u2019t going to define you\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe turning point was being at the bottom and thinking \u2018what else?\u2019. I can either just sit here, wave the white flag and give up.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I wanted to retire, I wanted to finish and I was like \u2018I don\u2019t want to do this no more, I\u2019m done\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou want to give up, you want to retire, you know depression and the thing is that I was already dealing with that stuff through my family and the circumstances which I was given.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it was very tough to be hit again and then sat on my arse a bit. So that was tough, having to deal with family issues, being one of the leaders in my community and being looked on for things and expected to be in places and show your face and just look after everyone in the community.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was tough and then to be put on your arse like that… and you start to question who you are, and you start to question what you\u2019ve been doing and how you\u2019ve been acting and who you\u2019ve been hanging around with and what has been really going on.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rankine said his support network really helped him get through the tough period as he apologised again to everyone who was impacted by his conduct.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am sorry to anyone I affected or caused havoc to, I never meant to do that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAll I can say is that I put my hand up and let\u2019s move forward together because we are on the same side, we are on the same team.\u201d<\/p>\n
Originally published as \u2018Wanted to quit\u2019: Izak Rankine breaks silence on homophobic slur ban<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adelaide star Izak Rankine has revealed he wanted to quit football after being suspended for a homophobic slur…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":499366,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":["post-499365","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-afl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499365","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=499365"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/499365\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/499366"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=499365"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=499365"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=499365"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}