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The father of Elijah Hollands has posted a heartfelt message in support of his struggling son, saying he will \u201clift him up until he is restored in full\u201d.<\/p>\n
Hollands, who turns 24 on Saturday, has been admitted to a Melbourne hospital<\/a> following a \u201cmental health\u201d episode during Thursday night\u2019s clash between Carlton and Collingwood at the MCG.<\/p>\n His father, Ben, released a note on Instagram this morning alongside a portrait picture of his son in Carlton football gear handballing a football.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is my beautiful boy,\u201d the message says.<\/p>\n \u201cFor anyone in the midst of healing \u2026 You are loved. You have a unique and defined purpose. You are seen whole.<\/p>\n \u201cI know who my son is \u2014 and I will lift him up until he is restored in full.<\/p>\n \u201cFor those supporting someone who is struggling: encourage them, affirm them, and love them.<\/p>\n \u201cGo to them, remind them of who they truly are \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n Related Article Ben Hollands played eight games for Richmond in 1999. He was initially recruited by Sydney from North Albury.<\/p>\n His sons, Elijah and Ollie, were reunited at Carlton at the start of 2024.<\/p>\n Elijah crossed from the Gold Coast after being taken by the Suns at pick 14 in the 2020 draft. Ollie was taken by Carlton at pick four in the 2023 national draft.<\/p>\n Both boys grew up playing football in the Albury-Wodonga region.<\/p>\n Carlton are facing intense scrutiny over the way<\/a> they handled the young midfielder\u2019s welfare.<\/p>\n Melbourne premiership captain Max Gawn said on Tuesday the Demons would use the Hollands\u2019 case to check how they would handle such a situation.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s been a tough week in football with the Hollands family and the Dawson family,\u201d Gawn said on Triple M.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n The brother of Adelaide captain Jordan Dawson died last week in South Australia. Jaryd Dawson was reported missing by his wife, Jessica, on Tuesday. A day later police confirmed his body had been found and identified.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s an interesting one. When things like this happen in football, we will use this as a test case,\u201d Gawn said.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ll go into the leaders this week and put this on us, [and ask] what would we do in this situation? Once the game started going, hindsight is a wonderful thing, and we all saw what we saw on vision.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019d love to do a test case on myself and see how I\u2019d react in that [situation] but, in hindsight, he should have come off the ground at some point.\u201d<\/p>\n Gawn said he would have \u201cmultiple\u201d face-to-face chats with teammates before taking to the field.<\/p>\n \u201cBut again, we\u2019re presuming that Elijah was acting differently. We\u2019ve been given a lot of vision [since the match] and it\u2019s helped us come to our own determination of what should have happened with Elijah, but you have to remember how hard that actually is to call live,\u201d Gawn said.<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/48fa4f599e94558467ac83b524ef7aa559bc5698.jpeg\")
A photo posted on Instagram by Ben Hollands (centre) with his sons Ollie (left) and Elijah (right).Instagram<\/p>\n![\"Elijah](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776735252_402_8da24a6e70ab8f812b86274685174d354cd2195f.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Jon](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1773472229_978_b41a40c453ab3b0ce85a012a2f2e71470a51efea.png\")
Jon Pierik<\/a> is a sports journalist at The Age. He covers AFL and has won awards for his cricket and basketball writing.Connect via X<\/a> or email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"April 21, 2026 \u2014 10:33am Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":620363,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,63,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-620409","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620409","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=620409"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/620409\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/620363"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=620409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=620409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=620409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}