The Contract Ends

My fixed-term contract with Bulleen was due to expire on 14 March 2025.

On 26 February, President Derek Pangbourne wrote to advise that it would conclude as scheduled.

There was no dramatic dismissal meeting.

No surprise letter handed across a table.

The contract reached its end.

But an employment relationship can end neatly on paper while everything around it remains messy.

There were still personal belongings at the club and club property with me.

I asked for a lowline wall unit and a hard copy of my performance review to be couriered to my home, with the club items I held returned in the same vehicle.

The club instead formally demanded return of its property and pointed to the relevant clause in my employment contract. It said I could arrange a courier at my own expense.

DXC told me it had no jurisdiction over that industrial issue.

So I paid for the courier.

It was hardly a major event in the scheme of everything that had happened.

But it represented something.

The last physical links to the workplace were being exchanged without either side needing to be in the same room.

By late March, I told my psychologist that the club property had been delivered. I did not receive my furniture or the document I had requested.

The employment chapter was over.

The WorkCover chapter was not.

That distinction became significant because once the job disappeared, recovery was no longer about returning to a particular employer.

It was about rebuilding enough confidence, capacity and professional identity to find somewhere else to go.

For the first time, I had to consider the possibility that basketball might continue without me.

That was not easy.

When work becomes entangled with identity, unemployment is not simply the absence of income.

It can feel like the absence of self.