Jeremy Finlayson fights back tears as Port Adelaide star pays emotional tribute to terminally ill wife after he kicked three goals to help his side beat Sydney Swans
Jeremy Finlayson fought back tears as he paid an emotional tribute to his terminally ill wife after helping Port Adelaide to victory over Sydney.
The AFL star kicked three goals as Ken Hinkley’s side bounced back from their Showdown defeat by rivals Adelaide Crows to win 66064 on Saturday night.
And Finlayson spoke about his wife, Kellie, who is battling Stage 4 cancer, after his side’s win.
‘I hope she’s watching. I love her so much,’ he said on Channel 7.
‘This is just a reward of sticking tough and doing it for Kell and Soph back home. I’m happy to be out here playing footy and doing what I love.’
Jeremy Finlayson fought back tears as he paid tribute to his terminally ill wife
Kellie Finlayson is in Stage 4 of bowel cancer (pictured with the couple’s daughter, Sophie)
The couple got married last month and Finlayson told Channel 7 he ‘loves her so much’
Kellie, 27, discovered she had a tumour in her bowel in November 2021 after suffering painful symptoms that were first thought to be side-effects of her pregnancy with baby daughter Sophia.
After Sophia was born, a colonoscopy discovered a tumour the size of a tennis ball. But after a year of intense treatment, she hoped the cancer had gone – only to have a CT scan show it had metastasised and spread to her lungs.
Now on the Gold Coast receiving treatment, Finlayson revealed that while the disease ‘100 per cent robbed’ her of her first year of motherhood with Sophia, that wasn’t the biggest struggle she has to overcome.
‘I’ve gone into early menopause. Whether I can come back from that, I don’t know,’ she told the Life Uncut podcast this week.
‘That was honestly my biggest struggle, knowing that I may not give Sophia any siblings, which is so hard. We had always planned to have a big family.
‘It’s just something that I always wanted. It was the hardest pill to swallow out of all the pills I’ve swallowed in the last 18 months.
‘We’ve kind of come to terms with it knowing how many options we do have.’
Finlayson explained that adoption is no longer a possibility due to her terminal diagnosis, which means ‘no one is going to give me a child’.
The couple explored the possibility of adoption but cannot do so as she is terminally ill
The couple got married in early March of this year, after their nuptials were postponed last October due to her cancer diagnosis.
‘I wanted to get married with my hair and I have started losing hair,’ Kellie told the Adelaide Advertiser.
She wanted their wedding to be a quiet, private affair and ‘a surprise for everyone but our bridal party, and family and friends attending’.
The event took just three weeks to plan, with help from the diligent bridal party and Kellie’s modelling agency, The Models
More to follow.