But it is his off-field life that has served to intrigue. Liptak was a medical student early in his AFL career and a qualified doctor towards the end.
Several doctors have played League football, including Melbourne's 1946 Brownlow medallist Don Cordner and Hawthorn's Nick Wilton in the early 1980s. But Liptak managed to combine a medical life with football in a national competition.
"Time management was the key," he said. "I enjoyed the challenge of combining something mental with something physical."
Liptak finished high school at 16 and studied three years of medicine at Adelaide's Flinders University. He was playing for Glenelg in the SANFL during that period.
When he made the Crows' inaugural squad in 1991, he deferred his studies. After starting as an uncontracted player, he made his debut in round nine, in a two-point loss to North Melbourne.
He deferred his studies again in 1992 and 1993, as he sought to establish his football career. After three years away from the books, he felt compelled to return to medicine.
"I realised there's life after footy," he said. "I thought I might not be able to go back to medicine if I left it any longer, so I jumped back in."
Liptak combined his medical and football careers so well that he won the club's top individual award in 1996.
The irony is that after spending his young adult life learning how to mend others, his own body fell apart. A catalogue of soft-tissue injuries cost him a place in the 1997 and 1998 premiership teams.
In 1999, his body truly rebelled, with injuries to his Achilles, hamstrings and calves. He retired from the AFL after playing in the round 22 match in 1999, a 76-point thrashing at the hands of North Melbourne.
The next season he played one game for Glenelg before badly tearing a hamstring. At 29, he retired for good to concentrate on his medical career.
Despite missing out on two premiership teams and having his final few seasons marred by injuries, Liptak said he ended his football career a happy man.
"I wouldn't change anything," he said. "I look back on it. I would have been happy to play one game."
Liptak, 41, still catches up with his former teammates. He attends matches irregularly, but is on the board of the club's charity group, the Crows Foundation.
Mostly, he is busy with his family—he and wife Jo have four girls, Ella, Ruby, Kate and Milla—and his life as a medico. Just as he once balanced footy with medicine, he now juggles work and family.
Having started his medical studies in 1987, he became a qualified consultant as an orthopedic surgeon in 2007—a journey of two decades.
Surgeons rely in part on steady hands. The obvious question is whether Liptak was worried during his footy career about damaging his hands.
"I didn't think about it," he said. "I had a passion for footy. It overrode anything I was doing in medicine."
This story first appeared in the AFL Record
