Times like these, you can’t help but get in a bit of a reflective mood.

If you count this paused, weird old season we find ourselves in, I’m into my sixth year as a Hawk and my 14^th as an AFL player.

Wow!

I think it’s fair to say playing for the Hawks has been the highlight of my career.

But becoming a Hawk was also the hardest decision I have ever and probably will ever make in my life.

Free agency was early on in its life when I was tossing up my move and I think, because of this, the media hype about free agency was pretty high.

I found it difficult to manage  the media scrutiny that seemed to surround me at the time.

Every second day, there seemed to be an article on the back page of the Herald Sun talking about where I was going and what I was going to do.

I’d be walking down the street and have people walk up to me and begging me to stay - things like that definitely increased the pressure.

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Probably the greatest motivating factor in my decision to leave Melbourne was the need for stability in my career.

In my eight years as a Dee, I’d had eight different coaches - including interim coaches.

I reckon you’d be hard-pressed to find many footballers that would thrive under that kind of revolving door of coaches.

In contrast, since I’ve been a Hawk, almost the same amount of time now as I was at the Dees, I’ve had just the one coach.

That continuity as made a big difference for me in a number of ways. There’s been pretty minimal change across my time apart from the odd assistant coach departing to continue their careers elsewhere, but that is bound to happen when you’re a successful club with good leaders and mentors.

Clarko is great.

He is a great country lad who grew up not too far from where I grew up. He gets along well with my old man.

He loves chatting about the farm and reckons he has a farm himself (he bought an acre down near Cape Schanck and calls it ‘The Farm’ – it’s a fair way off a farm for mine though, more of a patch of grass!).

But, he is a fantastic coach. He’s had many things already said about him but I think he truly is one of the all-time greats, a great motivator and a great people person, so I consider myself very lucky.

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What panned out in the 12 months following my move to Hawthorn was pretty much a fairytale. I’m not sure how else you could put it.

I dodged a fair bullet in my first few weeks as a Hawk – I dislocated my shoulder in Round 2 and there was a thought I had to get a full reconstruction and miss the rest of the year.

But, the docs and physios agreed to just give me a month off and retry it after that.

Luckily, it stayed in there!

From there, everything went from great to even better.

The first qualifying final against the Eagles in Perth was the first final of my career - 154 games in!

I was probably the most nervous I’ve ever been for that game – I felt like I didn’t really know what to expect given that everyone is always talking about finals and how they’re such a different beast.

As it panned out, you definitely could sense a difference in the pressure of the game, but once the ball was bounced - it sounds cliché - but it became just another game of footy.

We lost that game in the end by about five goals. Luckily we were able to bounce back pretty strongly in the next few games and get the Eagles back when it mattered most!

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It’s almost impossible to have an ‘easy’ day in the backline these days, given the calibre of the competition’s current forwards.

Every forward you line up on now seems to have different tricks and different ways they can expose you on any given day.

Josh Kennedy, for instance, he’s an absolute star of a player. He works extremely hard but he’s also very smart with his leading patterns. His hands are bloody strong and, when he gets his shots on goal with his little stutter steps, he usually knocks them over.

But I think, as a defender, playing on the best often gets the best out of you. I think that’s the exciting thing about being a backman – every game presents a new challenge.

I’ve played back pretty much all of my career except for my last with the Dees. That was a fun experiment! We had a few injuries at the Dees at that time, so Paul Roos came up to me one day and asked if I wanted to have a go switching ends.

I’d played forward as a junior, so I thought ‘why not?!’.

The first few games, I was running around a bit like a headless chook – I wasn’t overly used to someone following me around!

I kicked 15 goals and 16 behinds that year, so it wasn’t great goal kicking, but I’m generally alright so, if you’re reading Clarko, feel free to give me a run up there at some point!

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Over the last couple of years, I’ve grown to truly love the Hawthorn Football Club. You’re surrounded by such great people and it really is an environment I look forward to coming into work with every day.

There is a real excitement internally around the list we have been able to build. I’m glad that, before the pandemic made the competition spring to a hault, we were able to showcase our potential with a strong win over the Lions in Round 1.

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As for the current reality, I feel like the boys have still been attacking their training pretty hard. It’s difficult not knowing when we will be back and not necessarily having an end date to work towards. But, it’s kind of refreshing working and keeping fit in different surrounds. I’m running around with Liam Shiels at the moment who is one of the fitter blokes at the club; I have my work cut out just trying to keep up with him!

***

I guess, the blessing in disguise with this whole situation has been me being able to be at home much more to see my son Sonny grow up.

I think a few of the boys are getting a bit bored at home, but having a seven-month-old around the place, there is always something to do!

He’s at a great age now where he is starting to engage and show some personality.

In the first month or two of being a dad, I didn’t have much of an idea what I was doing. I finally feel like I’m starting to figure it out, and I’m just loving being around him at the moment.

To the Hawthorn faithful, I know we’re all doing it a bit tough at the moment but I really admire the way our club and its fans have banded together in such a testing time. On behalf of the playing group, I’d just love to say thank you, your support means the world, and I assure you this will all be worth it and hopefully we will be running around the ‘G again in no time.