MY MUM Nuala has had more influence on my career than anyother woman.
When I was growing up and training, I would just come homeand drop my bags and all my gear would be clean and ready to go again for thenext day, or even that night.
Even now she calls me before and after games.
Having been through what we’ve been through, with my dadpassing away, she’s showed so much strength. She’s been unbelievable.
It’s not as if you’re waiting for her to break or anything,but you just wonder where she gets her strength from. She’s really held thefamily together.
When you have a tragedy in your family, you see the truecharacter in people and she’s been amazing, along with my sister Joann, who’salso been fantastic.
My sister’s been through quite a bit as well, dealing directlywith a lot of the fallout from our family tragedy.
She’s been out to visit me here last year and had a ball andis doing very well for herself. She works with handicapped children and does anamazing job.
Joann and I are very close. She lives with mum so I ring herconstantly to check how everything is at home and how mum is.
She’s not sporty at all like me and my brother Noel. She’sprobably a bit sick of all the football talk in the house. But she’s alwaysfollowed our careers.
As for my dealings with women, Joann and mum are always keento give their opinion. I’m not sure that they give me any advice but theycertainly give their two cents worth. I give Joann advice about guys too. I justtell her to stay away from them. No bloke’s good enough for my sister.
Myself and my brother are very protective of her. She’s beengoing out with a bloke now for a couple of years and when he first came to thehouse we’d be interrogating him but we’ve eased up on the poor lad now.
As for the AFL Women’s Round game against St Kilda thisweekend, it’s a huge match for both teams. It’s one we really have to win.
Port Adelaideand West Coast did us a favour losing at the weekend, but at the end of the daywe can’t be worrying about what other teams are doing. As long as we keep goingabout our business and keep doing what we’re doing and winning, we can’t reallydo a lot more.
Of course we’ll be coming up against our old assistant coachRoss Lyon again.
Rossy was an integral part of our club for many years and heknows us inside out. He’s trying to implement our game plan with St Kilda andthat’s what’s going to make it such a tight contest because the game plans areso similar.
We know what Rossy likes and doesn’t like and he knows whatwe like and don’t like. It’s almost like the rivalry we have with West Coast.We know what they’re going to throw up and they know what we’re going to throwup. It’s going to be all about who sticks to their game plan.
I know Rossy’s copped a little bit of criticism because ofthe way he is in press conferences, but he’s just straight down the line. Hecalls it as he sees it.
That’s the way he is. You cansee it in press conferences. He doesn’t exaggerate, or talk around the point orwalk around the point, he just calls it straight.
If a player’s playing ordinary he’ll tell you. That’s the way heis. He’s just so honest.
That’s the sort of person you want around a football club.Someone that doesn’t talk rubbish and doesn’t just tell you what you want tohear.
But he’s also a very funny man and he’s really relaxed. He’squite similar to Roosy (Sydneycoach Paul Roos) off the field.
One of the main things I learned from him when he was at theclub was to go and get your own footy. It’s there to be won so go and get it.
‘Football’s a running game’, he used to always say to us. ‘It’sall about running’.
‘There’s a couple of times when you have to put your headover the football, but generally it’s all about running, so get on your bike andget going’, he would say.
Obviously I’ll be coming up against my countryman ColmBegley when we take on the Brisbane Lions in round 20.
The banter between myself and Colm is always great. I reallydo look forward to playing against him. Any chance I get I like to bump intohim or run into him during the game. Then I’ll hopefully get to catch up withhim afterwards.
I remember the first time we played against each other, hegot a touch of the ball and I threw him to the ground with a tackle and saidsomething like; ‘Come on you Laois so-and-so’. But he just laughed.
We know we’ve got a huge month of football ahead of us butwe really can’t get that far ahead of playing St Kilda. We can’t afford tobecause we can’t afford much of a slip up.
There’s a real buzz around the club at the moment. We wentdown to Canberra and did the job (against Melbourne), got the winand were like ‘let’s get out of here and get ready for a big month of football’.
This is the serious end of the season, it’s when the goodteams and players come to the fore. It’s when you find out a lot about a teamand a club, and people’s personalities.
