WINNING the AFL Rising Star Award was a massive honour and something I’m proud of. It was a great day down in Melbourne on Wednesday and I enjoyed it very much but it was great to fly back to Sydney that night and get back in to the Club on Thursday.

As expected, I copped a bit of flak from the boys about certain things I said in my acceptance speech and press conference.

In the emotion of the day and the excitement of the whole week I may have got a bit ahead of myself and said a few things that came out not exactly as I planned!
 
I can talk a bit, as a few of my team-mates have pointed out. Mum said it best a few weeks ago - because I’m from such a big family, you have to be heard. When you’re with them, there are a lot of loud people in that family, and that’s where I learnt to be a good talker, trying to make myself heard in that environment.

Being down in Melbourne, there is a lot of media attention there, so coming back up here was good, you get away from that and you get back into training.

Being around the boys and having meetings and heading towards the weekend, your mind is over that, it’s done and dusted and while it’s a great achievement for me, the focus is on Sunday.

I’ll speak to Goodesy about how he handled things after he won the Rising Star in 1999. I know Brisbane’s Daniel Rich got more attention this year than he did last year when he won the Rising Star. In the coming pre-season and the start of next year we will look at that and make sure I have a really good preparation, but at the moment my focus is solely on this weekend and Carlton.

Obviously we are really excited about the prospect of this Sunday and what it will mean for us if we can play good footy. My hamstring is feeling really good, so now I just have to make sure I’m really switched on and ready to go.