My mum (Nuala) and aunt (Ann) came to visit last Wednesday, which was perfect timing. I’d done my first tough training session that day since coming back from injury, and it was really nice to have some home cooking.

My mum’s been here a good few times before, so she’s done a lot of sightseeing and just likes to relax now. But my aunt, who hasn’t been out before, is mad to see and do things. They’ve been having a good time, just taking it easy and doing some shopping.

Last year my mum told me to have the front gate painted by the time she came back, but I didn’t have it done. The first thing she said when she came in the door was, “I told you to paint that gate a year ago”. So I told her I had done it the day she left but the weather had worn it down again.

It’s a busy house at the moment. Daniel Currie, who we drafted this year, is also staying with me because he’s on school holidays at the moment. He’s about ten-foot tall, even taller than Stephen (Doyle). Doyley doesn’t like it; he’s not the big man in the house any more.

It was great to get back out on the field at the weekend. We really didn’t decide until Saturday that I was definitely going to play. I trained on Wednesday and Friday but we just decided to take it easy and see how I’d pull up from training. I was quite sore Friday night, but I think that’s because I did a lot on Wednesday. On Saturday morning I went over to the doctor’s place, and when he had a look at my knee he said yes, go for it.

It was a great game to come back for, with Mickey O [O’Loughlin] breaking John Rantall’s club record for the number of games played. The whole day was really emotional. You could almost feel the love out on the field. We just kept talking about Mickey O, Mickey O. It really showed how much we love the man.

Players play milestones all the time, but it’s not every day that it’s for a player who’s played the most games for the club. It was quite emotional for Mick because originally he didn’t want to come to Sydney. He didn’t like it. And now he holds the games record, which is unbelievable.

He’s a funny, funny man and everyone loves him. I don’t think there’s anyone at the club who doesn’t like the bloke. He goes out of his way for his family and friends. He’d give you anything … he’d give you the shirt off his back. That’s the type of bloke he is.

John Rantall presented him with his jersey in the rooms, and you could see how emotional he was about doing that. You could see when he was talking about Mickey, that there isn’t a bloke that he would want to give it to more than Mickey.

We held that ceremony an hour or two before we ran out because we didn’t want to do it right before the game. We wanted to have our heads right and not be too emotional. It’s not good to get too uptight and too emotional just before you run out; you can have a bad start to the game if you do that.

We also watched a clip of Mickey playing for the club when he was 18 years old, and it was absolutely hilarious. He had this top-deck haircut and skinny arms. He’s come a long way when you think that now he’s the guy who reckons he’s got the best guns and best abs at the club.

The most pleasing thing about the day was the way we played. I think we did well against Geelong in the second half and we carried it over to last weekend. The win over Fremantle was probably our best performance since the preliminary final last year. Everyone was doing his role and everyone in the team knew what he had to do and did it. We were really back to the way that we usually play, which was great. We just wanted to get our season back on track. On the day, you want to make it memorable for Mickey O, and nothing less than a win would have done.

I’ve also changed one of my superstitions since the weekend. I’ve been wearing bike pants under my shorts for years, but I didn’t wear them at the weekend because I’ve had such a bad run with injury. I just thought I needed to change something on my uniform, so I won’t be wearing them this week. It’ll be shorts only!

As for Carlton at the weekend, they’ve been playing poorly but they’re going to have Brendan (Fevola) back, which will be a big focus for them. He’ll want to play well and there’s no bigger challenge for them than trying to beat us in Sydney, so they’ll be determined to do that.

As a person or a team we never worry about other match results or the repercussions of this or that team winning or losing, despite all the talk in the media about ladder positions. You just try to control what you do, because you can’t control any other team winning or losing. We haven’t been controlling our own house very well so far this year, because we’ve lost games that we should have won. So if we can just control what we’re doing, we know we’ll be playing September football.