Jason Davenport slept well on Saturday night.
For three days leading up to the Bendigo Bank Cats’ sudden-death preliminary final with North Ballarat last week, Davenport was restless with anticipation. He barely slept.
When his head hit the pillow, his mind started racing.
The tension of playing off for a shot at a second successive grand final set off a trigger of rapid emotions and uncontrollable adrenalin.
Despite having experienced the stress of VFL finals as a VFL-listed player last year, nothing could suppress the overpowering thoughts of preliminary final week.
“When you close your eyes it all starts. I was just hoping for the best, worrying about training, it’s all part of it, just hoping to train well tomorrow,” he said.
“Then I would go to bed the next day and say I hope I train well the next day. So it was just a big build up to the whole thing I guess.”
The gun wingman did manage to compose himself enough to get to sleep, but even that, he said, wasn’t even quality sleep.
“I’d say I still got six or so hours, but it wasn’t my usual sleep, I usually try to get eight or nine,” he said,
“But I wasn’t tired until pretty late and I would always wake up pretty early, and just sleeping in for the next hour if I could.”
He said his sleep deprivation did begin to overwhelm him late in quarters and during the final quarter of the Cats’ runaway 62-point win over North Ballarat.
“Yeah definitely towards the end of the game and even end of quarters I was getting very fatigued in the legs, very tired and all that,” he said.
“That fatigue hasn’t happened all year, so definitely this week I’m trying to get my mind off things and when I’m at the footy club think about footy and when I’m away try not to think about it too much.”
To counter this potentially detrimental bout of nerves and anxiety, Davenport will spend his time away from the football club this week with his girlfriend in Melbourne, removing himself from the constant thoughts of the upcoming grand final.
“I’m going to head up to Melbourne, we’ve got the Thursday off, so I’ll spend a couple of days with my girlfriend, she doesn’t know too much about footy which helps to get your mind off it,” he said.
“And I’ll just do other things once I’m away from the footy club so I don’t think too much about footy.”
Davenport declared Sunday’s grand final is redemption day for the Cats, saying he will be driven by the pain of losing to Sandringham last year.
“I think it’s even more of a motivation for me, I was a VFL top up last year, but it was still disappointing as it was for everyone else,” he said.
“I was shattered after seeing the Sandy boys get the medallions, I really wanted that to be me, so Sunday is that sought of redemption I guess where I hopefully will be able to get up there and get one.”
And as for what the next few weeks hold in terms of a potential senior promotion, Davenport said he would not entertain any such thoughts until after the season draws to an end.
“That’s the last thing on my mind,” he said.
“I just want to play my role and contribute to the team winning, if we win and I have six touches and play my role and shut down my opponent, then I’ll be rapt driving home with a medallion.
“I guess it’s not really about the individual games in finals, you just want to get the job done and help your teammates do everything you possibly can.”
