BY ALL accounts Hawthorn veteran Shane Crawford has flown through his 17th pre-season and the 33-year-old has signalled his intention to be a large part of the club’s 2008 campaign, starting with the round-one NAB Cup clash against Sydney.
“I’ll definitely be playing,” Crawford said shortly before a light hit-out at Aurora Stadium in Launceston on Wednesday.
“As long as I don’t get injured on Friday, I’ll definitely be playing. We’re ready, we’ve done all the work and we just want to get into game mode now.”
The Hawks are in Tasmania as part of their community camp and will hold their first intra-club match on Friday.
Crawford will sit out the first three games of the home-and-away season after incurring a ban for striking the Kangaroos’ Daniel Harris in last year’s semi-final loss, but the veteran is still keen to get in some early match conditioning to top off what he said had been an enjoyable summer on the track..
“I’m just training smarter,” he said.
“As you get older you’ve just got to train a lot smarter and not do as much as you used to, but still have the quality there. It’s just a matter of making sure you look after yourself and approach it in the right way.
“It’s probably been a little bit easier to be honest, [but] don’t tell the fitness advisors and the coaches.
“That’s probably one of the reasons I’m still playing because I really still enjoy training and being around the guys and still have the real passion there to play and hopefully play well.
“I’m certainly really looking forward to this year, it’s been a good pre-season, the guys are fit and strong and ready to go so we’re really hopeful.”
In what will surely be a recurring theme for the former skipper in his twilight years, Crawford was quizzed about his playing intentions beyond 2008.
“When you get to my age you’ve just got to take it as it comes, but if you’ve still got the passion there and you’re body’s OK then you’d be crazy not to continue on,” he said.
“It just depends. It all comes down to my body and, as I’ve said, that’s in good shape and I have no issues. I’ve still got that real desire to play so if I feel that way next year then I’d like to think that I could continue on, but I haven’t made it that far yet; we’ll just see what happens.”
