Davis showed maturity beyond his eight games of AFL experience to restrict Freo match winner Matthew Pavlich to a mere three first-half possessions and then displayed the courage of a seasoned veteran in holding his ground against a charging Aaron Sandilands.
Sandilands cannoned into the 19-year-old, leaving him lying motionless on the ground in the middle of AAMI Stadium.
Davis came to in the hands of club doctors, but sparked concerns over the state of his reconstructed shoulder and/or collarbone when he immediately reached for his upper arm.
“Initially the doctors thought I had a broken collarbone, so I was looking at eight weeks out. It turned out it was only an AC joint sprain, so I was lucky in the end,” Davis said.
But Davis was anything but lucky when it came to the player he collided with.
Standing at 211cm and weighing a whopping 122kg, Sandilands is by far the biggest man in the competition and Davis said he had no idea what he was up against when he made the reflex decision to contest the mark.
“I didn’t know it was Sandilands. I just saw a white guernsey and a blue guernsey. I was praying it was someone a little bit smaller,” Davis said.
“I remember going back with the flight of the ball and that was about a second before I got hit, but then there’s about a half-hour gap that I don’t remember at all. I was saying some interesting things apparently.”
Craig was full of praise for the talented teenager after the game.
"It was a fearless act for a guy that was so young and inexperienced in his career," Craig said at the time.
"It sets a really good scene I think for the younger players of our footy club. He's in his second year with us, you don't need to be a senior player to do it."
Davis’ teammates were also quick to applaud him for his sacrificial effort, but he didn’t see his actions as being anything out of the ordinary and said he would do the same thing if he had his time again… well almost the same thing.
“I’ve seen the replay many times now. My mum, sister and girlfriend don’t like it at all but it doesn’t bother me too much watching it. It’s nice to earn a bit of respect through it, but I’ll just continue to go about playing my footy and that’s part and parcel of it,” Davis said.
“It was tricky because it was a windy day so it was hard to judge the drop of the ball, but in hindsight the ideal thing would’ve been for me to turn my body a bit and not just leave myself wide open to get hit.”
Davis took time to adjust to AFL level during the pre-season, but Craig said the utility’s performance against Pavlich suggested he had a bright future in the game.
“We’ve got to be careful who we play Phil on because he’s still learning the game and in the pre-season we probably got him on some opponents that weren’t conducive to a guy just getting a sniff of AFL footy,” Craig said.
“He’s very coachable. He’s got a great passion for the game and he wants to be a very good player…I think he’s going to turn into a very, very good player for us down the track.”
