We will all no doubt miss Nigel Lappin following his decision to hang up the boots, both players and supporters.
I only had a little bit to do with him out on the ground because we usually played in different positions.
He never used to say too much, although he and I have pretty similar personalities and we liked to stir each other a bit. Okay a lot. And I will miss that.
As a team, we will miss the way he played the game.
His running ability is what I will remember most about him.
He is one of the few blokes who used to run harder defensively rather than when his team had the footy.
That was a rare treat.
And it is true what everyone always says about him being hard on himself.
Even if he was best-on-ground, Nige would always critique himself and be cursing afterwards about the one and only handball that missed its target on the day.
He was typical Nige when he addressed the group last Tuesday morning about his decision to retire.
He quickly stopped talking about himself and said there was a lot of young guys in the group who had the opportunity to step up, and urged them to take the club to the next level.
As for life after footy, I think he is starting to perhaps realize that he could be very good in the coaching area.
While Nige said goodbye, we’re hoping another bloke who played through the most successful era in the club’s history hangs around for a while yet.
Daniel Bradshaw plays his 200th game on Saturday night and everyone around the place is happy for him to reach such a great milestone.
Braddy is a great fella and everyone in the team loves the way he goes about his footy.
He’s really laid back and easy going and gets along with everyone.
I certainly enjoy the duels that we have on the ping pong table at the club.
On the field he has got an amazingly strong mark on the lead at full speed, although it doesn’t hurt to have arms like thighs.
From a personal perspective, it has been a hard week and fortnight.
I re-did the quad injury against Hawthorn down in Tassie that I hurt at the start of the year.
There were no symptoms or tightness before hand. I just went to take off and it gave way.
We’re still perplexed as to how it happened and now it’s a case of going back to the drawing board.
I was really shocked and disappointed because I had been hoping to be part of us getting into the finals.
I haven’t given up on getting back to play if we make the finals, and I’m at the club every day for treatment.
As I’m sure a few of the boys have written before me, you spend a lot more time around the place when you are injured, working overtime to get yourself fit and back into the team.
As frustrating as it is to be on the sidelines, it is more bearable when the team wins and plays like they did against the Bulldogs last weekend.
We pressured the Dogs out of the game, and we know that is a great strength of ours.
When we do our key indicators every week, our tackling generally always dictates how we have gone.
In the Hawthorn game we missed more tackles in the second half than we normally do in a whole game, and the result was we got blown away.
We know if we tackle to where we want, we will be ultra competitive irrespective of how we play offensively.
