Round 6, 2009

Despite the last-minute heartbreak against Hawthorn, the Blues’ brave loss against the reigning premiers will long be remembered for both teams displaying the best qualities that the AFL has to offer – attacking football, relentless pressure, superb teamwork, and an old-fashioned shootout between opposing full forwards. Cool heads were needed at the death, and Dennis Armfield’s efforts to storm through the centre and deliver a long pass to Fevola for a chance at glory win him Play of the Week.

Dennis, you win Play of the Week for taking on the Hawthorn midfield and kicking long to Fev for that last shot on goal. Can you take us through that passage of play?

I knew there wasn’t long left and the quarter had been going a while. Kade Simpson kicked it to me and I took a risk and needed it to pay off. I actually thought I was in more space than I was and then I moved forward through the centre and saw Fev playing really deep and kicked long to him. He was good enough to take the mark and have a shot on goal.

How does it feel to have played in the game of the season? Did it feel like that on the ground?

You can always tell when you play the Hawks. Their intensity and aggression really stands out, and that is something that we haven’t done well ourselves in previous years. Even when you are in the backline and our forwards are working hard and putting on pressure on their defence, you can see their efforts and really hear the crowd roar in a game like that.

The pressure comes from a mix of the opposition and the occasion. You always want to perform at your best, and especially in a pressure cooker match on the MCG, you want to make the most of your opportunities.

Did the team put too much emphasis on stopping Hodge and Franklin instead of Roughead? Or did he just have a day out?

Hawthorn has two top forwards, and it is hard to stop both of them. Bower did a supreme job on Franklin, but it was the team’s fault with Roughead and not any one individual. We should have structured up better and been more focussed on stopping the ball getting there and restricting the space he had.

What do you think you have to do to cement yourself as an automatic selection?

I have to continue improving the defensive side of my game. That’s why I got a game in the first place, as we have got the likes of Judd, Stevo, Scotland and Murphy there to do the attacking and offensive midfield roles.

I got a game based on my defensive skills, and I need to keep my opponent quiet whether I get one touch or 20 touches myself. If I can keep doing that, it will keep me in good stead for getting more senior games.

What do you see as the major improvements in your game since you arrived at the club? Which coaches have you been working closely with?

My kicking has improved ten-fold, and my game awareness has also improved. I am a lot more focussed, and probably having the belief and confidence in myself has really helped me along too. Having the likes of Jammo and Waitey yelling at me to run when I have space has given me a lot of confidence as I can use my speed running out of the backline.

Last year I spent a lot of time working with Matty Lappin and David Teague, and this year I have spent a lot more time with (Assistant Coach) Brett Montgomery and (Development and Kicking Coach) Darren Harris. Aaron Joseph and I have been doing a lot of work on defensive side of our game, and I’ve been improving my kicking with Darren Harris. I always do 10 or 15 kicks after training and will only keep improving from here.

Mike Pyke from the Swans is another rugby graduate who has made it to the AFL. What are the advantages of starting your sporting life as a rugby player?

One advantage is that you are taught to take on people and get through the opposition, whereas in footy you are taught to get rid of it when your opponent is approaching you or next to you. That gives me belief that I can take on opposition players when the time is right, which is one good positive to have. Footy is a bigger oval and gives you more room to do your things which is something else I’ve really come to notice.

We have John Donahue as our tackling coach who also has a rugby background. He really helps us with our defensive pressure, and tackling and corralling the opposition. St Kilda and other sides at the top do these things really well which can win footy games for you – the game is not all about fancy plays and finesse.

Carlton is playing a home game against a WA side in Queensland. Can you tell us how that works?

It is a good opportunity to promote the game up there with the new Queensland side coming into the league soon. The AFL want to promote as much as possible in the north, and we chose to play a home game there.

It will be a great experience for some of the younger players like Aaron Joseph and myself to get a look at and experience another ground and play interstate. The dimensions of the ground aren’t much smaller than MCG, but it is a bit narrower and a spongy ground with irregular bounce.

We will be playing in neutral territory with less fans there obviously, but we go into every game with focus, whether it is 90,000 at MCG against Collingwood or 7,000 up at Carrara.

Fremantle will be quietly confident after a come-from-behind win against the West Coast. Other than Pavlich, who do we need to look out for?

Stephen Hill is one of the best users of the football, and he is only young but we will need to pay attention to him. McPharlin can still pop up and we really don’t want him kicking goals, whilst Schammer has been doing a lot of hard in-and-under work. Hayden might also be back and you don’t want him exposing us from defensive line. There are plenty of others that we need to be wary of too. Ratts will no doubt have a good plan for when we tackle them on Saturday.

After such a close, tough, exciting game is there a chance of a let-down this week? Has that been spoken of?

No I don’t think that will happen. We got so close on the weekend but we have taken heaps of steps forward. Last year we lost by 78 pts against Hawks and 100 points the time before, so the weekend’s result shows that we are really improving. With each game we have our own standards to live up to, and you will continue to see improvements in the side. We can keep improving and won’t drop our standards on Saturday.

As a Western Australian recruit, did you barrack for the Eagles or Freo growing up? Do you have a soft spot for them?

I was born in Canberra, so I was actually a fan of the Kangaroos! My Dad was a Kangaroos fan, and I would try to get over to some of the games. I was into rugby a lot more back then, and didn’t get to more games as I probably would have chosen to watch rugby over football.

Canberra is a quiet little place. It has got a few tourist attractions like Parliament House, the War Memorial, and a science place there too, but there is not as much happening compared to Melbourne.

Can you tell us much about the history of guernsey number 27?

I’ve spoken to Rod Ashman about, and he loves his Carlton history. Obviously Des English and Hulme have worn it in a lot of games, and I know of some of the other players who have played in the jumper. I just want to wear the jumper with pride and do my best for the club.

Is there anything interesting we should know about any of your team mates?

Brad Fisher has got new look with his beard which he thinks is doing him well in the public eye and with getting on board with the club’s supporters. He has also got what I think is a Finnish Miniature Husky and he loves his little dog, and I reckon he spends more time with the dog than he does at the club!

After playing 9 games in his debut season in 2008, Dennis Armfield broke back into the Blues line-up for the round 4 clash against Sydney and has looked increasingly comfortable in his role in the seniors. Armfield’s attack on the ball, hard running and direct football have been conspicuous in a Blues team which is looking to bounce back against Fremantle, formerly a bogey team for Carlton who broke a nine game losing streak against the Dockers the last time the teams met.

There are many different ‘hurts’ dished out to spectators of football. There are the little hurts, like reading another article from ‘ Piddling Pat’ where he attempts to soften his mealy mouth with the worst kind of humour – sort of ‘My wife went on holidays’ ‘Jamaica?’ ‘No she went of her own accord.’ Pontificating Pat threw a spat about the whole Fev missing/umpires getting called out – now really, apples and oranges. For a start I’ve never seen an umpire collapse to the turf in agony after making a mistake (lets face it if that was the case one, at least, should have gone to ground for the non-fifty against Franklin).

So there was that pain when we all thought it was going through and then it didn’t. A hard pain, like a kick in the guts. But with that pain was the joy, damn we fought, and we almost made it, didn’t we ma? This was against the reining premiers who have used us as percentage boosters and pincushions the last few years and we gave them the scare of their lives. In fact when Fev took that mark Hawks fans around me fled to the train station – there is that pain too, the pain of not wanting to see the unthinkable happen (and then the pain of having left only to have him miss).

This is different to the Collingwood pain of playing numerous GF’s and losing all but 1 in recent memory or the Essendon pain of being the team that Collingwood won against (and being that ‘super team’ that lost to us in ’99 – now that was ecstasy – take seven Fev shots, add an Eddie Betts boundary snap and two Judd runs, mix well and served deliciously hot and you have the joy of that Fraser Brown tackle on Brain-fade Wallis – not the greatest joy of all though - that must go to the 1970 GF.

Of all the finals we’ve won, of all the flags and subsequent Arabian nights that followed, that one is the pinnacle, the Sistine Chapel of ecstasy (picture Kirk Douglas, painted splattered, holding the cup aloft). At half time the pain was like a dog gnawing away at my stomach. Paul Scanlon and I sat in the back yard, him spinning a football around and around in his sad, dejected hands, both of us silent. What can you say when Heroes fall? This was the silence of Hector’s death beneath the walls of Troy.

But then, but then the rise; the phoenix cry of joy as the flames become feathers and the heroes strut once more. It is hard to describe that day, the madness of it, and the unbelievable joy of winning the game everyone thought was lost. We danced in the streets that afternoon and when dad and my brothers came home we danced again, the Bluebaggers claimed Olympus that day, one small step for a team, one giant step for the club.

The club has delivered many moments of joy. The 30:30 against Hawthorn when you’d barely finished screaming for joy at a goal and another was already sailing though. The Premiership quarters and the signage reverberating like Greek shields as the Bluebaggers marched home again. Jezza’s marks, The Buzz’s buzz, Big Nick striding the turf like a titan of old, Southby’s torps, Sticks/Diesel and the victories of 95, Kouta’s one hand grab.

There have been the moments of pain also, the day the earth stood still when Big Nick was felled, the ball taken off Fitzy for time wasting, Blight’s torp in the mud, Dixon’s goal, loses snatched out of the jaws of victory.

The worst pain recently has been the beltings. Year after year the 100-point thrashings, a thing never experienced before, piled the pain, one on top of the other. This was the worst pain, the pain of despair. Pain without hope, without a glimmer of light. And the worst of all was that infamous game against the Roos, last game of the year, and the Roos players were laughing as they piled on the goals, as they played ring-a-ring-a-rosie and got the ball to Spider so he could goal. Leaving the ground that day was like leaving a morgue. That day I buried my beloved Blues knowing it would be many years before they did a Lazarus and returned.

There was the pain of the first wooden spoon, but that pain was not so bad, and growing more sort of ‘Doris Day photo touched up’ every game that Murphy plays, same too with Gibbs and The Kruise. These three players were worth the pain, they bring joy each time I watch them play for the Bluebaggers.

Saturday’s pain was the best sort of pain - the pain of the seed splitting, of the birth. Yes it hurt to lose but I am also smiling still. Finally we mixed it with the big boys and we held our own. The Bluebaggers are back in town. There are still steps to take, players to groom, strategies to develop – like how to man up on the mark – Hawthorn and St Kilda do this brilliantly - no strolling up to the mark, reminiscent of a back yard game, they run hard, pressure the player with the ball, make them hold up, wait, and of course then their defence is in place and the moment is lost. It’s a pressure we need to develop, one of the next steps for this young side to take.

On Saturday there was the ecstasy and the agony – and that’s the way I remember it as a kid. I remember our teams being a chance, and when the chance wasn’t taken you’d feel the hurt of a loss but also you knew there was next week. Lately there has been too few ‘next weeks’. Not any more. Not after Saturday. Sure we are still developing but at our best we are back to being a force, a pleasure, a stream of the Bluebaggers pouring out of the centre, rushing towards the goals.

That’s the joy I remember, and with that joy any pain is short lived because these teams redeem themselves. So this week I expect a victory. That’s the other thing that comes with being a good side. Win the games you should win.

This week we’ll see the Bluebaggers win by 35. Six to Fev and Gibbs for BOG.

Go Blues!