Speaker 1: All right, ladies and gentlemen, this is a very special episode.
Speaker 1: We've got the hundredth game coming up, so Brandon and
Speaker 1: myself I thought we'd deep die tell you some stories
Speaker 1: about my career, stories about the last one hundred games
Speaker 1: that maybe you haven't heard yet. And that's what we're
Speaker 1: here for. It's gonna be an interesting chat. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure where this is gonna go. There's gonna be some
Speaker 1: funny stories, some interesting stories, ups and downs, don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong. But it's gonna be exciting, I can promise
Speaker 1: you that. So listen, and it's gonna be good fun.
Speaker 2: All right, everyone, very very special podcast that is about
Speaker 2: to get underway. Mason Cox, as you all know and love,
Speaker 2: the great man, A hundred game special now, very very
Speaker 2: big accomplishment. I think we all know the journey, but
Speaker 2: we'll go through the first part really quick. I don't
Speaker 2: know if you guys know this, but he was born
Speaker 2: in a America?
Speaker 3: Was it American?
Speaker 2: How am I? Yes? So he was born in America,
Speaker 2: found out about the game around twenty two, came over
Speaker 2: here and the rest is history.
Speaker 1: Do I talk about college, na, No, I'll say that
Speaker 1: for another podcast after dark episode.
Speaker 2: So we've been through the early stuff. Now we're just
Speaker 2: going to get right into the nitty gritty, the nuts
Speaker 2: and bolts, the one hundred games. So one hundred games
Speaker 2: for the Collingwood Football Club. Now it almost wasn't for
Speaker 2: the Collingwood Football Club. If you if you're judging by
Speaker 2: North Melbourne's videos that they put out there, head to
Speaker 2: toe North Melbourne kit, you could have been playing down
Speaker 2: in tazzy. I'm lucky got the game for Collingwood. Now
Speaker 2: talk us through this, because you know it's pretty head
Speaker 2: to toe. You had the polo, you were out there,
Speaker 2: out they were doing. They got Brad Scott doing interviews
Speaker 2: about you, going like, oh he's the next big thing,
Speaker 2: Mason Cox and we're going to snap him up. How
Speaker 2: close was it?
Speaker 3: Not even remotely close?
Speaker 1: I think look, North Melbourne, maybe just turn off the
Speaker 1: next if you're a North Melbourne fan, t off the
Speaker 1: next to being a minute of this podcast. North Milan
Speaker 1: walked in.
Speaker 2: Brad.
Speaker 1: You know, he's a coach of a football club, right
Speaker 1: the enact that decision. It's not on him what goes
Speaker 1: on behind the scenes and their club Arden Street beautiful,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, but whenever you go to calling
Speaker 1: a football club and then you go to Arden Street.
Speaker 1: You see the vast difference and the big kind of
Speaker 1: carrot they had. They had Eric Wallace there, absolute legend
Speaker 1: American that was playing for them on their list at
Speaker 1: the time, and they had the idea that he could,
Speaker 1: you know, grow me as a player and teach me
Speaker 1: how to play the game because he had been through
Speaker 1: it himself. That was their biggest carrot, and it just
Speaker 1: it just comparatively, it was tough, Like sorry, North Melbourne,
Speaker 1: but this is We've talked about this on the podcast.
Speaker 1: It's very hard to keep up with the top tier
Speaker 1: echelon clubs that have the facilities.
Speaker 2: But where you're coming from though, is also college basketball
Speaker 2: college in the States. It's it's a bit different, right.
Speaker 2: We come over here and we're like, oh, Collingwood's the
Speaker 2: big byss.
Speaker 1: But my basketball university university that I played basketball for,
Speaker 1: their locker rooms five x what Collingwood was So coming
Speaker 1: into the country seeing Collingwood's I wasn't to be honest,
Speaker 1: I wasn't impressed. I was kind of like, yeah, like
Speaker 1: I've just come from a way better facility, Like we
Speaker 1: had a half a million dollar marble staircase going from
Speaker 1: the top level to the bottom level of our locker room.
Speaker 1: We had just the cowskin rugs everywhere because we're in Oklahoma.
Speaker 1: I had the twelve TVs all lined up, custom pool table,
Speaker 1: like custom seats for the for the vision room. All that,
Speaker 1: you know, just stupid cash. There's a guy that donated
Speaker 1: over half a billion dollars to our university so you can.
Speaker 2: Buy the whole afl exactly.
Speaker 1: That's it, Like we all know it's I'm not getting
Speaker 1: into that, but there's just there's so much money that's
Speaker 1: influxed into this thing that, yeah, the facilities, because you
Speaker 1: can't play players, the facilities is where the money went.
Speaker 1: So it was always topp tier, top echelon type stuff
Speaker 1: and that came to here and everyone's like Callingwood be
Speaker 1: baddest in the land, you know, and to be honest,
Speaker 1: and you know, I love calling it obviously, don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong. But like whenever I came in, they were like,
Speaker 1: we have custom weight sets.
Speaker 2: I was like, yeah, cool, bro.
Speaker 1: There was things like that that were probably very impressive
Speaker 1: for Australian sports, but compared to the US side of things,
Speaker 1: it was almost below what I expected.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you would have been like, can these guys
Speaker 2: pay the check every month? You would have felt like
Speaker 2: it's a People told me that.
Speaker 1: People told me, if you go to North Melbourne or
Speaker 1: someone else, you're not financially guaranteed to get your paycheck
Speaker 1: in the end of the month. And I was that
Speaker 1: actually scared me, being someone from half a world away
Speaker 1: thinking because I heard about AFL, I thought it'd be
Speaker 1: an Eastern European kind of like basketball that I didn't
Speaker 1: know if it was going to be successful or not.
Speaker 1: I'm just hoping to be able to make it out
Speaker 1: of the country, like if things go shit right, And
Speaker 1: that was like a big fear of mine. So someone
Speaker 1: I can't remember who it was, but someone could tell you, yeah,
Speaker 1: well seriously, I had no idea, so I believe whatever
Speaker 1: people to.
Speaker 2: Now you arrived at Collingwood. Did the full signing got
Speaker 2: you over that? Had you know a big hand to
Speaker 2: play in that? How was the pitch in getting you
Speaker 2: over here?
Speaker 1: There was a massive sales page, not only from the
Speaker 1: Collingwood and Derek Hines, but also the AFL, and they
Speaker 1: put a lot of a lot of media into this
Speaker 1: big American coming over to Australia and playing because I
Speaker 1: remember before I made my decision. Right last day in Australia,
Speaker 1: they take us out for this five star dinner. AFL
Speaker 1: shout out to the AFL, take us out to this
Speaker 1: five star dinner and they've got the agents. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: sign with her. There we get the beers a flowing.
Speaker 1: You know, there's Corona's on the table, There's you know,
Speaker 1: all these I couldn't fathom at being a kid that
Speaker 1: was eating Ramen noodles from college.
Speaker 2: I was just like, what the fuck?
Speaker 1: This is awesome red carpet treatment, right because they flew
Speaker 1: you around, flew me around everywhere, just you know, I
Speaker 1: was essentially media darling for them for a week and
Speaker 1: got these other beers flowing. You know, everyone's there that
Speaker 1: I kind of met throughout the week, and we get
Speaker 1: to the nitty gritty and stuff and they're kind of
Speaker 1: trying to get me to sign a contract. This is
Speaker 1: I don't know if I've ever actually told this story,
Speaker 1: but I am blind drunk, like blind drunk at this point.
Speaker 1: So it was like all the you know, all this
Speaker 1: stuff have been done for the week, Like we were
Speaker 1: very into this trip, hadn't had any enjoyment as far
Speaker 1: as like going out, having beers in a night out.
Speaker 1: So this was our night and we get up to
Speaker 1: this sports bar at the Crown. I'm sitting there in
Speaker 1: the two agents at the time that the AFL had
Speaker 1: given to me, you know, showed me because I hadn't
Speaker 1: seen any of the contracts beforehand. They showed me the
Speaker 1: different contracts. Port Adelaide, I think, was the only one
Speaker 1: that didn't give me a contract that I would look at.
Speaker 1: So you had like North Melbourne, Freemantle. I told them
Speaker 1: I wasn't going to go to Fremantle. So it's either
Speaker 1: North Melbourne, Richmond and Collingwood. Right, puts all three in
Speaker 1: front of me. You look through the details. Some are
Speaker 1: giving you a car, some aren't. You know, there's little
Speaker 1: details in there. I was so blind drunk, couldn't even
Speaker 1: read the lettering. I was hammered. And I'm at the
Speaker 1: sports bar and with the agents and we're finally getting
Speaker 1: down to business, right, business of like signing a contract
Speaker 1: come to the country or not. And I am so
Speaker 1: blind drunk, and I just look at my brother and
Speaker 1: I look at the agents. I go, can we just
Speaker 1: have five minutes please? Can we just have a little
Speaker 1: chat My brother and I just want to talk through
Speaker 1: some of the details here. My brother, no one who's
Speaker 1: been on the podcast. Great, great conversation if you have
Speaker 1: and go back and listen to it. And we kind
Speaker 1: of sit down and said, I'm I'm hammered. I can't
Speaker 1: read anything on this thing. Can you read this now?
Speaker 1: There's no chance for making decisions here. So we went
Speaker 1: back to the agent and said, we'll go to America,
Speaker 1: We'll talk to the fan, we'll sort it out, we'll
Speaker 1: sober up or than anything. Yeah, And it was like
Speaker 1: the IFL and the agents were like trying to get
Speaker 1: me to sign then and there before I left the
Speaker 1: country because they were worried if I left the country
Speaker 1: I wouldn't come back. Yeah, so it was a really
Speaker 1: interesting last night in Australia around it, and yeah, they
Speaker 1: kind of I feel like at times, looking back on it,
Speaker 1: I feel like they tried to dupe me into signing
Speaker 1: a contract I wasn't prepared to sign. Luckily, left my
Speaker 1: drunk conscious state, I was able to make the decision
Speaker 1: not to sign that. But I obviously went back to
Speaker 1: America and call up all the different clubs that thank you,
Speaker 1: and then talk Colin.
Speaker 3: I was going to to go and play for them.
Speaker 2: You have your very experienced agent Nolan. Nolan working old
Speaker 2: times tonight, he'll show up. Now let's jump into the journey,
Speaker 2: because it's a fair journey at that. So you fly,
Speaker 2: you know, halfway across the world and then you meet
Speaker 2: up with the team and you go on a pre
Speaker 2: season camp to Falls Creek, beautiful place. Beautiful place. Normally
Speaker 2: it's snowing there, but this time of year, you just
Speaker 2: go in the summer, so you're really you know, meeting
Speaker 2: the guys for the first time and battling it out
Speaker 2: in these really weird circumstances. What did you kind of
Speaker 2: take from that first big preseason training camp and in
Speaker 2: particular kind of meeting up with Brodie Grundy and kind
Speaker 2: of he really set the tone most years at preseason camps.
Speaker 2: He was a beast, So, like, what did you learn
Speaker 2: like getting into that.
Speaker 1: I think the cool thing about that that was probably
Speaker 1: the first time I got to really get to know
Speaker 1: players because like we're all staying in the same hotel
Speaker 1: and stuff. You know, you're playing card games at night
Speaker 1: and all that kind of stuff, and you just get
Speaker 1: to know people on a personal basis because a lot
Speaker 1: of the guys played growing up. You know, I played
Speaker 1: against each other in different leagues and stuff here and there,
Speaker 1: and I'm just this token American and it's rolled up
Speaker 1: and you know, it's a first of four years camp.
Speaker 1: So these people are eighteen to like twenty two. Max,
Speaker 1: I think there was Sam Dwyer was like thirty. I
Speaker 1: rolled around. It's like, dude, you should definitely not be here.
Speaker 1: But I remember that was like kind of the big things.
Speaker 1: I kind of felt like I was just kind of
Speaker 1: like on the side because I was older and all
Speaker 1: these guys who are a younger kind of group that
Speaker 1: were coming in and trying to sort themselves out. And
Speaker 1: you think about, like how much you change between eighteen
Speaker 1: and like twenty three.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of.
Speaker 3: Life changing that happens between then and a.
Speaker 1: Lot of these kids, you know, we're eighteen, We're trying
Speaker 1: to figure out what they're going to do and thrust
Speaker 1: into this AFL lifestyle and everything else. And that was
Speaker 1: kind of my way of getting to know people like
Speaker 1: Marley was a guy I got to know early.
Speaker 2: Darcy obviously.
Speaker 1: Brody was the main person that I think I looked
Speaker 1: to and you kind of look around and you go, Okay,
Speaker 1: who can I become close with I know he's gonna
Speaker 1: get me to the best part, sorry, get me to
Speaker 1: be the best player I can be. And Brodie is
Speaker 1: one of those people. He's one of the hardest work
Speaker 1: ethic kind of people, and he's a beast in the gym,
Speaker 1: like he works his ass off, and he's one of
Speaker 1: those people that never gives up. So I kind of,
Speaker 1: you know, you're right on the coattails of other people,
Speaker 1: you know, and you want to help them bring you
Speaker 1: to a certain level. And Brody was that person for
Speaker 1: me for a long time, and I still very close
Speaker 1: to them obviously, but we always kind of have those
Speaker 1: competitions going against each other, and I'd always try to
Speaker 1: be the guy that was trying to prove his you know,
Speaker 1: prove his worth. And we had Jared Witz also there,
Speaker 1: you know who's you know, yeah, big winners, Captain of
Speaker 1: Gold Coast. So it's there was a lot of guys
Speaker 1: in there that were big men that you know, are
Speaker 1: quite successful. Now that I was able to kind of have,
Speaker 1: you know, show me the ropes as far as what
Speaker 1: was appropriate and you know what you had to give up,
Speaker 1: what he had to sacrifice, and the effort you had
Speaker 1: to put into it. So yeah, those Falls Creek camps.
Speaker 1: That was kind of I think the biggest thing I
Speaker 1: got out of it. And and I remember back to
Speaker 1: the days of the some of the you know, the
Speaker 1: I guess the challenges Brodie and I you know, and
Speaker 1: he used to do like the boxing, and Brodie would
Speaker 1: just be the living shit out of you. Like that, man,
Speaker 1: No one wants to go up against me. Even whever
Speaker 1: he warms up for games. He is the most aggressive
Speaker 1: like bumps and tackles person before the game that I
Speaker 1: would always just like end up in the bathroom somehow
Speaker 1: magically because like we're the same height, so instantly you
Speaker 1: go with each other.
Speaker 2: Freak.
Speaker 1: But anyway, we used to have battles here and there.
Speaker 1: And there's one there's a famous photo whenever I look
Speaker 1: back on my career, all the different photos and stuff,
Speaker 1: and there's one of myself and Brody and I'm a scrawny,
Speaker 1: scrawny kid at this point and Brodie's the big human,
Speaker 1: you know, and we're running down this massive mountain after
Speaker 1: a full day of training. We're doing like ice bass
Speaker 1: in this like you know lake with snow on the
Speaker 1: ground and push ups all the way up this mountain
Speaker 1: and everything else to get to the very top, and
Speaker 1: there's a sprint down the very end to try to
Speaker 1: like win it because everyone's on different teams, and Brody
Speaker 1: and I were just in this dead heat and I remember,
Speaker 1: like coaches on like this is fucked, Like these two
Speaker 1: full momentum, like no stopping, pushing each other, trying to
Speaker 1: make sure like one one like well one one over
Speaker 1: the other. And there's this photo and we're dead even
Speaker 1: and I don't even know who wanted, but I just
Speaker 1: remember at the end of it, we were so fucked.
Speaker 1: I just laid on the ground so exhausted, and I
Speaker 1: was just like, this is the guy that I want
Speaker 1: to be able to push because I know if I
Speaker 1: push him, that's gonna be pushing myself to the limit also,
Speaker 1: and I'll be a better player for it. So yeah,
Speaker 1: big shout out to Brodie is one of those people.
Speaker 1: It's definitely made me a better human off the field
Speaker 1: and also a better player on the field.
Speaker 2: It's a sketchy on that one running flat out down
Speaker 2: a gravel hill.
Speaker 1: There was no like if I wanted to stop, I couldn't.
Speaker 1: The momentumly just carried us because it was such a
Speaker 1: steep hill, Like we just kept going. It was almost
Speaker 1: as though like the finish line was there and we
Speaker 1: just kept running down the hill another thirty meters past
Speaker 1: it because there's no stopping us. The cool thing is
Speaker 1: you've been here for a lot of these early moments too,
Speaker 1: like you were at the club seeing some of this
Speaker 1: as it was playing out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I felt like at the time we all knew
Speaker 2: that we were watching something that was significant. A lot
Speaker 2: of us like looked over stop what we were doing,
Speaker 2: kind of clapping you guys running in a lot of
Speaker 2: people shouting out and stuff like Yeah, and that what
Speaker 2: you said about that photo, it's almost defining of both
Speaker 2: of your journeys moving from forward from there.
Speaker 1: Either one of us over fucking give in. But there
Speaker 1: spent so many times where it' be like sprints on
Speaker 1: the treadmill and staff and he sits there and he goes,
Speaker 1: I'm going to put it to thirteen. I'll put it
Speaker 1: to fourteen because I'll put it to fifteen or fifteen
Speaker 1: and a half. Yeah, he's such a hard worker. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he just doesn't. He's always the biggest man of the gym,
Speaker 1: always benching, the most, you know, squat and the most
Speaker 1: all that kind of stuff, and yeah, he just always
Speaker 1: wants to be better. And it's someone you always want
Speaker 1: to have, you know, in your in your corner, and
Speaker 1: someone you always want to have you know, helping you
Speaker 1: to be, like I said, the best player you can be.
Speaker 2: And it is a difficult thing as we touched on
Speaker 2: we'd probably touched on it a fair bit in last
Speaker 2: week's episode, that it's your best mates with some of
Speaker 2: these guys. Yeah, and then fighting for a spot the
Speaker 2: players that you draw for the rough position. Brody Grundy
Speaker 2: arguably the competition's best, and then Jared Witz goes on
Speaker 2: to have a career as Captain of the Gold Coast
Speaker 2: and you're still here, so credit to Yeah, the hell
Speaker 2: I'll last at both of them. But the thing is
Speaker 2: one of those.
Speaker 1: Moments I think in my career that I had to
Speaker 1: pick and choose was like I looked at it and
Speaker 1: I said, Brodie Grundy's rock, Jerry Witz's rock. I knew
Speaker 1: the coach's trust and faith was in them too. And
Speaker 1: then we're fighting it off to see it would be
Speaker 1: the number one rock at the time, and I was
Speaker 1: obviously like, you know, third fourth string as far as
Speaker 1: rocks to that point. And I kind of made the
Speaker 1: realization early in my career and lucky for it, and
Speaker 1: probably through some guidance of some coaches of saying like
Speaker 1: if I wanted to get playing time early in my
Speaker 1: career and make it in the AFL, I had to
Speaker 1: have something they didn't have, which is being able to
Speaker 1: play forward. So I made that commitment for a year
Speaker 1: to say I was going to learn the forward craft,
Speaker 1: learn different like leading patterns, everything else to get used
Speaker 1: to that, and then that would allow me to slide
Speaker 1: in be a second rock slash forward, which was somewhat
Speaker 1: of a spot we didn't have at the time, and
Speaker 1: they tried. Whenever they tried to play two rucks, it
Speaker 1: didn't work because it was just neither one of them
Speaker 1: who go play forward. So I was like, if I
Speaker 1: can fill that gap of something they're looking for, change
Speaker 1: the total trajectory trajectory in my career, and like so
Speaker 1: grateful for it because even now it's like we're playing
Speaker 1: with Darcy and myself, caring to myself and like both
Speaker 1: of us can go forward, and that it gives us,
Speaker 1: you know, gives us a bit of options in the rock.
Speaker 1: Whenever someone's playing good or bad, whoever it is, we
Speaker 1: can leave people in certain positions and the other one
Speaker 1: can still fill another role.
Speaker 2: And as we go through there'll be a lot of
Speaker 2: sliding door moments very much similar to that. But we
Speaker 2: jump into your I guess it's technically your first game
Speaker 2: of footy.
Speaker 3: First time organized football.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so VFL Round one twenty fifteen in Ballarat, River
Speaker 2: of a game, real rough one.
Speaker 3: Everyone wants to do play the first game in Ballarat.
Speaker 2: Surely that's a bit of a tester. It's like, let's
Speaker 2: send the big yank out to VFL in Ballarat and
Speaker 2: see if he survives. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I moved to this country and I was like beaches,
Speaker 1: beautiful women, beautiful weather, and you throw my ass into
Speaker 1: Ballarat where it was raining, sleeting, sunny, windy all in
Speaker 1: one game so bad that we had buckets of hot
Speaker 1: water on the sideline just whenever you came off. You
Speaker 1: could just put your hands in there, get a bit
Speaker 1: of feeling back in the extremities, go back and play.
Speaker 1: And I was like imember going to this game thinking,
Speaker 1: what the fuck have our decided to do with my life?
Speaker 2: Yeah, driving away out there now, shout out, and I'm
Speaker 2: sure there's plenty of beautiful women out of Bellerratt, but
Speaker 2: you weren't alone out there. You played your first game
Speaker 2: Darcy Moore, Jordan de Goie, Brandon Maynard, Mason Cock. So
Speaker 2: it turned out in order to found out to be
Speaker 2: a pretty good little drafting period for them. Apparently you
Speaker 2: kicked the goal.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't really remember it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and we don't remember but vision, but we'll take it. Now.
Speaker 2: Another obscure first game, which is probably your first game
Speaker 2: in the actual AFL squad, took place in Bendigo pre
Speaker 2: season against Carlton. Now this would have been you've had
Speaker 2: the experience in the VFL or whatever. Now this is
Speaker 2: a moment of yeah, am I ready to step up
Speaker 2: and play with the big boys.
Speaker 1: This is about three to four, maybe probably about four
Speaker 1: months into actually landing in Australia and learning.
Speaker 2: The game, knowing what a is.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was real nervous because I mean, like, at
Speaker 1: this point I'm playing a game I'm still questioning whether
Speaker 1: with an umpire points certain way of what the hell
Speaker 1: that means, Like I didn't know details of the game
Speaker 1: that people knew their whole lives, and I was just
Speaker 1: kind of like, all right, just run the same direction
Speaker 1: as the other ruckmen, follow him around, and you're surely
Speaker 1: just try not to make an ass to yourself. I
Speaker 1: did that, Okay. I will say I played a half
Speaker 1: a game. I came in at halftime, played against their rockmen,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it was all right, Like I got a
Speaker 1: few different hitouts. I think I showed it be enough
Speaker 1: promise to say like, oh okay, like he actually has,
Speaker 1: you know, a bit of coordination that like we might
Speaker 1: be able to work with. And I just remember it
Speaker 1: like the game was a bit crazy in that sense
Speaker 1: of like getting there, the bus ride up, and I
Speaker 1: remember getting to the locker rooms and it was like
Speaker 1: local footy of the locker rooms. I was like, life
Speaker 1: is really taking a real shit storm. Like it was
Speaker 1: just like grade six, like you know, school lockers, and
Speaker 1: that was.
Speaker 2: The locker room. Yeah, concrete flaws, yeah, brick walls.
Speaker 1: Like putting on booty shorts and a sleeveless jumper for
Speaker 1: the first time.
Speaker 2: This is something that I want to ask you because
Speaker 2: obviously shorts above the knees in America really far, very
Speaker 2: for So what do you are you telling your mates
Speaker 2: back home what you're actually doing? Are you just telling.
Speaker 3: Cherry picking the best parts?
Speaker 1: And they were just like you're playing soccer, and I
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah soccer.
Speaker 3: We're playing soccer.
Speaker 1: So you even think, like soccer players have larner shorts
Speaker 1: in the AFL players, yeah, it's a real it's embarrassing,
Speaker 1: but anyway, I digress. It's very unique IFL to wear
Speaker 1: sleeveless in the middle of winter and shorty shorts in
Speaker 1: the middle of winter, but this is the way the
Speaker 1: world works. And even wearing speedos, like speedos you can
Speaker 1: imagine in America not a thing. So when I came
Speaker 1: over here and i'd wear my first speedos, it was
Speaker 1: a real kind of like cover your nuts moment, you
Speaker 1: know of like walking around and people just sitting there
Speaker 1: with the shit out and you're like, Okay, I guess
Speaker 1: this is going to be normal for the next few years.
Speaker 2: And unfortunately, every time you're in speedos it means you're
Speaker 2: getting in and out of cold water.
Speaker 3: Yeah it's not a pretty side.
Speaker 1: No one's walking around strutting after getting in the ice bath,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that, Brandon.
Speaker 2: So there was plenty that came out of this postgame interview.
Speaker 2: You said it was your best and worst game of
Speaker 2: your career.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I never played any other game. It was hilarious,
Speaker 1: Like I had no idea what I was doing. And
Speaker 1: I remember, like one of the big things I remember
Speaker 1: from the game was walking off and you shake everyone's hand.
Speaker 1: One of the last people I shake was this guy
Speaker 1: and he had that much fucking.
Speaker 3: Tape on him. It was just like, what are you doing?
Speaker 3: And I was shaking us.
Speaker 1: And he was the nicest guy you ever met. He's like, mate,
Speaker 1: great story. When I was shot all the best in
Speaker 1: your career. Really you admire what you're doing over here
Speaker 1: and like giving you a crack And I was like,
Speaker 1: that goes so nice, you know. I walked off, has
Speaker 1: like thanks buddy, and then like next thing I know,
Speaker 1: I turn I turn around and he's getting interviewed by
Speaker 1: Chance seven. Where it was now I look at Darcy
Speaker 1: and Darcy was probably the person I was closest with
Speaker 1: this time. I said, I see that guy was super
Speaker 1: like who is he? He goes, that's Chris Judd. He's
Speaker 1: like one of the best players ever played? How do
Speaker 1: you not know who that is? And I was like,
Speaker 1: he's not the rockman. I don't know And still to
Speaker 1: this day, same problem. Now, twenty guys all around. I
Speaker 1: got no idea I'd recognize Chris Judd. Now, don't get
Speaker 1: me wrong, but there's plenty of other midfielders rolling around
Speaker 1: the AFL.
Speaker 2: I got no damn clue. I often think that that
Speaker 2: you're really learning everything from scratch. I've been surprised over
Speaker 2: times when I make a reference and you're like, you
Speaker 2: know that situation, because there's there's a lot of history
Speaker 2: in the AFL, and I mean, you've only had a
Speaker 2: limited time to catch up on it all. I think
Speaker 2: it probably helps that your dad's a bit of a
Speaker 2: nut job with the oh my.
Speaker 1: Gosh, my dad. Literally this is a funny story. I
Speaker 1: came I came home the first time after playing my
Speaker 1: first year. I came home in the off season. I
Speaker 1: walk in on our dining room table. Is Australian rules
Speaker 1: football for dummies. You know the big yellow books with
Speaker 1: like the black out lining, and he's written, he's read
Speaker 1: the whole thing, He's tabbed and like folded the paper
Speaker 1: corners of everything. He like about Collingwood, essentially everything about Collingwood.
Speaker 1: He's read the thing front to back. He would know
Speaker 1: more about AFL than ninety nine percent of fans. And
Speaker 1: he's from America. Stays up at like four am to
Speaker 1: watch every single game. Last night after the Carlton game,
Speaker 1: give me tips that I'm like, dad, No, just no.
Speaker 2: I felt like giving your tips when I saw your
Speaker 2: set shut goal kicking. Now we're getting into the real stuff,
Speaker 2: and we've talked about this a lot, but twenty sixteen
Speaker 2: rolls around very you know, timely interview last week with
Speaker 2: Travis Klark, who made way for you to play your
Speaker 2: first game being picked, let alone picked for your first
Speaker 2: game to be an Zac Day. Yeah, did you know
Speaker 2: what you were getting into or was it just you know,
Speaker 2: you're just excited to play your first game.
Speaker 1: It was a shit storm that week. I had no
Speaker 1: idea what to expect, what was going to happen. I've
Speaker 1: only experienced one Anzac Day before, and that was the
Speaker 1: year prior. I didn't I didn't really quite understand a
Speaker 1: lot of the stuff around it. Like I'd gone to
Speaker 1: the to the shrine, understood the history of like you know,
Speaker 1: the ANZACs but I think around the game and the
Speaker 1: history of it and the big spectacle that it is.
Speaker 1: I didn't quite understand until after the game, probably, but
Speaker 1: a lot of it, like there was so much I guess,
Speaker 1: like commentary around whether and I'd play my first game,
Speaker 1: you know, for the weeks prior and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff, and even the year prior, like we didn't
Speaker 1: make finals, and the club was talking to me about
Speaker 1: whether or not because Jason Holmes the debut is the
Speaker 1: first American ever born born and bread American never play
Speaker 1: and he played his first game. The club was like, oh,
Speaker 1: do we want to you know, do we want to
Speaker 1: try to give Mason that kind of same credit to
Speaker 1: be like the first one to ever play a fell
Speaker 1: And they kind of gave me the They said to
Speaker 1: me essentially like we don't want to rush this. We
Speaker 1: see a future with you, you know, we want to
Speaker 1: make sure whenever you play, you're ready for it and
Speaker 1: we're not just throwing this out there. And Jason played
Speaker 1: really well, so credit to him. And I always have
Speaker 1: to say on the second born and bread American ever play,
Speaker 1: and Jason hangs out on me a bit. But yeah,
Speaker 1: going into that week, like my parents found out I
Speaker 1: was playing for I did, got the Flights book and
Speaker 1: everything else, and then the brothers came over and it
Speaker 1: was just chaos like and the same thing whenever, like
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen and things like that around the Grand Finals,
Speaker 1: Like you look at the whole week and it's just
Speaker 1: like a bit of a blur, Like you do remember
Speaker 1: like little moments other things here there, but there's just
Speaker 1: so much going on that I don't know. It was
Speaker 1: kind of nice because once the game got there, you
Speaker 1: kind of were like, all this stuff that's been in
Speaker 1: my mind and happening here and there and everything else
Speaker 1: is just kind of doesn't matter anymore. It's like you
Speaker 1: can just focus on the game, and that was kind
Speaker 1: of relieving, to be honest. More than anything, it was
Speaker 1: just a crazy, crazy week. And then, yeah, Darcy Moore,
Speaker 1: who we talked about, you know, was one of the
Speaker 1: first friends I met in the club and his family
Speaker 1: kind of took me in. He looked after me and
Speaker 1: super super grateful for what he's given to me over
Speaker 1: my career. He actually gave me my jumper. And you
Speaker 1: think this kid's nineteen years old probably at the time,
Speaker 1: and his maturity he had to be able to do that,
Speaker 1: and that's like a special moment that people don't forget
Speaker 1: in their lives. And at nineteen to give a jumper
Speaker 1: to a friend of yours is pretty cool and it's
Speaker 1: a sign of you know, where he's at now. It's like,
Speaker 1: it's pretty cool to see him this captain and something
Speaker 1: I always kind of saw the opportunity for him to
Speaker 1: be able to do that if he wanted to, and
Speaker 1: he's taken it by the horns now, but to have
Speaker 1: him giving him my jumper and then be the person
Speaker 1: that kicked the ball into me, it was just kind
Speaker 1: of a pretty amazing moment, Like I don't even know
Speaker 1: that you can't really describe it. I'll never be able
Speaker 1: to fully describe it to someone. But take the Marc
Speaker 1: kick the goal and then have the whole team that
Speaker 1: iconic photo on my mind, if the whole team jumping
Speaker 1: on my shoulders, like it was just crazy, like fuck man,
Speaker 1: Like I never thought it would happen. I didn't think
Speaker 1: I'd ever really play an AFL game at times, and
Speaker 1: had been through some shit and then came out the
Speaker 1: other end of it and then kind of had the
Speaker 1: opportunity and took about the Horns, and luckily it was
Speaker 1: successful enough in it to get some more games behind that.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it was just cool to have the family
Speaker 1: there and Darcy be a part of it, and you know,
Speaker 1: everyone else be there. That kind of was through my career,
Speaker 1: and yeah, it's like so fortunate. This is the thing
Speaker 1: I think about mostly when I think of that day
Speaker 1: of just having everyone there and to wear decided to
Speaker 1: have the whole family in Talent once and then for
Speaker 1: them to be there on that day and experience it
Speaker 1: with me and just meant the world to me.
Speaker 2: You kicked your first goal with your first kick, which
Speaker 2: is the first goal of the game. Crowd erupted. Then
Speaker 2: from there was it hard to kind of settle because
Speaker 2: you got around, you took some more marks and stuff,
Speaker 2: you finish out the game. The whole thing would have
Speaker 2: just been like a willing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the whole thing is a whirlwind, Like I didn't
Speaker 1: even looking back now, I think there's maybe one other
Speaker 1: play I really remember from the whole thing. I think
Speaker 1: I like tapped it down Alex Fasoldo and he had
Speaker 1: a shot for goal. But the funny thing is is
Speaker 1: looking back now and a lot of people talk about
Speaker 1: that game. They're like, oh man, you kicked like what
Speaker 1: five on An's act day first game. You know, it's
Speaker 1: like very Australian that they start blowing things up to
Speaker 1: be like bigger and bigger, and I'm like, yeah.
Speaker 2: I did kick five. Maybe I don't know.
Speaker 1: It's like you just kind of like it's your story,
Speaker 1: you're telling it, but you know, it's just the whole day.
Speaker 1: It was a bit of a whirlwind. And then like
Speaker 1: coming off and I remember some I've never talked about.
Speaker 1: I guess was Anthony Rocker, who was, you know, one
Speaker 1: of my coaches that really kind of showed me ifl
Speaker 1: and taught me through the early stages of my career.
Speaker 1: And he just came out to me and he's like,
Speaker 1: let's make sure this isn't a one off. And in
Speaker 1: my mind I kind of was like so excited about
Speaker 1: everything going, I was like, what the fuck is he
Speaker 1: talking about. Then kind of you get back to the rooms,
Speaker 1: you kind of think about it. You're like, okay, like yeah,
Speaker 1: it's you know, it's it's a great story and everything
Speaker 1: and now, but it's like this can't be a flash
Speaker 1: in the pan. Make sure it's a long career. This
Speaker 1: is just the start of it. So really good advice
Speaker 1: from Pebs in the moment, which was amazing. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just like it's a credit to him and in Craig,
Speaker 1: and it's like every time I play and do something good,
Speaker 1: like it's it's just cool to have them, I guess,
Speaker 1: like someone I can kind of go back to and
Speaker 1: think and be like, yeah, the reason I'm here, Like
Speaker 1: I don't exist, I don't have the experiences I've had
Speaker 1: without Craig and Pebs and Derek Hines and there's people
Speaker 1: are you know, stuck their neck out for me and
Speaker 1: the times that they didn't really have to, and it's
Speaker 1: cool to kind of have these memories with them to say,
Speaker 1: like they're the reason I'm being successful, and like all
Speaker 1: the credit kind of goes to them. I'm just there,
Speaker 1: you know, doing my job, but without them going to
Speaker 1: me in the right directions throughout my career, I don't
Speaker 1: get to one hundred games.
Speaker 2: So it's cool.
Speaker 1: But yeah, on the day, it was kind of crazy.
Speaker 1: And even after the game, I remember walking the streets
Speaker 1: trying to go find my parents and trying to go
Speaker 1: to dinner with them and stuff, and had all these
Speaker 1: essident people come up to me and they're like, I
Speaker 1: fucking hate Colin wed don't get me wrong, but what
Speaker 1: you did today was amazing, like something I'm so credible
Speaker 1: to be happy to be like a part of them
Speaker 1: to see it. And Asinth was going through their saga
Speaker 1: stuff and everything else and weren't probably the best team
Speaker 1: if they had ever put out on the park, but
Speaker 1: it was cool to see fans from an opposing team
Speaker 1: who hated cong with so much still be appreciative and like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like just sort of complimentary of the I guess thing
Speaker 1: that transpired.
Speaker 2: So it wasn't just smooth sailing from that point on.
Speaker 2: It was game one, you know, the fairy tale start
Speaker 2: ninety eight games ago. It's game one of the rest
Speaker 2: of your career, and a lot of people start to
Speaker 2: then go okay, like start to pull you kind of
Speaker 2: down kind of mentality. How much did you feel like
Speaker 2: there's a chip on your shoulder that you have something
Speaker 2: to prove over the course of your career.
Speaker 1: Oh, every day I walked into the club, I had
Speaker 1: something to prove. You can be American coming into a
Speaker 1: club not knowing what AFL is, and no one's going
Speaker 1: to give you any time of day thinking that you're
Speaker 1: going to be successful, no reason for them to think
Speaker 1: that was going to be successful. So I mean I
Speaker 1: really strugled with it for the first probably like three
Speaker 1: or four years of trying to roof to everyone that
Speaker 1: I gave a shit about AFL and I was going
Speaker 1: to be successful in this. And it was a grind
Speaker 1: mentally at times, and Craig Craig talked about it and
Speaker 1: stuff and breaking down out on the field and stuff
Speaker 1: and him kind of consoling me through those kind of times,
Speaker 1: which was amazing. But yeah, I remember it the first year,
Speaker 1: like I played that Anzac Day and played maybe six
Speaker 1: or seven games after that, and then Trav came back
Speaker 1: into the fold, and I essentially took a week off
Speaker 1: because my mental health was just shit ass.
Speaker 2: Like I went to the alls for the thing I was.
Speaker 1: I went to Dallsford with a girlfriend at the time
Speaker 1: and just kind of got away, and I think Jesse
Speaker 1: came back, Jesse White came back into the team, and
Speaker 1: I just was all over it mentally, like I just
Speaker 1: broke down. I think it was after Carlton game. I
Speaker 1: went into the rooms and we've got like a taping
Speaker 1: kind of corner and I just went in there. I
Speaker 1: just broke down, just like show crying. I was like,
Speaker 1: I can't fucking take this, Like I'm so far away
Speaker 1: from any kind of support. I wasn't playing perfect at
Speaker 1: the time. It was really hard on myself and I
Speaker 1: still am today. But that was kind of one of
Speaker 1: those really like learning moments in my career of like
Speaker 1: being able to deal with adversity and like people were
Speaker 1: on my ass about not playing well and like that
Speaker 1: and the media pressure and everything else that came with it,
Speaker 1: and I did. Yeah, I had to take a couple
Speaker 1: of weeks off just because I wasn't mentally in the
Speaker 1: right place. I've never really told anyone about it, but yeah,
Speaker 1: and I went away and came back and played a
Speaker 1: bit of VFL and then continued on with my career.
Speaker 1: But I think that was like one of those learning
Speaker 1: points of a real kind of like point in your
Speaker 1: career of whether it's going to go one way or
Speaker 1: the other, and whether you know you kind of sold
Speaker 1: the future and wanted to go through the stresses of
Speaker 1: AFL life and having a career in nex it's not
Speaker 1: it's not always rainbows and daisies, and in a beautiful time.
Speaker 1: There's a pressure that comes with it and everything else
Speaker 1: and not being able to get away from it, and
Speaker 1: you just had to sit down and say, do I
Speaker 1: want to make the sacrifices to have a successful and
Speaker 1: full AFL career? And luckily enough, you know I made
Speaker 1: the decision to make those and continue on.
Speaker 2: It's very rarely sunshine and rainbows, even for the best
Speaker 2: players out there. And you said your mum said that
Speaker 2: you probably described you as like someone that won't give up,
Speaker 2: like someone that just keeps forging ahead. What was it
Speaker 2: that kind of got you back on track those situations
Speaker 2: being so far from home and not really having a
Speaker 2: family support network around.
Speaker 1: We used to is like I said before, a lot
Speaker 1: of it goes to credit goes to Derek Hines, Anthony
Speaker 1: Rocker and Craig McCrae. Like Craig used to come over
Speaker 1: every single year for Thanksgiving. That was a massive thing
Speaker 1: for me, And I was in a shitty two bedroom apartment,
Speaker 1: like and we're make shifting at ikea table into the
Speaker 1: Thanksgiving table and putting all his turkey and everything else down.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's just moments like that. Well, like Craig
Speaker 1: doesn't need to do that, but he goes out of
Speaker 1: his works. He knows that what's that's what makes me comfortable,
Speaker 1: and that's a big deal for me and to have
Speaker 1: him their mental lot. And you know, Pebs, I remember
Speaker 1: so many times going over to his house and hanging
Speaker 1: out with his family and like getting to know them
Speaker 1: and just having dinners with him, and that was kind
Speaker 1: of my home away from home, was going to his
Speaker 1: place and looking after me. And you know, you look
Speaker 1: at so many players that come into the system, and
Speaker 1: you know, not every coach can devote that kind of
Speaker 1: time and that kind of effort into into players, but
Speaker 1: they did, and like they kind of saw I guess,
Speaker 1: and the opportunity of myself and where I would go
Speaker 1: on life. And I'm forever grateful for what they've done
Speaker 1: because those tough times were made easier by them being
Speaker 1: there for me and me being able to trust them,
Speaker 1: because yeah, I think you go into a country, into
Speaker 1: a football club, and you've got no inner circle to
Speaker 1: bitch and complain about things whenever theo's shit, and like
Speaker 1: you don't want to complain to a coach because then
Speaker 1: you look like you don't give a shit or wherever
Speaker 1: it is, you know, and like you just don't have
Speaker 1: your like thing to Everyone goes to work, they go home.
Speaker 1: They usually release their stress when they go home to
Speaker 1: their partner or their family, wherever it is. I didn't
Speaker 1: have that, and like Craig and Anthony are the only
Speaker 1: ones I really could so to have them there and
Speaker 1: knowing they're in my corner and be able to kind
Speaker 1: of talk to them through things are the tough times
Speaker 1: and you know, I guess let out a bit of
Speaker 1: steam whenever I needed to and then not you know,
Speaker 1: referred on to a coach that was going to be
Speaker 1: detrimental to my career. Was something that you know, it's
Speaker 1: the inner circle and the people you really trust at
Speaker 1: the end of the day, and they were They were
Speaker 1: those for me and continue to be so I think
Speaker 1: then that was kind of like the thing that got
Speaker 1: me back on track was just having them as a
Speaker 1: support group. And I've got a lot of friends outside
Speaker 1: of football. People always ask me, oh, you're best friends
Speaker 1: of everyone at the club, and I'm like, I'm friends
Speaker 1: with everyone at the club. Don't get me wrong, but
Speaker 1: like my weekends aren't probably spent with them besides playing
Speaker 1: on the weekend playing football but I've never really done
Speaker 1: many trips overseas with them. I've never been a guy
Speaker 1: that probably goes out to lunch and coffees with the
Speaker 1: boys and stuff like that. I've always kind of done
Speaker 1: my own thing, and I've had my support group away
Speaker 1: from football because football takes up so much of my
Speaker 1: life and there's the media side of things and things
Speaker 1: I do there and the more attention from that and
Speaker 1: everything else that comes with it. And I've found an
Speaker 1: amazing group of friends internationally. They've come over here from
Speaker 1: the States and Vietnam and Sweden and all this kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. That those are my people I probably hang
Speaker 1: out with, and those are the people I put my
Speaker 1: time to. And yeah, it's it's an interesting thing because
Speaker 1: you're an American that plays AFL and you're so foreign,
Speaker 1: you don't have any experiences. They're similar to anyone else there, really,
Speaker 1: and you always feel like you're a little bit the
Speaker 1: odd one out.
Speaker 2: Most of those guys, if not all of those guys,
Speaker 2: are on a very similar journey. Like a lot of
Speaker 2: them go through high school with the idea of getting drafted,
Speaker 2: go through the draft, get picked up from eighteen, and
Speaker 2: they go through the whole journey by themselves. Like some
Speaker 2: might drop short, some might get rookie listed, but the
Speaker 2: path is pretty similar, so it same goal. Yeah, so
Speaker 2: it'd be very hard for you to come in outside
Speaker 2: of that mold and just try to slot straight in
Speaker 2: and fit in with you know, a bunch of guys
Speaker 2: that haven't experienced anything that you've experienced. I mean, no
Speaker 2: one's really experienced anything that you've experienced. Now I will
Speaker 2: touch on it seems you're mentioning all of these guys.
Speaker 2: Eddie maguire. Yeah, you've had like a really tight relationship
Speaker 2: with him over the journey, and it sounds like over
Speaker 2: your time he's done a lot for you. How is
Speaker 2: that relationship with Eddie and and what's it mean to you?
Speaker 1: Yeah, all Dad, he's a legend, him and Carlo's wife
Speaker 1: and his kids, Joan Xander. It's even like over the
Speaker 1: weekend he was up at the Carlton game obviously as
Speaker 1: you expect that to be, and he was up in
Speaker 1: his box and off the ground just kind of giving
Speaker 1: a wave to him.
Speaker 3: And yeah, he's been massive.
Speaker 1: Like I remember my first medad, I'd know you who
Speaker 1: he was, Like I was getting recruited and he's in
Speaker 1: the room and he's talking about this that and pumping
Speaker 1: up calling with such and such. My brother and I
Speaker 1: getting the taxi after the meeting and he's sitting there
Speaker 1: started getting that uber or whatever's after the meeting. Is
Speaker 1: a taxi in front of us, and his face is
Speaker 1: on the back of it. For who wants to be
Speaker 1: a millionaire at I've gone to my brother is he
Speaker 1: a big deal? And they're like, yeah, Eddie's like one
Speaker 1: of the biggest media moguls in Australia. So that was
Speaker 1: kind of like wild and just like me and my
Speaker 1: ignorance coming in here, you know, like i'd know who
Speaker 1: Nathan Buckley was. I didn't know any of these people
Speaker 1: were and I just kind of, you know, was just
Speaker 1: like all right, sweet, let's just figure it out as
Speaker 1: we go. But yeah, Edie's been he's been amazing. Like
Speaker 1: he's someone that on a weekly I'll probably send a
Speaker 1: message to and you know, talk about the game or
Speaker 1: talk about life and things like that. And he's a
Speaker 1: guy that's one of the most probably busy people in Melbourne, like,
Speaker 1: but he's always shown time for me and in every
Speaker 1: single year during Christmas, he's always looked after me and
Speaker 1: you know, had me over for dinner and stuff because
Speaker 1: obviously I'm that far away from home. And he's just
Speaker 1: one of those people, always been a support network and
Speaker 1: someone that's always you know, helped me out. Like I
Speaker 1: understand what's happened in the media and stuff with him,
Speaker 1: but I think I always try to judge people on
Speaker 1: my own interactions and he's just always been there for support.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it's it's it's good.
Speaker 2: It's good.
Speaker 1: It's amazing to have those people there because like you
Speaker 1: value those people so much. I remember back in the
Speaker 1: day and we'll talk about it. I'm sure with my
Speaker 1: eye injuries and staff, like he was the only person
Speaker 1: from the colleing football club that checked in on me
Speaker 1: on a regular basis. And it's like this guy is
Speaker 1: the most he's the busiest out of anyone else there,
Speaker 1: and he's the one sending me a message making sure
Speaker 1: I'm okay, asking him find you need food, whoever it was,
Speaker 1: and it just it just kind of those moments where
Speaker 1: you're really in the you're really in the dark times,
Speaker 1: you realize who really is in your corner, and that
Speaker 1: was someone I think that I became so much closer
Speaker 1: with and so much more grateful to have in my
Speaker 1: life after that experience. And he was just the person
Speaker 1: that kind of always made sure I was all right
Speaker 1: and you just kind of, yeah, you have those moments
Speaker 1: of depression everything else, and you realize he's the He's
Speaker 1: one of those people that's always gonna be in your corner.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a lot of people that will always have
Speaker 2: their opinions of Edin without knowing that's understandable who he is,
Speaker 2: like what's happened. But yeah, there is certain things like
Speaker 2: that that there's plenty of stories like that out there
Speaker 2: from times that he's reached out and helped help people.
Speaker 2: And yeah, it's great to see that the relationship you
Speaker 2: too have and obviously means a fair bit now. It's
Speaker 2: one of the standout highlights to me. Twenty sixteen, so
Speaker 2: still really young in your footballing journey. You get a
Speaker 2: ball straight up the guts Mason Cox just outside fifty
Speaker 2: and then a paddock. Fuck, they're all the guys in
Speaker 2: front of you, so Collingwood vg along. They're all kind
Speaker 2: of running away from you, covering up, leading up shopping.
Speaker 3: They're chasing me to Alans. I don't have to do
Speaker 3: this yeah.
Speaker 2: And off you go run take a bounce slot one
Speaker 2: from probably about forty on the run. What was going
Speaker 2: through your mind that whole journey?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Bo gets switched outside, I'm in paddocks and I'm gone, shit.
Speaker 1: And it's not like you can come off the mark.
Speaker 1: There was that much space you hadn't take. You had
Speaker 1: to take the mark. Sorry, you had to play on
Speaker 1: the mark. There's those moments in your career you don't forget,
Speaker 1: and it's like the funny moments and all that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. And I remember just sitting there and I'm going,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to bounce the ball for the first time.
Speaker 2: I think everyone was thinking it and we have all gone.
Speaker 1: Has he been taught this yet? And literally, I think
Speaker 1: it's maybe like weeks or a months prior. Pendles taught me,
Speaker 1: Like there's little things that people will teach you throughout
Speaker 1: your career, right, and Pendles taught me He's like, you
Speaker 1: have bounce it on the lass because the lasers get
Speaker 1: more grip on the ground. That fought it poss back
Speaker 1: up and doesn't skid out like it would whenever it's wet.
Speaker 1: It's smart man, Pindles. And I remember getting it and
Speaker 1: going like all right, cool, this is it? Bang as
Speaker 1: soon as I let it go, and I was like,
Speaker 1: oh that's good, that's good.
Speaker 2: It bounced back up.
Speaker 1: And then you go look up and then the players
Speaker 1: like Trav Varka and ever get trad Varco has gone
Speaker 1: and he's linked in to the goal square. Their player
Speaker 1: who I was hoping came to me goes with Trav.
Speaker 1: You know, I've gone, fuck more paddocks.
Speaker 2: It's a real dropping off the three point shooter that
Speaker 2: can't shoot it is.
Speaker 3: It's a real disrespectful kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 1: He goes back and traps kind of he's like coind
Speaker 1: of in between, So traups in the goal square and
Speaker 1: like I had the balance and I kind of run
Speaker 1: in and I'm like, I look back, Matlop's giving up.
Speaker 1: He's got this. I had to be a side to see
Speaker 1: and he's got He's gone back there. So I'm just
Speaker 1: jogging in and I'll slut the goal and then I think,
Speaker 1: thank fuck, because I would have got the biggest spray
Speaker 1: from Trav Varker and the goal square. But yeah, that
Speaker 1: was that was That was a funny moment of being like,
Speaker 1: you know, there's some things you know that I can
Speaker 1: pick up that probably aren't part of my repertoire as
Speaker 1: a recommend that you would think that I can figure
Speaker 1: out on the run and sort it out. And that's
Speaker 1: one of those moments of like doing something for the
Speaker 1: first time. And it was so funny, like I think
Speaker 1: everyone was giving me ship after it thinking like there's
Speaker 1: no chance in hell I thought that was going to happen.
Speaker 2: And yeah, I think speaking of Trev Varker, you can
Speaker 2: see there's a moment when he can see it's going
Speaker 2: through and he just opens his arms out and throws
Speaker 2: his head up like looking up to the even it's
Speaker 2: like miracles happened. Miracles. So I just want to touch
Speaker 2: on this real briefly. But you have bounced the ball
Speaker 2: a handful of times in your career, and you four
Speaker 2: you said that you could remember. Yeah, I want you
Speaker 2: to run through them for us.
Speaker 1: The Geelong one, I think we've got one. I want
Speaker 1: to say Gold Coast on the wing came in as
Speaker 1: a substitute.
Speaker 3: No one out there.
Speaker 1: Paddocks gets the ball kicked to me, I've gone ship,
Speaker 1: got to bounce it.
Speaker 2: Here the Gold Coast bouncing goal on the run.
Speaker 3: Gold Coast bouncing goal on the run COVID times. That's
Speaker 3: the other one. And then there's one more that was freemantle.
Speaker 3: Maybe I can't kick.
Speaker 2: A goal on the run. Yeah, free mantle. But I
Speaker 2: don't know if you bounce it. It was a bounce.
Speaker 3: There's another bounce. I can't remember it.
Speaker 1: But they also it's funny that like that little thing
Speaker 1: sticks out a bounce and it's like of all the
Speaker 1: things in the hundred games or only one games, whoever,
Speaker 1: it is like anytime I bounce, the ball sticks out.
Speaker 2: It's just rare stuff.
Speaker 1: Now.
Speaker 2: I guess we're probably in a great spot to just
Speaker 2: ask you a few little quick fire ones. Yeah, what
Speaker 2: is your favorite goal from your career?
Speaker 1: Favorite goal? O. That's a tough one. Fifth goal Queen's
Speaker 1: Birthday that's up there. That was like took a mark
Speaker 1: about fifty out I think on the angle, goes through
Speaker 1: for the bag, big day, Queen's Birthday lock and sealed
Speaker 1: three votes, get the trophy type deal. I knew it too,
Speaker 1: knew it. That was good fun. I want to say
Speaker 1: that was the fifth the Melbourne goal few I.
Speaker 2: Think it was like a year ago. The center Ye.
Speaker 1: Didn't do anything literally hit out bang, I'm jogging in
Speaker 1: the middle, just the dickhead on the outside. One person
Speaker 1: gets tackled, another person flicks.
Speaker 2: It over the top.
Speaker 1: I'm just there and I'm just like the ball just
Speaker 1: gets in my into my lap and then just kick
Speaker 1: the goal. That was a good one. On the boundary
Speaker 1: versus Geelong Snap, Yeah, that's a good one.
Speaker 2: One.
Speaker 3: I'll never forget.
Speaker 1: That is port Adelaide in the corner trying to do
Speaker 1: a check sid or banana, and it's like, maybe like
Speaker 1: second year, I want to say, I'm in the corner
Speaker 1: on the boundary and I'll never forget because I'm sitting
Speaker 1: there and I'm like a year or two into a rite,
Speaker 1: so I've not done many of these. But I was like, fuck,
Speaker 1: it's no expectation.
Speaker 3: They had no expectation.
Speaker 2: No one's thinking a chance.
Speaker 1: This is going in, even to the point where Pindles
Speaker 1: never Forget this comes over cheekly, acts like he's trying
Speaker 1: to talk me through. He's going to give me the receive,
Speaker 1: give me the handbover, receive, give me the handover, receive me.
Speaker 2: The audacity goes, oh my.
Speaker 1: God, I got this, Pindles, you gotta step off right
Speaker 1: spread went through it for a point, Pingels just gives
Speaker 1: me the daggers after I'm just looking away, like nope,
Speaker 1: don't see, you don't see, you don't see Pendles.
Speaker 3: Yeah, retrospectively, should have gave the handball receive.
Speaker 2: My favorite Top of Mind Richmond, but not pre Limb
Speaker 2: twenty nineteen. In traffic, there was about five of them
Speaker 2: around you. No one comes at yourself, candy, candy, candy,
Speaker 2: and then just slots it, snaps it through. It's like,
Speaker 2: come on, leave him alone alone. Oh, it's just out
Speaker 2: of nowhere. But that one is one that it doesn't
Speaker 2: get hold up. It was cool too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, celebrations around a Kiss FM, getting around it, donating
Speaker 1: money for a good cause that was good.
Speaker 2: For and out the back just the cheeky one on
Speaker 2: the road like.
Speaker 1: Barreled someone into Jamie. Jamie turns on. What the fuck
Speaker 1: is that all about?
Speaker 2: Okay, Now, this was probably in one of the more
Speaker 2: obscure things, and I assume you get asked about this
Speaker 2: a fair bit. But Joe Biden meeting the president, well
Speaker 2: he was like he was the vice president at the time,
Speaker 2: But how did that all come about? And what was
Speaker 2: he saying during the game.
Speaker 1: I had no idea what was going on. It was
Speaker 1: what we what he called murder ball, which is essentially
Speaker 1: we called it something else that's in a appropriate to
Speaker 1: say on the podcast being from Texas, but essentially tackling
Speaker 1: one with the ball. It's like a game and the
Speaker 1: recess whatever. Everyone will play. But now that that was
Speaker 1: a wild experience. One of the coolest things I think
Speaker 1: experience was that's come from AFL was that Dad knew
Speaker 1: before I did, because, like I told, my dad was like, oh,
Speaker 1: the US consolated asked me who I've got a really
Speaker 1: good relationship. They're like, we need to get a background
Speaker 1: check on you. We've got high profile person coming into
Speaker 1: the country. I had no idea who it was. At
Speaker 1: that time. They hadn't released it, and they can't release
Speaker 1: these things until like kind of pretty close to it.
Speaker 1: So the media got onto a Dad knew that that happened.
Speaker 1: And then my dad, who listens to like Triple M
Speaker 1: in the morning, and it's like, yeah, I think this
Speaker 1: is like what three pm US time, like six am
Speaker 1: Australian time. He's listening to like Triple Them in the morning.
Speaker 1: They said, oh, Joe Biden's coming, So my Dad calls
Speaker 1: me at like eight am and he's like, Mason.
Speaker 3: Are you are you hosting Joe Biden?
Speaker 2: Is that who it is?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: I know you got the clares ball. I was like,
Speaker 3: I don't fucking know.
Speaker 1: Like he's smart man, Old Phil Cox and surely enough
Speaker 1: forget to call maybe an hour later like, hey, just
Speaker 1: the heads up. This has gone into the media. Joe
Speaker 1: Biden's coming to town and that's who you're kind of looking after.
Speaker 1: So to say that you kind of like that was crazy.
Speaker 1: And I don't think people here understood how much of
Speaker 1: a motorcade and experience and everything else that comes with
Speaker 1: the person of that kind of status coming to Australia.
Speaker 1: They shut down the streets. You know, They've got two
Speaker 1: like two massive airplanes just full of equipment to bring
Speaker 1: in just for one person. Obviously the people come with them,
Speaker 1: but like just to show one person there, and that
Speaker 1: was an amazing kind of life moment I'll never forget.
Speaker 1: Like hosting a vice president. That's pretty crazy to think,
Speaker 1: and he had no idea what was going on. They
Speaker 1: had the secret service, nicest people they ever made, but
Speaker 1: one of them like full trench coat earpiece like matrix
Speaker 1: who you would picture to be Secret Service was not
Speaker 1: trying to blend in whatsoever, just stood next to you know,
Speaker 1: next to our aisle the whole time or a row
Speaker 1: and it was just the whole thing was pretty wild
Speaker 1: because you just don't realize, I guess how much it
Speaker 1: goes with it. And like there was Secret Service everywhere.
Speaker 1: They had wept the whole MCG beforehand make sure there's
Speaker 1: no issues, Like there was police, like fifty police policemen
Speaker 1: and women, you know, outside of the room to make
Speaker 1: sure there's no issues. Like it was crazy. And then
Speaker 1: there was like secret Service like dotted in the seats
Speaker 1: that we didn't know secret secret Service. Yeah, and then
Speaker 1: like we go in and then there was like different.
Speaker 1: Then they had like a swap of Secret Service at
Speaker 1: like halftime or like a quarter time or something like that,
Speaker 1: and there was like so many things in motion behind
Speaker 1: the scenes just for this one person to be there,
Speaker 1: and it was so cool, and yeah, that's that's a memory,
Speaker 1: Like that's up there with anything I've done in the
Speaker 1: AFL field. And shout out to colinwa because I had
Speaker 1: to have a very stern conversation with them whenever I
Speaker 1: was told I was going to host the Vice president.
Speaker 1: We were playing a big game Frankston Dolphins in the
Speaker 1: VFL that week and sends up fins up, fins up
Speaker 1: told frang At and yeah, so I had to ask
Speaker 1: the club essentially permission to skip the game to go
Speaker 1: host the vice Isn't it.
Speaker 2: A note from Joe being like, please leave him, Please
Speaker 2: let him come out and play.
Speaker 1: He's a sitizen of us, not yet you and I
Speaker 1: remember Neil Baum was the gym at the time, and
Speaker 1: I had to because I knew Bucks is a very
Speaker 1: stern man. I loved Ducks, but I knew neil Baum
Speaker 1: was a bit softer, you know, I could get into
Speaker 1: Neil Baum a bit. So went into Neil's office and
Speaker 1: I said, look, this opportunity has come up. This is
Speaker 1: what's happening. You know, it's just something that I could do,
Speaker 1: skip this Frankston game. And he goes, I'll have a
Speaker 1: conversation with Bucks. He doesn't have a conversation.
Speaker 2: Bucks.
Speaker 3: Box comes back to me because I understand what this means.
Speaker 3: We'll let you have it.
Speaker 1: So create to the club the coach Neil and sorry
Speaker 1: Bucks and Neil at the time for let me do that,
Speaker 1: because it was a moment I'll never forget my life and.
Speaker 3: Really cool, just really cool. I still about the pin.
Speaker 1: I've got a little coin from him and stuff like
Speaker 1: that too, And now he's President of the United States
Speaker 1: and it's just a crazy cool life experience story you
Speaker 1: can tell people.
Speaker 2: And the Secret Service couldn't have stopped you if you
Speaker 2: wanted to.
Speaker 1: I literally could not have been more immobile in my
Speaker 1: life because I knew there was a sniper rifle at
Speaker 1: my forehead quick all the time.
Speaker 2: It was legit though.
Speaker 1: It was me and Matt just sitting there like just
Speaker 1: you know, like in the airplanes here this armress question
Speaker 1: marks like he got the armrest for sure.
Speaker 3: There was no doubt Joe Biden is getting the arm wress.
Speaker 1: And it was just one of those things like it
Speaker 1: was so like nerve wracking that kind of made it
Speaker 1: awkward and like I had never been in a position
Speaker 1: of something like that right, Like that was next tier,
Speaker 1: top tier type stuff that was going on, and I
Speaker 1: just felt so he made it really comfortable. Like as
Speaker 1: far as charisma, he is an amazing human. I get
Speaker 1: why he's a politician because he just fits the bill
Speaker 1: really well. He can maneuver in and out of conversations
Speaker 1: a bit like Eddie does, you know, and he makes
Speaker 1: everyone feel valued that he talks to, which is really
Speaker 1: it's a very very good and tough skill to learn,
Speaker 1: and damn he was. Really he's really good at that.
Speaker 1: But I still to this day I think the reason
Speaker 1: he came out to Australia obviously he opened up a
Speaker 1: part of the hospital his son had brain cancer, I
Speaker 1: think was the reasoning he opened that up with the
Speaker 1: ribbon cutting. But another reason he brought his granddaughters and
Speaker 1: they wanted to see a koala and a kangaroo. Because
Speaker 1: at halftime like, oh, where's the you know, where's the
Speaker 1: granddaughters over there is? And he's like, oh, they're in
Speaker 1: Heelsville already, like pat and kangaroos and koalas they wanted
Speaker 1: to go see. And into this day I still think
Speaker 1: that was a main draw factor for him to come
Speaker 1: out here.
Speaker 2: You should have went out and did that one Now,
Speaker 2: from one experience, go to the Killsville or the or
Speaker 2: the granddaughters.
Speaker 3: Okay, I just want to clear that out there.
Speaker 2: Now. One experience of Joe Biden at the g to
Speaker 2: another experienced tenant creek in the middle of nowhere now
Speaker 2: amazing journey. And we went on this trip together and
Speaker 2: it was it's always a real eye opener and anyone
Speaker 2: that works at the club, it's like, you got to
Speaker 2: get on this trip. Yeah, talk to us through that trip. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And the effect that it had on you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's it feels like you're in a different country.
Speaker 1: It really does. And the vast difference in the way
Speaker 1: of life between you know, the city to the outback
Speaker 1: is it's pretty crazy.
Speaker 2: It was.
Speaker 1: It was a very you know, like confronting at times,
Speaker 1: but also like I remember, there was a lady there
Speaker 1: that took us through and talked about some of the
Speaker 1: negative things that were happening in the community and the
Speaker 1: tough things that were happening because of situations, and.
Speaker 2: It was it was very eye opening, it really was.
Speaker 1: And I think just because I had gone straight to
Speaker 1: Melbourne and I was just known the city life, really
Speaker 1: I didn't realize just exactly what was happening outside of,
Speaker 1: you know, the bubble of Melbourne. And I've always been
Speaker 1: a massive advocate for the digitous community and had some
Speaker 1: amazing experiences with them over the years, but I think
Speaker 1: that Tenant Creek one was the one that really opened
Speaker 1: mars As to one of the power I think that
Speaker 1: AFL has as athletes and what we can do to
Speaker 1: help influence people in the right way. And being in
Speaker 1: those very remote communities, it was like waterloo downs we
Speaker 1: were talking about.
Speaker 3: We had to like walk through like floodwaters to.
Speaker 1: Get to and the head I remember sitting on the
Speaker 1: hood of the land Cruiser are like going through it.
Speaker 1: There's just like these really remote places and you know,
Speaker 1: the one thing that brought everyone together was sport, was
Speaker 1: football and you just realize. I think that twenty eight
Speaker 1: team trip to Tenant was just one of those realizations
Speaker 1: of just the power and impact you can have as
Speaker 1: a sports person. That kind of made me realize it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a beautiful thing that that got me really invested
Speaker 1: into the indigenous side of things. And like I said,
Speaker 1: I've gone up to Tivy Islands and don't community work
Speaker 1: up there and doing community work all the way from
Speaker 1: Gold Coast all the way up to the very tip
Speaker 1: and Bamagay up in k p Ork and something very
Speaker 1: passionate about to help change the futures for the better
Speaker 1: for some of these some of these people that are
Speaker 1: you know, living a bit tough for limited remote communities
Speaker 1: and you know, to try to give them opportunities elsewhere. It's,
Speaker 1: you know, something I'm very passionate about. Yeah, that Tenant
Speaker 1: Creek definitely changed me. Yeah, just some amazing people you
Speaker 1: meet there and just what the community does and how
Speaker 1: sport brings everyone together is it's such a powerful thing.
Speaker 2: And I can talk about tee wee.
Speaker 1: They were nuts up there, like walked into the like
Speaker 1: there was kids and they found out that I was there.
Speaker 1: We're waiting for us at the dock as we went fishing,
Speaker 1: waiting for us at the dock every sing all day.
Speaker 1: And there's kids walking the fence line trying to get
Speaker 1: a glimpse of moon, or there's crocs in the water,
Speaker 1: Like just some stuff you just wouldn't think in Melbourne
Speaker 1: would be happening in the same country. And you go
Speaker 1: to the local pub and they're they're throwing the Callingwood
Speaker 1: theme song on for like an hour straight on loop,
Speaker 1: just whenever I'm there, and like people are hanging off you,
Speaker 1: and kids are hanging off you and they can't believe it,
Speaker 1: you know, and talking about we're always you know uncle
Speaker 1: and you know brother and all this kind of stuff,
Speaker 1: and it's just such a cool experience to be in
Speaker 1: these remote communities that like, you know, that is what
Speaker 1: they live and breathe as if l and like I
Speaker 1: didn't know it existed, you know. And yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know if I've ever told this story of There's a
Speaker 1: lady I met on that trip up to the TV
Speaker 1: on and she was one of the last elders I think,
Speaker 1: or one of the living elders of their tribe.
Speaker 2: And she was there and met her.
Speaker 1: Very lovely lady, older, older lady, and I've gone back
Speaker 1: to Melbourne and then really really Junior actually sent me
Speaker 1: this and I feel people sent me this and it
Speaker 1: was she had unfortunately passed away, and that he was
Speaker 1: telling the story of how she flew an American flag
Speaker 1: outside of her house, mad Collingwood fan flew an American
Speaker 1: flag outside of her house because she like was a
Speaker 1: massive fan of myself. And I was thinking, me impacting
Speaker 1: someone in a remote community on the TV Islands enough
Speaker 1: for them to fly an American flag outside of their
Speaker 1: house makes no freaking sense whatsoever. But this lady was
Speaker 1: the most lovely human. I met her when I was
Speaker 1: up there, and she like I said, she unfortunately passed away,
Speaker 1: and then he's sent me this photo and I was like,
Speaker 1: I was blown away and it was her casket and
Speaker 1: the casket was in collingwood stripes, then had the logo
Speaker 1: in the middle, and then it had Mason Cox's forty
Speaker 1: six on it. Crazy on a casket in the TV Islands,
Speaker 1: And I've asked them, they said, it's fine for me
Speaker 1: to tell the story. But that was a moment of
Speaker 1: just like, yeah, there's a twenty eighteen Intennant Creek. But
Speaker 1: I think that was another moment where I was like,
Speaker 1: holy smokes, like what we do we probably take for
Speaker 1: granted of like what we do day and it's pretty
Speaker 1: phenomenal how much people love it and breathe it and
Speaker 1: just live it and you talk about, you know, bleeding
Speaker 1: for your team and stuff like that. Like there's people
Speaker 1: that that is their life and that is their happiness.
Speaker 2: There's their joy.
Speaker 1: Is the one thing they look forward to every single
Speaker 1: week is watching comould play and it just makes you
Speaker 1: have a different perspective to footy. Well, it really does.
Speaker 1: And that was, Yeah, that was one of those moments
Speaker 1: that I'll never forget. And it's just like a crazy
Speaker 1: life experience for me to think back on.
Speaker 2: And yeah, you leave that just the joy in their faces,
Speaker 2: seeing their faces and like genuinely light up, especially you
Speaker 2: because you're even more foreign. You're over two meters toll.
Speaker 2: They're like sitting on your shoulders and stuff running around.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it's also like a carrot to get them
Speaker 2: to go to school and keep attendance up. And it's
Speaker 2: genuinely life out there, like they live and breathe it,
Speaker 2: and it's yeah, it is awesome to go out there
Speaker 2: and see firsthand how much it does mean into them
Speaker 2: because it gets thrown around a lot, like footy is
Speaker 2: everything to some people, but like it genuinely is out
Speaker 2: there and it makes a massive difference to those trips.
Speaker 2: Now another we're getting into some good games and we
Speaker 2: actually have proof that you can play more than one
Speaker 2: good game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, can you tell the people on social media.
Speaker 2: That now twenty eighteen Queen's Birthday, shout out to the og,
Speaker 2: Prayers to the Queen. Five goals still your best to
Speaker 2: date goal holes? Yeah, yeah, you have kicked a bag. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you've kicked a bag. You go on to win the
Speaker 2: Neil Danaher Medal Trophy. But yeah, talk us through that game.
Speaker 1: So I was thinks, like Brody and I are playing
Speaker 1: the rock against Max Gone, and that was kind of
Speaker 1: one of those moments, I guess, going against one of
Speaker 1: the bigger ruckmans and then one of the better rockmans
Speaker 1: in the camp, whether an idea would stack up, and
Speaker 1: luckily enough that that worked out. And there's another moment.
Speaker 1: I'll talk about this because the Melbourne game, right, so
Speaker 1: let's talk about sliding doors moments into my third year
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen, it would have been very last game we
Speaker 1: played Melbourne. Melbourne's has to win to get into the eight.
Speaker 1: We win, we knock him out of the eight. We
Speaker 1: weren't making finals, right.
Speaker 2: Lindon Nunn goes nuts on the side.
Speaker 1: Of nuts and I remember after the game, he goes nuts.
Speaker 1: I remember going over actually remember going over to Dunny
Speaker 1: and I just said to him, I said, man, I
Speaker 1: appreciate it. It's been a good ride. I'm appreciure all to
Speaker 1: help you've kind of given me and whatnot, just kind
Speaker 1: of giving thanks. And he was kind of like, what
Speaker 1: are you talking about you now? And I was at
Speaker 1: that point I kind of already had something in the
Speaker 1: mix as far as me going to another team, and
Speaker 1: because the club hadn't given me a contract, another team
Speaker 1: had come to the table and given me one, and
Speaker 1: I thought that was the last game I was gonna
Speaker 1: play for Collingwood. I remember getting to the end and
Speaker 1: going to the post match and that was the wild
Speaker 1: thing is is like that was the big question mark?
Speaker 1: Can we played Brodie Grundy and Mason Coxon the same
Speaker 1: team In that game? We dominated Melbourne, we won, everything
Speaker 1: was on the line for them. We ended up winning
Speaker 1: that game and it was kind of proof that we
Speaker 1: could and the club probably had this moment. I was
Speaker 1: ship like this might be the future.
Speaker 2: Who knows.
Speaker 1: And I hadn't had a contract there from the club.
Speaker 1: I had a contract from another team, and I was
Speaker 1: mentally I was out the door and I was like,
Speaker 1: it's been It's been a good ride. Yeah, I'm going
Speaker 1: to move on to another chapter in life and I'm're
Speaker 1: getting to the end of the game. You talk about
Speaker 1: people in your life, and Eddie he always talk funny.
Speaker 1: I we always talk about the funny moment of him
Speaker 1: finding out and he came up to me and I
Speaker 1: just said, look, I appreciate all the help you've had
Speaker 1: over the years and everything you've kind of given to
Speaker 1: me and the support you've kind of given to me.
Speaker 1: And he's like, what are you talking about? What are you?
Speaker 1: You're not leaving us, so are you? And I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say anything, but like it's just,
Speaker 1: you know, I just want to say thank you so
Speaker 1: much for everything you've done. And he talks about going
Speaker 1: home and I'll talk to his family about this. But
Speaker 1: he goes home and throws his jacket on the countes
Speaker 1: and what the.
Speaker 2: Fuck have we done?
Speaker 1: Are you kidding me? We're losing Mace. Mason's not going
Speaker 1: to fucking say this. He goes this huge tyrant for
Speaker 1: the whole line, and he's on the phone with you know,
Speaker 1: with all the different people at the club saying you
Speaker 1: can't and yeah, Like in my head, I'd already kind
Speaker 1: of made the commitment. I'd verbally committed to another team.
Speaker 1: And there was some things that happened behind the scenes
Speaker 1: around visas and stuff that I'll talk more about at
Speaker 1: some point in my life. But things have happened, and
Speaker 1: over the next few weeks, I guess I don't know
Speaker 1: if Eddie made phone calls. I don't know the details
Speaker 1: to this, but miraculously, all of a sudden, the club
Speaker 1: came to and came to me with a contract that
Speaker 1: matched the other one. That was the reason I stayed.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it happened very quickly. But I think that
Speaker 1: sliding Door's moment of me coming back into the team,
Speaker 1: it was in my mind the last game I was
Speaker 1: ever going to play for. Collingwood played really well with
Speaker 1: Brody and they sold a future of us playing in
Speaker 1: the tandem, and that kind of got me to stay
Speaker 1: at the club, which is kind of crazy to think.
Speaker 2: And some massive things happened throughout the twenty eighteen season.
Speaker 2: I will say that Queen's Birthday was my last game. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it didn't look like a lot was going to
Speaker 2: happen with Collingwood to that point. I was like, I'm
Speaker 2: getting off this sync. But there's also something else bigger
Speaker 2: at play than that. Murray Swinton, who came through the club,
Speaker 2: who was suffering from M and D, was just a
Speaker 2: massive Collingwood man. Got around with your scrapbook full of
Speaker 2: Collingwood moments and stuff, had a really powerful impact on
Speaker 2: the club through that twenty eighteen season.
Speaker 1: Murray was most people like you'd been diagnosed with M
Speaker 1: and D was going through this rough trial of treatment
Speaker 1: and everything else. To have him there as part of it,
Speaker 1: we really kind of took him in as our own
Speaker 1: his family also, and you know, you talked about the
Speaker 1: scrap books and stuff like that, we talked about and
Speaker 1: everything else, and it just one of those people just
Speaker 1: loved Colin.
Speaker 3: I just loved it.
Speaker 1: And that I think brought us back to, just like
Speaker 1: I said before, the influence we can have on people,
Speaker 1: on how much it meant to other people and our fans,
Speaker 1: and it really kind of brought us to this realization
Speaker 1: of it's bigger than just us as a group. It's
Speaker 1: you know, we bring the community with us and everyone
Speaker 1: else and it provides so much happiness for so many people.
Speaker 1: And Murray was a big reason I think we had
Speaker 1: successful on Queen's Birthday only wrong, but also throughout the
Speaker 1: rest of the year, and we put quotes up on
Speaker 1: the board from him and you know, throughout the year
Speaker 1: and talking about like how fortunate we should be, how
Speaker 1: great grateful we should be of what we've been able
Speaker 1: to do, and you know, the opportunity to side in
Speaker 1: front of us. So Murray was a big reason I
Speaker 1: think for a lot of success in that year.
Speaker 2: And yeah, he came through the club. We did a
Speaker 2: story on him and he was very selfless, like he
Speaker 2: wasn't really thinking, he was thinking about everyone else before himself,
Speaker 2: and yeah, it's such a touching story. Obviously Bucks went
Speaker 2: down the slide wearing Murray's Firefighting Kid and yeah, it
Speaker 2: definitely had a big impact on Bucks as well. So yeah,
Speaker 2: a very touching story and just a reminder to support
Speaker 2: M and D danaher foundation. Get on the Beanie is
Speaker 2: ahead of this year's King's Birthday game now the big
Speaker 2: one heading into the pre Limb twenty eighteen. It all
Speaker 2: culminated in essentially you stopping Richmond from getting the four feet.
Speaker 2: We all say, yeah, we got teammates or whatever whatever
Speaker 2: people say, it's all not in this case, it was you,
Speaker 2: Mason c.
Speaker 3: I already had a good game too.
Speaker 2: Was there anything different about this game that set it
Speaker 2: up to be what it was or did it all
Speaker 2: just fall into place at the right time. I kind
Speaker 2: of think it.
Speaker 1: It kind of marries up to the rest of my
Speaker 1: career of just being an underdog at every point, and
Speaker 1: that's what we were on the day. Like no one
Speaker 1: expected us to win. I think Richmond had how many
Speaker 1: games they wanted to row a d MCG blah blah,
Speaker 1: this massive streak and I had won the two previous
Speaker 1: years in the Grand Final, Andy all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: No one gave us a chance, and I was like
Speaker 1: we were playing pretty well, but like obviously Richmond was
Speaker 1: just at their peak, the peak of their powers, and
Speaker 1: yeah it was. It was interesting, like I think going
Speaker 1: into it, like I had an epidura on my back
Speaker 1: the week before, so that kind of put some I
Speaker 1: had some issues, I guess health wise and whatnot, and
Speaker 1: got the epidura and that kind of made me feel
Speaker 1: back to normal. And then kind of was like, well,
Speaker 1: you got nothing to lose here, like no one picture,
Speaker 1: no one.
Speaker 2: Things you don't when so you're playing against arguably one
Speaker 2: of the best defensive lineups, like going around like Alex rant.
Speaker 1: Like it was They're a good, good outfit, and yeah,
Speaker 1: it just was one of those things like you just
Speaker 1: the whole it wasn't just myself either, it was the
Speaker 1: whole team was in flow state, like it was just
Speaker 1: it was wild, Like it's similar to essential the first
Speaker 1: half of the Grand Final until we lost but everything
Speaker 1: seemed to be working and everyone was clicking, everyone was
Speaker 1: on the same page. And I think I was probably
Speaker 1: just the benefactor of that, like just being the person
Speaker 1: in the forward line that we kind of looked to
Speaker 1: to kick a goal and you know, was on on
Speaker 1: the day and kind of got I guess the the
Speaker 1: credit in the sense of everyone else is good doings.
Speaker 1: So you look on those games in their career defining
Speaker 1: moments and stuff like that, and everyone will always mention it,
Speaker 1: which is awesome to have that, I guess in your
Speaker 1: in your memory bank.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: It was a wild scenario.
Speaker 1: I hope like mom and Dad were there, and I
Speaker 1: talk about like one of my favorite memories from the days,
Speaker 1: I used to kind of I can't do anymore.
Speaker 3: It doesn't lie me, but.
Speaker 1: I used to go up to the edge of the
Speaker 1: MCG at the race after games and just see, like
Speaker 1: the MCG is an empty kind of like coliseums. It's
Speaker 1: a it's a like kind of a weird feeling and
Speaker 1: eerie feeling, but like really cool at the same time.
Speaker 1: And I used to do that as just a coming
Speaker 1: down moment from like the craziness and the you know,
Speaker 1: the atmosphere and everything else from games and you're up
Speaker 1: all night, you know, thinking about this, that and the other.
Speaker 1: And that was kind of my way of just like
Speaker 1: taking a breath, was going up there and just kind
Speaker 1: of looking around, being like, life's pretty fucking crazy. And
Speaker 1: went up there, and the thing I remember probably the
Speaker 1: most from the whole game is like being up there
Speaker 1: and my mom. I wasn't aware of it until she
Speaker 1: she had walked up the race and put her arm
Speaker 1: around me, and she just kind of said, like, you know,
Speaker 1: I'm so proud of you and and what you've been
Speaker 1: able to do.
Speaker 3: It's pretty crazy where life takes your.
Speaker 2: Kind of thing.
Speaker 1: And that's that's the number one People can talk about
Speaker 1: goalsy kick, talking shit to whoever it is, this and that.
Speaker 1: But that's the one thing I remember the most and
Speaker 1: probably tells you how much, Yeah, that means to me
Speaker 1: as far as family, But yeah, there was a career
Speaker 1: de finding moment, I guess. And to think that like
Speaker 1: the guy who was four years and knowing what the
Speaker 1: sport was about, to you're playing to a Grand final,
Speaker 1: it's just absurd. And just the absolute storm that came
Speaker 1: after that week of just everything that is a Grand
Speaker 1: Final was such a learning moment for me, I think,
Speaker 1: And how would.
Speaker 2: The attention post that You're playing the biggest sport in
Speaker 2: Australia on the biggest club in the land and you
Speaker 2: just taught to pieces the prelim final. How is the
Speaker 2: attention after that going into a Grand Final? Oh?
Speaker 1: It as wild, like just yeah, I don't I don't
Speaker 1: even know how to describe it, to be honest. I
Speaker 1: remember we had our media day at the club. I
Speaker 1: think I was there for an extra hour and a
Speaker 1: half or two hours after doing interviews with people, and
Speaker 1: I wasn't happy with that because I was trying to
Speaker 1: focus on the game and it was just kind of
Speaker 1: this whole thing of like trying to make the club
Speaker 1: is trying to make the most of the opportunity of
Speaker 1: being in a Grand Final. I understand that, but also
Speaker 1: the players were, you know, in a unique standpoint of
Speaker 1: like just you know, the situation beating Richmond, going into
Speaker 1: Grand final versus West coastin you know, been what eighteen
Speaker 1: years since the last Grand Final and being such a
Speaker 1: big club brings a lot of attention, So yeah, it
Speaker 1: was it was a whirlwind of a week, like so
Speaker 1: much happening. The brothers started like flying in and then
Speaker 1: you know, surprise the parents and mom and dad were there,
Speaker 1: and then trying to organize tickets and everything goes with it,
Speaker 1: and then they got the parade and it's just literally
Speaker 1: every day is like something new, and it was just
Speaker 1: like just chaos, absolute chaos, and it was cool. Now,
Speaker 1: Like I mean, I look back and so fortunate to
Speaker 1: be able to experience that. I always kind of say
Speaker 1: it is everyone talks about that year. Oh, you're so
Speaker 1: close to like winning the whole thing ball bah, you know,
Speaker 1: you're one kick away and all this kind of shit.
Speaker 1: But to be honest, like me from an experience standpoints,
Speaker 1: like I've experienced everything, but carrying a gold medal around
Speaker 1: my neck and life is a bad experiences. You know.
Speaker 1: I can tell you most people I probably won a
Speaker 1: Grand Final and have a Premiership medal don't see it
Speaker 1: every day. I probably would think about that, you know,
Speaker 1: every day of my career and what I've been able
Speaker 1: to do and some of the experiences I've come through it.
Speaker 1: So I'm very fortunate in being able to experience that
Speaker 1: what I've loved to win it. Yes, well, I hopefully
Speaker 1: win one in the future, yes, but looking back, I
Speaker 1: can't be upset with the opportunities of come my way
Speaker 1: from the decisions I made. Same I mean looking back,
Speaker 1: I mean I could have sung with Richmond or I
Speaker 1: first came to the country, and I could be sitting
Speaker 1: here with three medals, maybe even four exactly.
Speaker 2: Oh well, there was one piece we won't touched too
Speaker 2: much on the Grand Final.
Speaker 3: Don't remember it locked that out of the memory.
Speaker 2: But you did talk about seeing your old man while
Speaker 2: you were up on stage. Just after the parade.
Speaker 3: Is the funniest thing. So you got in the parade,
Speaker 3: roight slot parade in.
Speaker 1: So you go up onto the stage, the captains both
Speaker 1: touch the cop and hold it up whatever it is,
Speaker 1: show it to the fans, you know, and then it's
Speaker 1: the awkward who lets go of it?
Speaker 2: Last? Bullshit? Whatever.
Speaker 1: I get on stage, and I'll never forget because I
Speaker 1: knew my parents are there, my brothers are coming to town,
Speaker 1: like it was a big house. And then like I'm scanning,
Speaker 1: you know, trying to find my parents in the crowd,
Speaker 1: and I see my dad. My dad is wearing one
Speaker 1: of me the most horrendous kits you've ever seen. He's
Speaker 1: got the big Cockzilla shirt, which is the hilarious love that.
Speaker 1: And then he's got this like hair piece that like
Speaker 1: it's like a mohawk three sixty round the head. We'll
Speaker 1: shirt on social but it's like hair piece up and
Speaker 1: he's got it. He's just grinning from here to hear
Speaker 1: it is like he's loving it more than I am.
Speaker 1: He's just living the absolute dream, this man.
Speaker 2: And it was.
Speaker 1: It was one of the funniest moments of my life
Speaker 1: because I couldn't stop laughing the whole time I was
Speaker 1: out there.
Speaker 2: I was like, that's my father, doesn't everyone knowing?
Speaker 3: Everyone doing everyone, Let's go.
Speaker 2: He's so high. It reminded me of the photo's hilarious,
Speaker 2: but it reminded me of like a preschool of going
Speaker 2: to primary school for the first time. Like just proud
Speaker 2: as punch, Proud as punch. It was great. Great to see.
Speaker 2: Now let's flick through the tail end of this because
Speaker 2: we're getting lunk. There's a bit of a downside coming
Speaker 2: out of the back end of this, and it's your
Speaker 2: eye injuries now injuries, because there's a whole heap of them.
Speaker 2: They're like hardly hanging in there inside your scale, so
Speaker 2: talk us through this. You copped finger to the eye,
Speaker 2: went all the way to the back of the scale.
Speaker 2: You got detached. Retina's coming out of the wazoo dark rooms,
Speaker 2: laying on your back, can't do anything, can't see anyone,
Speaker 2: frustrating recovery because it's not just like a standard ankle
Speaker 2: or like a hamstring or something. It's your eyes. And
Speaker 2: also fearing that this could be it for the future
Speaker 2: of your football, but also your vision. Like there's a
Speaker 2: lot going on in your head. What's this rollercoaster journey
Speaker 2: been about? And this is before we get to your
Speaker 2: stuff about playing in goggles in front of hundreds of
Speaker 2: thousands of people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the eye injury by far most depressing dark times
Speaker 1: in my life, Like can safely say that.
Speaker 3: And it's the whole thing.
Speaker 1: Being away from home, Yeah, your work and your job
Speaker 1: and being not being able to do that and not
Speaker 1: being able to show up to work, and then you
Speaker 1: lose one of your senses and you're just essentially putting
Speaker 1: full faith in doctors and you have no idea what
Speaker 1: to expect, and it was it seemed somewhat innocuous, never happened,
Speaker 1: and didn't think any of it, and then whenever I
Speaker 1: went and saw the doctor essentially not only that, but
Speaker 1: had the two detached threaten as I came out of it,
Speaker 1: and it was blind for a decent chunk and one
Speaker 1: of the worst things I probably don't talk about too much.
Speaker 1: One of the worst things about it is you come
Speaker 1: out of there right And I remember going to a
Speaker 1: game and playing like Geelong and a semiar prelim, I think,
Speaker 1: and I couldn't see anyone on the field. I was
Speaker 1: just sitting there and just thinking to myself like, probably
Speaker 1: never going to play this game again. I probably never
Speaker 1: going to be able to go back out there and
Speaker 1: be able to perform on the big stage. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's quite depressing times You're thinking, like what do I
Speaker 1: do next in life?
Speaker 3: Like what's what's the next thing?
Speaker 2: Is?
Speaker 1: What can I do? Can I even write an email?
Speaker 1: I can't see at the moment, So like, am I
Speaker 1: ever going to be able to work a normal job again?
Speaker 1: Am I ever going to be able to, you know,
Speaker 1: do the simple things in life that I took for
Speaker 1: granted for a long.
Speaker 3: Time, and I didn't know the answers to it at
Speaker 3: that point. And get to the next scene.
Speaker 1: I think it is progressively get better, but obviously you're
Speaker 1: waiting on time because you can't just flick your fingers
Speaker 1: and go, okay, everything's back like to normal.
Speaker 3: It was. It was a long process. I'm still going
Speaker 3: through it now.
Speaker 1: But I got to the next year, and it would
Speaker 1: have been in the best shape of my life going
Speaker 1: into that next year, and we unfortunately I couldn't see,
Speaker 1: which doesn't help. It was in the best shape of
Speaker 1: my life and going into like twenty twenty, was really
Speaker 1: looking to have a great year, but just like physically
Speaker 1: couldn't see anything. Like I think I've talked about it
Speaker 1: as like I was going into marketing contests. The ball
Speaker 1: was coming in, I would just engage with the defender
Speaker 1: because I had no idea where the ball was going
Speaker 1: to land, and I was just essentially hoping that he
Speaker 1: knew where the ball was going to go, and I
Speaker 1: could just last second kind of put the arms out
Speaker 1: and take a mark and wasn't launching the ball whatsoever.
Speaker 1: And it was essentially half lined out there trying to
Speaker 1: play football, which is impossible say tackle. On the fact
Speaker 1: that we're going through a pandemic. I can't even see
Speaker 1: doctors to get properly like looked at I'm essentially just
Speaker 1: going off phone calls at this point, trying a bunch
Speaker 1: of different options as far as contacts, and nothing working.
Speaker 1: It was just frustrating, like so frustrating because you just
Speaker 1: you felt physically like I'm the shaped my life. But
Speaker 1: then you have something that is so necessary and it's
Speaker 1: such a necessity to football you can't fix and you
Speaker 1: can't do anything to make better, and you're sitting there
Speaker 1: and that's what's holding you back, and that was like
Speaker 1: the shittiest thing. Like it was not only that the
Speaker 1: covidself obviously everything else of the chaos and stress of that,
Speaker 1: but the fact that you couldn't properly do your job
Speaker 1: and you had these high expectations of yourself, wanted to
Speaker 1: be successful and felt like you're in the best shape
Speaker 1: of your life, and your body was just not allowing
Speaker 1: you to actually complete just sacked as shit. And you
Speaker 1: go through that year and I'm one, so I SENTI
Speaker 1: had to play X amount of games to be able
Speaker 1: to get into another contracted year, And there's stories behind that,
Speaker 1: I'm sure I'll tell at some point in my life.
Speaker 1: But eventually ended up getting the extension, which was massive
Speaker 1: for me because I wasn't really sure what the future
Speaker 1: was going to hold, and everyone's in this depressive state
Speaker 1: of being, you know, absolute shitout, and I think we
Speaker 1: were like I can't remember what we were in the hub.
Speaker 2: We went, you beat West Coast which was one of
Speaker 2: the old time finals, and then came out and couldn't
Speaker 2: back it up. Unfortunately.
Speaker 1: Yeah, West Coast goes out and that was kind of
Speaker 1: like I think went into that we were fucked after
Speaker 1: that game.
Speaker 2: But because that was the one where they had you
Speaker 2: sleeping in caravan, all of that stuff outside.
Speaker 1: Like just shamble shit show trying to get it together
Speaker 1: in West Coast, you know, with Mark McAllan essentially a
Speaker 1: different country at the time, not wanting us to win
Speaker 1: that game, did everything in his power to make sure
Speaker 1: we couldn't. And it was kind of like this bullshit
Speaker 1: of politics and sport that kind of ran through and
Speaker 1: it was like, we're looking from the other side. It
Speaker 1: was embarrassing the way that like politics handled that and
Speaker 1: we were putting the worst situation essentially handcuffed the whole
Speaker 1: way through. And then we got to the game and
Speaker 1: just gave a big fuck you to West Coast.
Speaker 3: And when by one point.
Speaker 1: That was one of those moments I think where myself
Speaker 1: and DC were playing at the time together and.
Speaker 2: It clicked again.
Speaker 1: Last game of the year, last game of the year
Speaker 1: and or second to last game of the year, and
Speaker 1: you kicked three, kick three, and there was a guy,
Speaker 1: never forget it, this guy in the stadium or in
Speaker 1: the stands. He's this big, overweight fella in the cheer squad.
Speaker 1: And I'm on the line, I think I'd kicked one,
Speaker 1: and he's there just giving it to me, saying, you
Speaker 1: fucking Trump supporter in American piece of ship.
Speaker 2: Oh, going at me.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at this guy must be the wildest human
Speaker 1: I've ever met, you know. He's like, oh you're gom Yeah.
Speaker 2: Missing that, you know.
Speaker 1: And then kick the second kick the third gave him
Speaker 1: the sh and told him to sit his ass back down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that man just didn't say a single thing the
Speaker 1: rest of the game. And it's those it's those moments
Speaker 1: where like you want to prove people wrong, you know,
Speaker 1: and that's what that gets me up. And about touch you,
Speaker 1: I'm like, all right, I'm to just put people back
Speaker 1: in their fucking place. But yeah, that that game was amazing.
Speaker 1: I think in my career looking back, in some of
Speaker 1: those games that you're up against the wall, no one
Speaker 1: expects you to win and you somehow come out on
Speaker 1: top and the situation and of course taked onto it
Speaker 1: is something you're kind of, I guess, proud of how
Speaker 1: you're able to handle it as a club. Also tacked
Speaker 1: onto the getting to win over there, and.
Speaker 2: We will touch on him. The goggles side, A lot
Speaker 2: has been said about them over the journey.
Speaker 1: Signed a poster to have your goggles coxy after the
Speaker 1: game last week.
Speaker 2: You probably need them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they're way too custom for everyone else to have,
Speaker 3: But what was.
Speaker 2: The whole experience like playing with them for the first time,
Speaker 2: even getting them past you know, the AFL, to getting
Speaker 2: them out onto the field.
Speaker 1: The little thing was so AFL had never really seen anything.
Speaker 1: I think someone else supposed glasses once before. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd done all on my own. We did all the
Speaker 1: research to find them on my own. So I had
Speaker 1: multiple trials with contacts and then googled sports glasses and
Speaker 1: I saw some NBA players wearing them stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Just googled it.
Speaker 1: There's one person out in col ac i Sports Dot
Speaker 1: Condo you shout out to them who have helped me
Speaker 1: through the journey, and just kind of drove out to
Speaker 1: coal Ak. It's funny, ever, drove out to cool Ac
Speaker 1: and they had different tints of different colors and we
Speaker 1: sat there and put them into the into the frames,
Speaker 1: had to kick with his kid on the ground out there,
Speaker 1: and just kind of decided which tints I wanted, you know,
Speaker 1: And we went through this whole process of darker and medium.
Speaker 1: And people will notice all my glasses, there's one that's
Speaker 1: darker than another because the injury, and it just really
Speaker 1: kind of honed in and just knutted down this thing
Speaker 1: of like trying to figure out the details of what
Speaker 1: would work the best, and and it was it was
Speaker 1: interesting went and did that. No one really knew about it,
Speaker 1: and I just shut up one day at training and
Speaker 1: I was like, well this is It was a really
Speaker 1: kind of like moment of nervousness. Like I remember like thinking,
Speaker 1: like what are people going to say? Like what's going
Speaker 1: to happen?
Speaker 2: You know?
Speaker 1: And I think players were aware of how bad my
Speaker 1: injuries were, but until I started wearing the glasses, I
Speaker 1: think the story kind of came out of how properly,
Speaker 1: like how properly like bad the actual injury was. And yeah,
Speaker 1: the first time wearing a lot of Hakeem Elijah Won
Speaker 1: comments and stuff that, you know.
Speaker 3: And Kareem comments and things like that.
Speaker 1: But that was a real nervous moment in my whole career.
Speaker 1: And it's I kind of bring those out and being different,
Speaker 1: like I've always been different, but I think it's always
Speaker 1: been different for positive reasons. And then that was the
Speaker 1: first reason of I guess, like someone making fun of
Speaker 1: me in a different sense. But yeah, after the first
Speaker 1: like training, so essentially it's just normality after that, so
Speaker 1: people stop wearing them. And now Bobby Hill tries him
Speaker 1: on before every game, I feel like, and he's.
Speaker 2: Like, oh the speed Dealers by that he's just sick,
Speaker 2: you know, and.
Speaker 1: Just stuff like that, and like one of the cool
Speaker 1: things that's come from I never expected it, but like
Speaker 1: you know, it's nowadays probably on the weekly I would
Speaker 1: get a message or a comment from someone saying, you know,
Speaker 1: my kid never felt comfortable wearing you know, protective.
Speaker 3: Gear wheneber he was playing.
Speaker 1: And now because he has someone to look up to
Speaker 1: and idolize in a sense, that's doing it at the
Speaker 1: highest level, like now he feels comfortable to play on
Speaker 1: his kick and I don't know, one of these days,
Speaker 1: maybe you know, one of those kids turns into being
Speaker 1: an AFL footballer who knows and that story kind of
Speaker 1: links back into me, which wuld be pretty cool.
Speaker 2: But yeah, I've had a lot.
Speaker 1: Of amazing just kind of connections that have come from it,
Speaker 1: an amazing kind of comments around it. And yeah it
Speaker 1: was tough. I mean, the AFL essentially almost didn't allow
Speaker 1: me to do it, and they told me I couldn't
Speaker 1: wear him for a preseason, even though I'd warn them
Speaker 1: all preseason, all training during the presee and they're very
Speaker 1: well aware of it. They sent me essentially a letter
Speaker 1: saying that I'd have to sign it so I had
Speaker 1: to be able to play the next day versus hawthorn
Speaker 1: out and like I think Moe it was. They sent
Speaker 1: me a letter it said I had to sign it,
Speaker 1: saying that they don't want any legal liabilities if something
Speaker 1: happens because of them. I had to go and find
Speaker 1: a lawyer within twenty four hours to get them ticked off.
Speaker 1: And then they said you need to sharp you out
Speaker 1: any advertising that might be on the side of them,
Speaker 1: so this is like F five I think or something
Speaker 1: like that on the side of it, which is just
Speaker 1: the model of the glasses. It doesn't even say like
Speaker 1: Rexpex or anything like that. And they're like you have
Speaker 1: to sharp you out every single little thing. They just
Speaker 1: made it really pain in the ass to wear, and
Speaker 1: I was just like, this is a medical thing.
Speaker 2: Which was so bizarre, because one, it's a tool of
Speaker 2: the trade. You need it to be able to play,
Speaker 2: like any boots. You're allowed to wear any brand of
Speaker 2: any boots, even if they clash with your team, sponsors
Speaker 2: or anything. And then they came out and celebrated it
Speaker 2: the whole weekend, taking photos of your videos, put it
Speaker 2: on social and it's Mason with these goggles all that stuff.
Speaker 2: It was bizarre.
Speaker 3: AFL is a bizarre place. We'll say that.
Speaker 2: On top of that, we were talking about so your
Speaker 2: eye injuries. It's were you still going back to your
Speaker 2: the key forward at times in one of the biggest
Speaker 2: clubs in the land. All the pressure, like all the
Speaker 2: good stuff that comes with that when you're winning the
Speaker 2: prelimp for it, and then you get all the bad
Speaker 2: stuff when you're underperforming. It's all tenfold, so the pressure
Speaker 2: comes on Bucks out Fly in real crazy period of
Speaker 2: time for the club.
Speaker 1: I think at that time in my career, I was
Speaker 1: ready to call it quits. I was like, this is bullshit,
Speaker 1: Like I'm just so stressed out, I'm not enjoying life,
Speaker 1: Like this is not what I was made, you know,
Speaker 1: to do for the rest of my life. I was
Speaker 1: ready to call it quits and it was just done
Speaker 1: with it, and it was probably gonna go to a
Speaker 1: different team if there was an opportunity, But got to
Speaker 1: that off season without a contract, don't really knowing where
Speaker 1: I was going to go, what was going to happen,
Speaker 1: and kind of come to I guess groups with the
Speaker 1: fact that our career is done and like it as
Speaker 1: it is. It was fine. We move on, we try
Speaker 1: to find out who the next chapter is. And I
Speaker 1: remember before I left, being on the sprung floor doing
Speaker 1: some kicking and stuff and Craig came in. It was
Speaker 1: kind of like the day that he was kind of
Speaker 1: announced as head coach, and in my mind, I'd already
Speaker 1: I had already committed essentially in my mind, like and
Speaker 1: confirmed that I was dying, like I was going to
Speaker 1: play there again, like i'd really bad taste my mouth
Speaker 1: from everything that kind of happened in the years before,
Speaker 1: and wasn't really happy with where things were, and there's
Speaker 1: a lot of change, and I thought, you know, maybe
Speaker 1: it's just time for me to move on. And I
Speaker 1: just remember, like Craig walking in, I go, fuck you, dude,
Speaker 1: You're the only person, the only person in this whole
Speaker 1: world that would get me back to this club probably,
Speaker 1: And he walked in and he did his speech of
Speaker 1: what he wants to do as a coach and anything else,
Speaker 1: and I remember sitting there going, this fucking asshole, like
Speaker 1: I actually want to I want to play for you, man,
Speaker 1: and like what you've been able to give to me
Speaker 1: to be able to set up my career was like
Speaker 1: something I've always wanted to repay him. And I thought,
Speaker 1: fuck man, Like if there's ever an opportunity, it's it's now.
Speaker 1: So in my mind, I was kind of like, I
Speaker 1: hope hopefully they kind of give me a gig, and
Speaker 1: Craig was like, look, it's not my decision, it's the
Speaker 1: club decision where they want to keep you. And he
Speaker 1: was not part of me signing another contractor what they
Speaker 1: gave me, and offered me, and fortunate enough they did
Speaker 1: offer me something, and yeah, it's kind of cool.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: I think it's one of the biggest reasons I still
Speaker 1: am playing and still want to players. Like I always
Speaker 1: talk about what I want to do and wanting to
Speaker 1: repay Fly for what he gave to me. So, like
Speaker 1: I think over the last few weeks, you've seen some
Speaker 1: of the stuff that's on the inside of people's jumpers
Speaker 1: on the neckline, so you've got like I think Brandon
Speaker 1: had like competitive beast, right, like Jack had entertainer or
Speaker 1: something like that, right, like mine says repay flight, And
Speaker 1: like that's kind of something I've always been in my
Speaker 1: mind everything every time I go about like play, that's
Speaker 1: I always think about him, what he's given up and
Speaker 1: the opportunities he's given me, and thought, how cool would
Speaker 1: have been now to like full circle this thing for
Speaker 1: like the universe kind of coming back on itself and
Speaker 1: be able to give him, you know, success and be
Speaker 1: part of that and help him kind of reach what
Speaker 1: he wants to wants to accomplish as a coach. So
Speaker 1: that's kind of one of the reasons I still do it.
Speaker 1: One of the main reasons I'm still playing.
Speaker 3: But yeah, that year I was I was ready to
Speaker 3: call it quits.
Speaker 1: And then Fly came in and that was kind of
Speaker 1: the only person probably in this world that could keep
Speaker 1: me at the club and had some serious conversations throughout
Speaker 1: that first year of getting dropped after playing a few
Speaker 1: terrible games at the beginning and then coming back and
Speaker 1: then like the game I came back, we won eleven
Speaker 1: straight and talk about sliding doors moments like you know,
Speaker 1: at that point we started this podcast whenever I started
Speaker 1: playing VFL I think it was, and I was like,
Speaker 1: you know, this is probably it, Like I'm not playing, well,
Speaker 1: it's not it's not working, like just gonna have to
Speaker 1: try to move into the next phase of life, which
Speaker 1: hopefully would be media. So let's start this podcast and
Speaker 1: see what we can do with it. And it's been
Speaker 1: awesome to be to be enjoying it and now obviously
Speaker 1: still playing. It's it's cool to still kind of everything
Speaker 1: essentially is extra now. But I remember we're coming back
Speaker 1: and sliding doors moments of Brodie gets injured does his
Speaker 1: potelton and I think it was or something like that,
Speaker 1: and I get an opportunity to come back or Beggy
Speaker 1: actually coming back. Aiden Beg comes back and plays before me,
Speaker 1: and I was pretty filthy. But look back at the
Speaker 1: traft Cloak thing, I was like, well, maybe this is
Speaker 1: my moment of trev klok, you know, like maybe this
Speaker 1: is me passing the torch on to someone else. And
Speaker 1: he played a really good game. And then yeah, a
Speaker 1: couple down down our games compared to that first one,
Speaker 1: and then got the opportunity to come back up and
Speaker 1: play with DC and we.
Speaker 3: Want eleven straight.
Speaker 1: And you know that kind of changed probably the opportunity
Speaker 1: because we talk about, you know, if we lose some
Speaker 1: of those games, you know, maybe we go into rebuilding
Speaker 1: mode and we go some of the older guys, we'll
Speaker 1: start playing the younger guys, and the older guys get
Speaker 1: pushed out and we start revamping. And everyone no one
Speaker 1: would have asked a question of that. Everyone would gone, well,
Speaker 1: call him as a young team, new coach. You know,
Speaker 1: he wants to revamp everything, like that's just part of
Speaker 1: the process. And I would have been one of those
Speaker 1: players that would just go moved on. And luckily enough
Speaker 1: the young guy stepped up and kept us old boys
Speaker 1: around a little bit longer. And we want eleven straight.
Speaker 1: So it's you talk about the sliding doors moments. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of those in the career, and that was
Speaker 1: definitely one that looking back, it is like if Roady
Speaker 1: doesn't get injured, and obviously, like good friend of mine,
Speaker 1: never would want that upon anyone. But if he doesn't
Speaker 1: get injured, he doesn't get moved on, his contract doesn't
Speaker 1: get taken up by another person, and I am no
Speaker 1: longer playing for Collingwood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it is a twist of fate that it just
Speaker 2: happens to be Fly that comes in. Now. You did
Speaker 2: the sixty minutes feature, big feature over in the States,
Speaker 2: and there was some great stuff in there about well,
Speaker 2: Fly being there from the start of your career, getting
Speaker 2: videos back from you overseas see that you can't really
Speaker 2: kick for shit. There was the statement that you saw
Speaker 2: Fly sitting on the Richmond bench in the twenty eighteen
Speaker 2: prelim and you said you did this, you did this,
Speaker 2: this is your fault, which is great, and it is
Speaker 2: just the fact that it was him that came in
Speaker 2: and like you said it literally, I feel like it
Speaker 2: could have only been one guy, and he had a
Speaker 2: great impact on everyone to date. You guys go on
Speaker 2: the fairy Tale run. A lot of people see Fly
Speaker 2: externally and say, jeez, it must be great to play
Speaker 2: for a lot of guys want to come into the
Speaker 2: club rejuvenated. You got all these young guys playing really
Speaker 2: great footy with a really healthy mix of like older
Speaker 2: mature your heads in there, and the club's in a
Speaker 2: great position. So like, it's been really good to have
Speaker 2: the podcast here to kind of write it every week.
Speaker 2: Last Every week last year was like, god, it dusted
Speaker 2: it by six. It's like can you can you get
Speaker 2: a big win? But it was just so fun and
Speaker 2: everyone talks about how fun it is and the amount
Speaker 2: of messages that we get through the podcast where it's like,
Speaker 2: I'm a Richmond supporter, we're having them down year. I
Speaker 2: never thought i'd say it, but I love watching Collingwood games,
Speaker 2: or like Essenon supporters or you know, all these big
Speaker 2: rivals that would always hate Collingwood. We're getting so many
Speaker 2: messages just alone saying how much they're enjoying watching Collingwood play.
Speaker 2: You play in particular, like it's a crazy thing that
Speaker 2: you guys are doing and it must be fun. Again.
Speaker 2: You talked about the last few years that you went
Speaker 2: through injuries, ups and down. It must be fun to
Speaker 2: play this footy again. And it's been reflected outside of
Speaker 2: Spleen injury, You've played a really good, solid year of footy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's it's good.
Speaker 1: I think I've talked about people as of recent because
Speaker 1: a lot of people have been talking about how good
Speaker 1: the culture is in credit to Craig and the coaching
Speaker 1: staff and everyone else that's created it, and it's totally
Speaker 1: changed the place. And whenever you go through the tough times,
Speaker 1: the dark times, the challenging times, and then you have
Speaker 1: experiences like now or it's you know, exciting, everyone's enjoying it.
Speaker 1: Like when you're in a happy place, like you kind
Speaker 1: of you want to soak it in and like really
Speaker 1: enjoy it as much as you can. And it's it's
Speaker 1: one of those things like whenever you the older you get,
Speaker 1: the more you have these experiences of the highs and
Speaker 1: the lows and everything else. And whenever you have an
Speaker 1: opportunity as to be able to recognize a high, you
Speaker 1: really enjoy it that much more. And I think that's
Speaker 1: what a lot of us are doing at the moment,
Speaker 1: especially the older guys. I'll talk about like after games
Speaker 1: like I never we'd always just go down. You know,
Speaker 1: you win the game, you lose game, can earn the race,
Speaker 1: sing the song, or you don't. Whoever it is, move on.
Speaker 1: And now it's like you kind of like after every
Speaker 1: single game I'll finish. I'm just kind of like three
Speaker 1: sixty the MCG and I'm just kind to think, like
Speaker 1: how crazy is this man? Like a crazy as life,
Speaker 1: And it's like soak in as much as you can
Speaker 1: because you know that this is a fleeting time career
Speaker 1: could be done in a game. With my eye injuries
Speaker 1: and stuff, I realize like every game could be my last,
Speaker 1: and you just want to make sure that if it
Speaker 1: is your last game, you got to enjoy it for
Speaker 1: the forest amount. And like looking around seeing people chant
Speaker 1: USA as you're going through the cheer squad and then
Speaker 1: down into the rooms and stuff, and everyone had a
Speaker 1: smile on their faces, like you just you really kind
Speaker 1: of enjoy those moments now, I think more than I
Speaker 1: ever probably have before. And yeah, it's a it's a
Speaker 1: really good time and everyone's really enjoying. I think what's
Speaker 1: happening at the Corn Football Club at the moment.
Speaker 2: And whatever happens from this point to your last game,
Speaker 2: you've left the mark. Now there's there's no it's undeniable.
Speaker 2: You've left the mark. You've had massive games along the journey.
Speaker 2: You're always going to be that the first American. You
Speaker 2: talk about not being the first like native porn in
Speaker 2: America to play, but you're definitely going to be the first.
Speaker 2: It hits one hundred games and you might hold that
Speaker 2: record for hell of a long time. So there's plenty
Speaker 2: that you've done throughout your career and from the impacts
Speaker 2: that you had on people all across Australia. It's just yeah,
Speaker 2: it's a massive achievement and a massive accomplishment for what
Speaker 2: you've done. And yeah, it's it's it's a real credit
Speaker 2: to you. One hundred games, There's going to be more.
Speaker 2: That's the next question. What's next for Mason Cox?
Speaker 3: Hopefully Premiership? It round it off pretty well.
Speaker 1: I think you talk about windows and opportunities and I
Speaker 1: think we're definitely in that window at the moment, as
Speaker 1: a lot of people would probably agree. And yeah, it's
Speaker 1: it's exciting because yeah, as a certain point, probably the
Speaker 1: beginning of last year, you didn't you thought, you know,
Speaker 1: you come to realization and grips you probably won't ever
Speaker 1: won a Grand Final and that twenty eight team probably
Speaker 1: sticks out and your head a lot, a lot stronger
Speaker 1: than other days, and now you can't look at it.
Speaker 1: You're going, well maybe you maybe we're in that kind
Speaker 1: of you know, those few years wherever it is we
Speaker 1: can actually you know, win this whole thing. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's it's it's hopefully what's next. I don't know
Speaker 1: if it'll be you know, this year, next year and
Speaker 1: not happen, whatever it is, but I think having that
Speaker 1: would be something to add to the journey, to say
Speaker 1: it's it's dying. You've experienced everything. You can't look back
Speaker 1: and fault anything you've you've been through it all the ringer,
Speaker 1: the ups, the downs, and you've made the most of
Speaker 1: it and you've got to experience everything you could possibly
Speaker 1: do over here in Australia. So that'd be a great
Speaker 1: ride round it off. Whether or not it happens, we'll see,
Speaker 1: but it's something that is probably what's next, and then
Speaker 1: post career, hopefully media hopefully's podcast launches and we can
Speaker 1: do some cool stuff around it. Shout out to people
Speaker 1: like Dylan Buckley, are I guess like paid in the
Speaker 1: path for ex athletes and doing these kind of things,
Speaker 1: and you know, hopefully this leads to media opportunities post
Speaker 1: career and stay around football and then maybe bring the
Speaker 1: exposure of IFL to international market. Who knows, but there's
Speaker 1: there's definitely hopefully opportunities there and hopefully I get to
Speaker 1: to stay here in Australia long term and do some
Speaker 1: stuff and continue to push the boundaries in the future.
Speaker 2: And I think we have the name for the episode
Speaker 2: Mason Cox's a career of sliding doors. But yeah, one
Speaker 2: more time, congratulations mate, and big juicy contest coming up
Speaker 2: on the weekend against North Melbourne if they don't stop
Speaker 2: you at the gate with their pitchforks after all the
Speaker 2: shit that you talk about them. But are you looking
Speaker 2: forward to it? I am.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a good day, I think, Like I said,
Speaker 1: not only is it my hundredth, but more important only
Speaker 1: it steals three hundredth and to celebrate him what he's
Speaker 1: been able to accomplish is pretty cool. He's done a
Speaker 1: lot more than I probably have very different journeys, don't
Speaker 1: get me wrong, but it'd be a great day to
Speaker 1: be able to celebrate him myself and just be able
Speaker 1: to really soak it in. Like I don't know, I
Speaker 1: don't know what's going to happen on the day, whole
Speaker 1: families coming out. I don't know what to expect, but
Speaker 1: I know there'd be some pretty cool experiences looking back
Speaker 1: and getting to reminisce with some people on the journey
Speaker 1: and bringing them into the rooms and get to experience
Speaker 1: a whole thing. And some of the videos people probably
Speaker 1: sent through dumb shit I've done throughout my career, funny
Speaker 1: experiences and things. It's it's all as cool moments in life.
Speaker 1: You get to really kind of look back on what
Speaker 1: you've been able to accomplish. And that's kind of one
Speaker 1: of the things I'm going to look forward to the most,
Speaker 1: I think, And.
Speaker 2: I think that wraps us all up.
Speaker 1: To wrap it up, massive game coming out the hund Earth.
Speaker 1: So thankful for everyone that's you know, been a part
Speaker 1: of it, including yourself, Bradon. It's been amazing to share
Speaker 1: experiences throughout this whole process and even the early days
Speaker 1: to talk about back then and how things have changed
Speaker 1: so much. But a massive thank you to everyone who's
Speaker 1: one tuned into this podcast and supported us in the
Speaker 1: community that's here, and too to everyone that's supported me
Speaker 1: personally throughout my career and everything that's happened. It's it's
Speaker 1: amazing to have amazing supporters like everyone out there, and
Speaker 1: you know, through ups and downs, always having my back
Speaker 1: and the club's back. It's pretty incredible to be able
Speaker 1: to share this experience with so many different people, and
Speaker 1: I'm extremely grateful and humbled to have so many supporters
Speaker 1: out there. So massive thank you. Hopefully you get to
Speaker 1: enjoy the day just as I will, and yeah, go past.
Speaker 2: Can it stand extended? Sand