The Cat with the Giant Story by Steve Johnson

Author:Steve Johnson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9781760141523
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

15

REIGNING PREMIERS

2008

We partied for a couple of months – both close to home and overseas – after winning the premiership. It’s fair to say that I felt like I’d earned a frothy. But such was the level of competitiveness and desire in our group, we returned to the club for pre-season training in good shape physically and mentally.

There was no way I was going to rest on my laurels. I wanted to become a better player and win another flag. Bomber Thompson took it upon himself to keep me on my toes both when it came to footy and life in general. He didn’t want to see me slip back into my old bad habits. He would remind me on a weekly basis, ‘Steven, limit the amount of risk in your life.’ I had a huge pre-season, thanks largely to the fact I didn’t need any off-season surgery for the first time in a long time. It was only two years since I had told my parents that I believed my body would not let me keep playing in the AFL beyond 2008. But my ankles felt so good that I was now confident I had many years of footy left in me. I trained so hard that I was able to get my troublesome skinfolds, which had been over 70 mm two years before, down to around 55 mm.

We steadily built up our training loads before Christmas, then we trained like there was no tomorrow during January and February. We were itching to get back into playing matches again, and we didn’t hold back when we played our first intra-club game at Skilled Stadium in early February. I approached the game with such a level of ferocity that I ended up coming to blows with Cameron Ling during the latter stages. There was nothing personal about the incident. It was just a case of two very competitive blokes trying to outdo each other. Our coaches loved seeing that level of hunger for the contest, as Brendan McCartney told the media afterwards. ‘You don’t want seven- and eight-year-olds doing that, but they’re a competitive group of players,’ he said.

When it came to footy, my pre-season was impeccable, but away from the club I was involved in one stupid incident. A bit after 8 p.m. one January night, Shannon Byrnes and I decided to go for a hit of golf at the Eastern Gardens golf course in Geelong. Byrnesy lived only a short distance from the course, but we decided to drive there. We had been in the car about a minute (we were halfway there!) when I had a brain fade and decided to give my Ford XR6 a bit of flex down a road near the course. I floored it for around 300 metres before I had to slow down for a speed hump. I didn’t have a care in the world. There was no one else on the road or in sight for that matter. But as I slowed down for the speed hump I suddenly noticed a cop car behind me.

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