"I was only at Norwood in 1996 and 1997 but I remember it as a particularly good time as I'd come from Richmond where I'd basically spent four years injured and got de-listed. I knew I had a lot more to offer and South Australian clubs had recently offered a lifeline to quite a few players as an avenue back to the AFL so I jumped at the opportunity to come to Norwood. I was contacted initially by Peter Rhode, who'd just been appointed coach, and Glenn Rosser. They were the first club to come and see me and I got a really good vibe about the club after a few days in Adelaide training with the group Even at Norwood in the first year I was still trying to get myself back to the level I knew I could and while I had some rough patches for Norwood but the coach really backed me and I knuckled down and found the form I knew I was capable of.

I suppose a couple of games really stand out. The 1996 Preliminary final is certainly one of those. It was a terrific game at a typically blowy Football Park and we were really well matched against Port that day. We'd missed a few crucial opportunities and then Scott Hodges kicked that miracle goal into the breeze so it was heartbreaking. What it did do though was instil in the playing group a steely resolve in the team for the 1997 season. I remember right from the first day of training there was a really hard edge to the team about our unfinished business. I suppose Port were foremost in our minds and it really showed when we played them on Anzac Day that year. Apart from that year's Grand Final it stands out in my mind because of the sheer volume of the crowd and the fact that we came out and absolutely blitzed them. I've been back to Adelaide Oval a few times and I always remember that day very, very fondly.

At the end of 1997 Essendon drafted me. While I had some reservations about getting back into the AFL system as the business my wife and I had set up was going pretty well I finished up under Sheedy for a few years. There were quite a few highlights, playing in a final and captaining a reserves premiership team, but I had a lingering hip injury that restricted me to just a few games in my time there. 2000 was probably my toughest year, Essendon had one of the best team in football history and I just didn't get a look in. I saw the writing on the wall at the end of that year and while I had had some discussions with Neville Roberts about coming back to Norwood Fremantle drafted me in the end.

I suppose I'd call my two seasons there as a player as character building but when Chris Connolly offered me the chance to become an assistant coach I jumped at the chance, In some ways I'd been acting as an unofficial assistant coach even before that. I'd taken on some mentoring work off my own bat with the younger players and interstate recruits and I guess Chris got wind of that. My time as coach there was like going to football university as I had a number of different roles during those years. I covered everything from ruck coaching to rehab work, stats and strategies and midfield coach.

By my final year there though I felt as if I was ready to take on my own club and I applied to become senior coach of the Perth Football Club. It was an exhaustive process with nearly four and half hours of interviews but I'm really glad they took a gamble on someone who hadn't coached in his own right before. There's no doubt coaching Perth is a big challenge, they haven't had a lot of success in recent times, but we're trying to bring an AFL environment to a semi-professional club and give the players confidence they're as well prepared as any team out there. It's a very progressive club, very prominent in junior development, and there are lots of elements to my job that keep the challenge fresh. We won as many games this year as we had for the last two years combined so hopefully we can improve on that next year.

I do look back very fondly on my time at Norwood and indeed still have a number of friends we made at the club that we keep in close contact with. Some are even Godparents to my children. If anything that's what I remember most strongly at Norwood was the quality of people around the place. As an interstate recruit it could be hard to settle in but when you've got people like the Gayles, Bowles and Jarretts around the place it makes it a lot easier. These people to me are what Norwood really is and what made winning the flag in 1997 so enjoyable. For me just seeing how much joy and pleasure our success bought these people meant more to me than anything else."

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