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Good read. 
Thrills and skills
7:32:54 PM Fri 15 July, 2005
AFL Record
He has been described as possessing the most exquisite foot skills in the modern game – and few would disagree. But Darren Jarman worked on his game from a very early age with the help of his older brother Andrew. His story started in Adelaide, moved to Melbourne and then returned to Adelaide. He talks to Ben Collins.
People say: "The Jarmans were born with all this wonderful skill," but I disagree. (Older brother) Andrew and I learnt the basics from our father, Dennis, and as a result we were playing football by the age of six and kicking with both feet when we were seven. That was purely through practice. While my mates were watching TV and playing computer games, I was outside kicking a football. There was a light pole out the front of our house and we’d aim at it. We turned it into a competition. I won most of the time too – every time I did, Andrew belted me!
Play the ball, not the man. I was lucky to compete against Andrew so much as a young bloke; he’s a year older and was always a little bit bigger and stronger. Dad would kick the ball to us and be the umpire as we went at it one-on-one. Andrew gave me fat lips and clips over the ears, which toughened me up a bit. I learnt from a young age to just cop the whacks and not get distracted; just get on with it and try to beat them on the scoreboard. I frustrated Andrew more by beating him (rather) than retaliating. That was a good lesson to learn, particularly as I had to deal with a few taggers during my career.
I literally got a kick up the backside from one of my coaches – and I deserved it. I played junior footy at Gaza until I was 16. We won back-to-back premierships in the under-16s in ’82-’83 and it all came a bit too easy for me. I was too cocky. My first year with North Adelaide was in the under-17s in ’ 84 when we were beaten in the Grand Final. Then I was invited to do the pre-season with the seniors. Mick Nunan was the senior coach. I was paving one day in front of a delicatessen when I got this huge kick up the bum and went flying through the deli with stuff all over me. I wasn’t very happy, but when I looked up to see who’d kicked me, Mick Nunan was standing over me saying: “If you don’t get to training tonight you’re out!” I didn’t miss another training session in my career. It put the fear of God into me and it was the reality check I needed. That year I played three League games (in the SANFL), then I had a super pre-season and played seniors from ’86. We lost the Grand Final to Glenelg in ’86 and won the flag in ’87.
Andrew and I had the same uncanny sense the Krakouers had. We actually used to call ourselves the Krakouers. I’d run past Andrew and I wouldn’t even blink and he’d handball to me. We did it a lot when we played at North Adelaide together in the late ’80s. I actually tested the theory once. Andrew got the ball; he couldn’t have known where I was, and I deliberately didn’t call for the ball, but he went bang with the handball and it was on my chest. In the end, neither of us needed to call for it; you’d just kick to a spot because you knew he was going to run there; or you’d run to the spot because you knew he was going to kick it there.
I was in Andrew’s shadow – I was known as “Andrew Jarman’s brother”. People think that must have annoyed me, but I didn’t mind it because it took pressure off me. He was winning Magarey Medals (in 1987 and 1997), so all the publicity was on him, which suited me because I was very quiet and didn’t really want the attention. But it gets to a point where no matter how shy you are, you want to make a name for yourself. That’s why I left Adelaide, and gave up a chance to play with Andrew at the Crows, to go to Hawthorn (after the 1990 season).
I was painfully shy at Hawthorn – and it probably hurt my footy. Legends were all around me and I was packing it. I really struggled in my first season. I was 23 when I went there (24 when the 1991 season started) and I’d already played state footy for a couple of years so I should have been ready for it, but I wasn’t. It took me a while to get to know everyone and I became a bit homesick. It was real tough for me. It wasn’t anyone else’s fault though. It was just my personality – I was too quiet. That was the hardest part of my career. But I slowly opened up a bit and was more outgoing at the Crows because I was one of the more experienced players.
I played a shocker in the ’91 Grand Final. I was playing in a forward pocket alongside Jason Dunstall, with Tony Hall in the other pocket. I was thinking: ‘Come on, I’ve got to get a touch.’ I took a mark and, instead of going back and having a shot, I played on and missed. I panicked, which was out of character, and you could only put it down to freezing under the pressure of playing in a Grand Final. I lost a lot of confidence from that. If I had gone back and slotted it through, it might have got me going. But it was always going to be tough for me to get involved because I was on (Guy) ‘Bluey’ McKenna, who was a superstar backman and one of my hardest ever opponents, and I was also relying on Dunstall to drop a mark so I could get a crumb. At half-time, our interchange bench was me and Tony Hall, the two forward pockets, so I thought: ‘Well, it just didn’t go my way on the day.’ But in the back of my mind, I thought: ‘If I ever play in another AFL Grand Final, this isn’t going to happen again.’
(Coach) Alan Joyce said I needed to improve my fitness and defensive skills. I was probably too attacking at North Adelaide because I’d back my skill in and didn’t expect to ‘burn the ball’. My defensive aspect just wasn’t there when I started in the AFL. I wasn’t chasing or manning up when I should. I thought: ‘My opponent should be worried about me, not the other way around.’ But ‘Joycey’ made me work on it. I really improved that part of my game. We had a tackling trophy which Andy Collins seemed to win every year, but I knocked him off in ’93. When it was announced, everyone went: “Who?” Andy was angry because it was the first time he’d been beaten.
I tried to get at least one steal a game. You’d get two or three opportunities to do it each game, but I wanted to get one minimum to catch the opposition out and hopefully steal a goal on a fast break. It comes down to reading what the player with the ball is going to do. It’s that split-second decision you make where you know he’s going to go over the top with a handball or kick. You can tell by looking into his eyes and watching how he moves – it’s an instinct thing. You can make him think that you’re covering someone else and at the last moment you try to smother the ball in mid-air. I’d always run and jump with both hands in the air – which a lot of blokes don’t bother to do – and think: ‘If he doesn’t go high enough, I’m a chance here.’ If you commit yourself too early and he baulks you, you’re going to look like a goose. But if you time it right, he’s the one who’ll look silly while you’re kicking a goal from his mistake. They’re real bonuses because you’ve made something out of nothing. It can really lift your side too.
I’m given far too much credit for supposedly feeding Jason Dunstall. People say: “You always hit Dunstall on the chest,” but that’s because he was always there. Jason was so footy smart that he’d make the play by leading to the right spot. My job was just to kick it out in front of him; then he’d read when to button off and use his body and when to come forward. He had that combination of pace and strength to do it. Half the time, he’d turn your average kick into a daisy-cutter where everyone says: “Gee, that Jarman’s got good skills.” But what about the bloke marking it? I reckon marking it is the hardest part of the chain.
I’d rather get caught holding the ball than kick it to the opposition. The last thing I wanted to do was get the ball and kick it to someone else. You work your butt off to get the thing, so why would you just turn it over? My attitude was: ‘I have to hit a teammate because if I burn the ball, I’m going to have to work my butt off to get it back again.’ I got very upset with myself when I missed a target. I saw that as my job. Once you work yourself up to a certain skill level, you can’t let that level drop.
Take pride in your possessions. When we had skills sessions at the Crows, ‘Blighty’ (coach Malcolm Blight) would say: “Try to have a nought session” – in other words, try not to make a mistake. No one would actually be able to do it – because you’d touch the ball heaps of times throughout the course of a session – but if you made only two or three mistakes you’d done very well. It’s about trying to achieve perfection, or as close to it as you can get.
I went back to Adelaide (in 1996) for two reasons: to play with Andrew and to be closer to family. I knew Andrew only had probably a couple of years left, so I thought: ‘If I get a chance to go back I will, but if I don’t, that’s fine too because I really love Hawthorn.’ It was hard to leave. I actually wanted to stay in Melbourne, but other things came first.
The 1997 preliminary final against the Western Bulldogs was the best game I’ve been involved with. We were absolutely gone at half-time (the Crows trailed by 31 points). Anyone who saw the body language of the two sides as they walked off the ground – the Bulldogs were patting each other on the back while we had our heads down and hardly anyone was saying a word – would have said we had no hope. We had been thinking about making history by making the club’s first Grand Final, but that seemed a million miles away. It was an amazing turnaround. I think he (Blight) made only two moves. Blighty stared at Chad Rintoul, I think, and said a couple of harsh words and I thought: ‘Uh oh, we’re gonna’ cop it here.’ Then he stopped, made two moves, didn’t berate anyone else and then everything was positive. He said: “Listen, boys. That was crap. We can play a lot better than that. Just go out there and attack.” To kick the winning goal was a huge moment in not only my footy career but my life. To help the club that had got me back from Hawthorn get into their first Grand Final was beyond words. That game, particularly the second half, was a better performance as a team than either of the GF wins, because if we didn’t win that game we mightn’t have won a GF.
Never worry about the result when you are lining up for goal. I never thought: ‘If I miss this, we’re gonna be in trouble.’ It’s not the end of the world if you miss. It just means you must do it better next time. I always felt that: ‘If I follow my routine correctly and miss, I can accept that.’ If my routine failed, I’d look for the reason why it failed. If I had a set shot and didn’t do something that I normally did, I’d make sure that the next time I had a set shot I’d do it 100 per cent properly. You can’t have a routine and chop and change it all the time; you have to set it in stone and stick to it.
That theory worked for me in the last quarter of the ’97 preliminary final. The Bulldogs were flooding to try to save the game and I somehow fluked a mark over (Craig) Ellis – it was a hanger for me because it was the first time in my life I’d gotten off the ground! It was a typically swirly breeze at the MCG and I tried to guide it through from about 40 metres out and I missed to the right. I thought to myself: ‘What did I do wrong? I chipped it.’ I was so angry with myself – more so because I didn’t follow my routine than the fact I actually missed. I thought: ‘You idiot, Darren! You’ve always said: “Don’t chip it.” But what did you just do? You chipped it! OK now, if I get another kick, I don’t care where I am, even if I’m on the boundary line, I’m gonna kick straight through it.’ I’m lucky I got the chance to redeem myself soon after when Kane (Johnson) hit me on a lead. I put everything else out of my mind; didn’t even think about the result of the kick and whether we’d win or lose the chance to play in our first Grand Final. I didn’t think: ‘I’ve got to kick this’; I only thought: ‘Kick through it.’ I couldn’t have put less pressure on myself in such a high-pressure situation. I ran straight, I kicked straight through it and the ball went straight. There’s the evidence of my theory right there.
(Melbourne football writer) Mike Sheahan helped fire me up for the 1997 Grand Final. The night before the GF, (teammate) Tyson Edwards and I were watching The Grand Final Marathon on TV in our hotel room. It was about 10.30pm and I thought: ‘I’ll stay up for another quarter.’ Sheahan was a guest on the show and he probably didn’t think I’d be watching – he probably thought I’d be tucked up in bed – but he started bagging my performances in big games and they even replayed some of the ’91 GF when I played a shocker. I thought: ‘That’s a bit harsh. (My opponent) Bluey McKenna’s not a bad player!’ Sheahan was probably right, but I really didn’t need to hear it then. I went to bed angry, and woke up angry.
I thought: ‘I’ve got to get rid of this anger,’ so I went for a walk. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Sheahan’s comments. I even spoke to Blighty about it; he said: “Don’t worry about it. Just concentrate on the game.” After it all happened for us and for me in the last quarter, the first person I wanted to see was Sheahan. I wanted to shake his hand and thank him for firing me up. A funny thing was that some of my mates from Gaza Football Club came over to watch the game and by the end of it they would have been pretty full of grog. They caught a tram back to their hotel and Sheahan got on their tram. They gave him hell and he got off the tram a couple of stops early. I did an interview with Sheahan a couple of years later – everything’s fine between us.
Blighty threw me to full-forward after dreaming about it the night before. I played the first half (of the 1997 Grand Final) on the ball, but at half-time (with the Crows trailing by 13 points) Blighty took me aside and said: “I want you take the centre bounce and drift forward.” I said: “Where do you want me to drift to: centre half-forward, a flank, a pocket?” He said: “No, I want you to go to full-forward.” This sounded interesting. I said: “When did you think that one up?” He said: “I dreamt it last night.” (Andrew) Thompson was tagging me, so I took the centre bounce and then made my way down to full-forward where ‘Shanas’ (St Kilda full-back Jamie Shanahan) picked me up as well. I had two blokes standing with me asking each other: “What’s going on here?” When we kicked a goal, I went back to the centre with Thompson following me. After the bounce, I drifted forward again, very slowly though, so it wasn’t all that predictable. Meanwhile, the loose player for us was Simon Goodwin, who was playing only his 10th game and was creating a lot of run off half-back. To pull off that move using a kid who’d hardly played before was sensational.
I got lucky in the last quarter. The last quarter was like a dream; really flukey. Everyone dreams of kicking four or five in the last quarter of a Grand Final. But in all seriousness, I got a couple of nice bounces – they just landed in my lap. I suppose you have to finish them off though, so there’s a bit of skill in that. It wouldn’t have been any good kicking 1.4 – if that happened, rather than feeling on top of the world after winning the Crows’ first premiership, we might have lost and I would have been shattered. I never thought: ‘You beauty, this is my day.’ Because it was a close game, I was more concerned about kicking the next goal. In the end, I didn’t realise I’d kicked five for the (last) quarter. It was just about doing what we had to do to win.
I played 100-plus games and won at least one premiership with every one of my clubs. I won flags at Gaza in juniors, at North Adelaide (1987), Hawthorn (1991) and then the Crows (1997, 1998). I’ve played in three AFL Grand Finals and won three flags. I’m blessed. If things had worked out differently, I might not have played in one winning Grand Final.
I wish I was still playing. When I watch Andrew coach the Roosters (North Adelaide), I get itchy feet because I just want to get out there. My playing weight was 91-95kg; I blew out to 120kg, but I’ve dropped 20kg and Andrew reckons that he might give me a game if I can drop another 10kg!
I am setting up what might eventually be called ‘The Jarman School of Football’, which will probably start next year. I want to be a professional skills coach, like they have in tennis and golf, and focus on kids aged seven to 12. I’m the skills coach at Immanuel College (Novar Gardens) where my kids go to primary school. I know first-hand how important it is to learn your skills early. I plan to run sessions with groups of about six every night after school over a school term, with a different age group each night.
Source: http://afl.com.au/default.asp?pg=news&spg=display&articleid=215545
Thrills and skills
7:32:54 PM Fri 15 July, 2005
AFL Record
He has been described as possessing the most exquisite foot skills in the modern game – and few would disagree. But Darren Jarman worked on his game from a very early age with the help of his older brother Andrew. His story started in Adelaide, moved to Melbourne and then returned to Adelaide. He talks to Ben Collins.
People say: "The Jarmans were born with all this wonderful skill," but I disagree. (Older brother) Andrew and I learnt the basics from our father, Dennis, and as a result we were playing football by the age of six and kicking with both feet when we were seven. That was purely through practice. While my mates were watching TV and playing computer games, I was outside kicking a football. There was a light pole out the front of our house and we’d aim at it. We turned it into a competition. I won most of the time too – every time I did, Andrew belted me!
Play the ball, not the man. I was lucky to compete against Andrew so much as a young bloke; he’s a year older and was always a little bit bigger and stronger. Dad would kick the ball to us and be the umpire as we went at it one-on-one. Andrew gave me fat lips and clips over the ears, which toughened me up a bit. I learnt from a young age to just cop the whacks and not get distracted; just get on with it and try to beat them on the scoreboard. I frustrated Andrew more by beating him (rather) than retaliating. That was a good lesson to learn, particularly as I had to deal with a few taggers during my career.
I literally got a kick up the backside from one of my coaches – and I deserved it. I played junior footy at Gaza until I was 16. We won back-to-back premierships in the under-16s in ’82-’83 and it all came a bit too easy for me. I was too cocky. My first year with North Adelaide was in the under-17s in ’ 84 when we were beaten in the Grand Final. Then I was invited to do the pre-season with the seniors. Mick Nunan was the senior coach. I was paving one day in front of a delicatessen when I got this huge kick up the bum and went flying through the deli with stuff all over me. I wasn’t very happy, but when I looked up to see who’d kicked me, Mick Nunan was standing over me saying: “If you don’t get to training tonight you’re out!” I didn’t miss another training session in my career. It put the fear of God into me and it was the reality check I needed. That year I played three League games (in the SANFL), then I had a super pre-season and played seniors from ’86. We lost the Grand Final to Glenelg in ’86 and won the flag in ’87.
Andrew and I had the same uncanny sense the Krakouers had. We actually used to call ourselves the Krakouers. I’d run past Andrew and I wouldn’t even blink and he’d handball to me. We did it a lot when we played at North Adelaide together in the late ’80s. I actually tested the theory once. Andrew got the ball; he couldn’t have known where I was, and I deliberately didn’t call for the ball, but he went bang with the handball and it was on my chest. In the end, neither of us needed to call for it; you’d just kick to a spot because you knew he was going to run there; or you’d run to the spot because you knew he was going to kick it there.
I was in Andrew’s shadow – I was known as “Andrew Jarman’s brother”. People think that must have annoyed me, but I didn’t mind it because it took pressure off me. He was winning Magarey Medals (in 1987 and 1997), so all the publicity was on him, which suited me because I was very quiet and didn’t really want the attention. But it gets to a point where no matter how shy you are, you want to make a name for yourself. That’s why I left Adelaide, and gave up a chance to play with Andrew at the Crows, to go to Hawthorn (after the 1990 season).
I was painfully shy at Hawthorn – and it probably hurt my footy. Legends were all around me and I was packing it. I really struggled in my first season. I was 23 when I went there (24 when the 1991 season started) and I’d already played state footy for a couple of years so I should have been ready for it, but I wasn’t. It took me a while to get to know everyone and I became a bit homesick. It was real tough for me. It wasn’t anyone else’s fault though. It was just my personality – I was too quiet. That was the hardest part of my career. But I slowly opened up a bit and was more outgoing at the Crows because I was one of the more experienced players.
I played a shocker in the ’91 Grand Final. I was playing in a forward pocket alongside Jason Dunstall, with Tony Hall in the other pocket. I was thinking: ‘Come on, I’ve got to get a touch.’ I took a mark and, instead of going back and having a shot, I played on and missed. I panicked, which was out of character, and you could only put it down to freezing under the pressure of playing in a Grand Final. I lost a lot of confidence from that. If I had gone back and slotted it through, it might have got me going. But it was always going to be tough for me to get involved because I was on (Guy) ‘Bluey’ McKenna, who was a superstar backman and one of my hardest ever opponents, and I was also relying on Dunstall to drop a mark so I could get a crumb. At half-time, our interchange bench was me and Tony Hall, the two forward pockets, so I thought: ‘Well, it just didn’t go my way on the day.’ But in the back of my mind, I thought: ‘If I ever play in another AFL Grand Final, this isn’t going to happen again.’
(Coach) Alan Joyce said I needed to improve my fitness and defensive skills. I was probably too attacking at North Adelaide because I’d back my skill in and didn’t expect to ‘burn the ball’. My defensive aspect just wasn’t there when I started in the AFL. I wasn’t chasing or manning up when I should. I thought: ‘My opponent should be worried about me, not the other way around.’ But ‘Joycey’ made me work on it. I really improved that part of my game. We had a tackling trophy which Andy Collins seemed to win every year, but I knocked him off in ’93. When it was announced, everyone went: “Who?” Andy was angry because it was the first time he’d been beaten.
I tried to get at least one steal a game. You’d get two or three opportunities to do it each game, but I wanted to get one minimum to catch the opposition out and hopefully steal a goal on a fast break. It comes down to reading what the player with the ball is going to do. It’s that split-second decision you make where you know he’s going to go over the top with a handball or kick. You can tell by looking into his eyes and watching how he moves – it’s an instinct thing. You can make him think that you’re covering someone else and at the last moment you try to smother the ball in mid-air. I’d always run and jump with both hands in the air – which a lot of blokes don’t bother to do – and think: ‘If he doesn’t go high enough, I’m a chance here.’ If you commit yourself too early and he baulks you, you’re going to look like a goose. But if you time it right, he’s the one who’ll look silly while you’re kicking a goal from his mistake. They’re real bonuses because you’ve made something out of nothing. It can really lift your side too.
I’m given far too much credit for supposedly feeding Jason Dunstall. People say: “You always hit Dunstall on the chest,” but that’s because he was always there. Jason was so footy smart that he’d make the play by leading to the right spot. My job was just to kick it out in front of him; then he’d read when to button off and use his body and when to come forward. He had that combination of pace and strength to do it. Half the time, he’d turn your average kick into a daisy-cutter where everyone says: “Gee, that Jarman’s got good skills.” But what about the bloke marking it? I reckon marking it is the hardest part of the chain.
I’d rather get caught holding the ball than kick it to the opposition. The last thing I wanted to do was get the ball and kick it to someone else. You work your butt off to get the thing, so why would you just turn it over? My attitude was: ‘I have to hit a teammate because if I burn the ball, I’m going to have to work my butt off to get it back again.’ I got very upset with myself when I missed a target. I saw that as my job. Once you work yourself up to a certain skill level, you can’t let that level drop.
Take pride in your possessions. When we had skills sessions at the Crows, ‘Blighty’ (coach Malcolm Blight) would say: “Try to have a nought session” – in other words, try not to make a mistake. No one would actually be able to do it – because you’d touch the ball heaps of times throughout the course of a session – but if you made only two or three mistakes you’d done very well. It’s about trying to achieve perfection, or as close to it as you can get.
I went back to Adelaide (in 1996) for two reasons: to play with Andrew and to be closer to family. I knew Andrew only had probably a couple of years left, so I thought: ‘If I get a chance to go back I will, but if I don’t, that’s fine too because I really love Hawthorn.’ It was hard to leave. I actually wanted to stay in Melbourne, but other things came first.
The 1997 preliminary final against the Western Bulldogs was the best game I’ve been involved with. We were absolutely gone at half-time (the Crows trailed by 31 points). Anyone who saw the body language of the two sides as they walked off the ground – the Bulldogs were patting each other on the back while we had our heads down and hardly anyone was saying a word – would have said we had no hope. We had been thinking about making history by making the club’s first Grand Final, but that seemed a million miles away. It was an amazing turnaround. I think he (Blight) made only two moves. Blighty stared at Chad Rintoul, I think, and said a couple of harsh words and I thought: ‘Uh oh, we’re gonna’ cop it here.’ Then he stopped, made two moves, didn’t berate anyone else and then everything was positive. He said: “Listen, boys. That was crap. We can play a lot better than that. Just go out there and attack.” To kick the winning goal was a huge moment in not only my footy career but my life. To help the club that had got me back from Hawthorn get into their first Grand Final was beyond words. That game, particularly the second half, was a better performance as a team than either of the GF wins, because if we didn’t win that game we mightn’t have won a GF.
Never worry about the result when you are lining up for goal. I never thought: ‘If I miss this, we’re gonna be in trouble.’ It’s not the end of the world if you miss. It just means you must do it better next time. I always felt that: ‘If I follow my routine correctly and miss, I can accept that.’ If my routine failed, I’d look for the reason why it failed. If I had a set shot and didn’t do something that I normally did, I’d make sure that the next time I had a set shot I’d do it 100 per cent properly. You can’t have a routine and chop and change it all the time; you have to set it in stone and stick to it.
That theory worked for me in the last quarter of the ’97 preliminary final. The Bulldogs were flooding to try to save the game and I somehow fluked a mark over (Craig) Ellis – it was a hanger for me because it was the first time in my life I’d gotten off the ground! It was a typically swirly breeze at the MCG and I tried to guide it through from about 40 metres out and I missed to the right. I thought to myself: ‘What did I do wrong? I chipped it.’ I was so angry with myself – more so because I didn’t follow my routine than the fact I actually missed. I thought: ‘You idiot, Darren! You’ve always said: “Don’t chip it.” But what did you just do? You chipped it! OK now, if I get another kick, I don’t care where I am, even if I’m on the boundary line, I’m gonna kick straight through it.’ I’m lucky I got the chance to redeem myself soon after when Kane (Johnson) hit me on a lead. I put everything else out of my mind; didn’t even think about the result of the kick and whether we’d win or lose the chance to play in our first Grand Final. I didn’t think: ‘I’ve got to kick this’; I only thought: ‘Kick through it.’ I couldn’t have put less pressure on myself in such a high-pressure situation. I ran straight, I kicked straight through it and the ball went straight. There’s the evidence of my theory right there.
(Melbourne football writer) Mike Sheahan helped fire me up for the 1997 Grand Final. The night before the GF, (teammate) Tyson Edwards and I were watching The Grand Final Marathon on TV in our hotel room. It was about 10.30pm and I thought: ‘I’ll stay up for another quarter.’ Sheahan was a guest on the show and he probably didn’t think I’d be watching – he probably thought I’d be tucked up in bed – but he started bagging my performances in big games and they even replayed some of the ’91 GF when I played a shocker. I thought: ‘That’s a bit harsh. (My opponent) Bluey McKenna’s not a bad player!’ Sheahan was probably right, but I really didn’t need to hear it then. I went to bed angry, and woke up angry.
I thought: ‘I’ve got to get rid of this anger,’ so I went for a walk. But I couldn’t stop thinking about Sheahan’s comments. I even spoke to Blighty about it; he said: “Don’t worry about it. Just concentrate on the game.” After it all happened for us and for me in the last quarter, the first person I wanted to see was Sheahan. I wanted to shake his hand and thank him for firing me up. A funny thing was that some of my mates from Gaza Football Club came over to watch the game and by the end of it they would have been pretty full of grog. They caught a tram back to their hotel and Sheahan got on their tram. They gave him hell and he got off the tram a couple of stops early. I did an interview with Sheahan a couple of years later – everything’s fine between us.
Blighty threw me to full-forward after dreaming about it the night before. I played the first half (of the 1997 Grand Final) on the ball, but at half-time (with the Crows trailing by 13 points) Blighty took me aside and said: “I want you take the centre bounce and drift forward.” I said: “Where do you want me to drift to: centre half-forward, a flank, a pocket?” He said: “No, I want you to go to full-forward.” This sounded interesting. I said: “When did you think that one up?” He said: “I dreamt it last night.” (Andrew) Thompson was tagging me, so I took the centre bounce and then made my way down to full-forward where ‘Shanas’ (St Kilda full-back Jamie Shanahan) picked me up as well. I had two blokes standing with me asking each other: “What’s going on here?” When we kicked a goal, I went back to the centre with Thompson following me. After the bounce, I drifted forward again, very slowly though, so it wasn’t all that predictable. Meanwhile, the loose player for us was Simon Goodwin, who was playing only his 10th game and was creating a lot of run off half-back. To pull off that move using a kid who’d hardly played before was sensational.
I got lucky in the last quarter. The last quarter was like a dream; really flukey. Everyone dreams of kicking four or five in the last quarter of a Grand Final. But in all seriousness, I got a couple of nice bounces – they just landed in my lap. I suppose you have to finish them off though, so there’s a bit of skill in that. It wouldn’t have been any good kicking 1.4 – if that happened, rather than feeling on top of the world after winning the Crows’ first premiership, we might have lost and I would have been shattered. I never thought: ‘You beauty, this is my day.’ Because it was a close game, I was more concerned about kicking the next goal. In the end, I didn’t realise I’d kicked five for the (last) quarter. It was just about doing what we had to do to win.
I played 100-plus games and won at least one premiership with every one of my clubs. I won flags at Gaza in juniors, at North Adelaide (1987), Hawthorn (1991) and then the Crows (1997, 1998). I’ve played in three AFL Grand Finals and won three flags. I’m blessed. If things had worked out differently, I might not have played in one winning Grand Final.
I wish I was still playing. When I watch Andrew coach the Roosters (North Adelaide), I get itchy feet because I just want to get out there. My playing weight was 91-95kg; I blew out to 120kg, but I’ve dropped 20kg and Andrew reckons that he might give me a game if I can drop another 10kg!
I am setting up what might eventually be called ‘The Jarman School of Football’, which will probably start next year. I want to be a professional skills coach, like they have in tennis and golf, and focus on kids aged seven to 12. I’m the skills coach at Immanuel College (Novar Gardens) where my kids go to primary school. I know first-hand how important it is to learn your skills early. I plan to run sessions with groups of about six every night after school over a school term, with a different age group each night.
Source: http://afl.com.au/default.asp?pg=news&spg=display&articleid=215545
