JORDAN JONES PLAYER COLUMN – STATE GAME

A WEST Perth premiership player will be writing a column for the club's website every week of the 2014 WAFL season. This week's edition is Jordan Jones' first offering.

A WEST Perth premiership player will be writing a column for the club's website every week of the 2014 WAFL season. This week's edition is Jordan Jones' first offering.

MY MOVE to join West Perth has obviously been a great one for me. I already had a lot of friends there already and that was one of the reasons I came to the footy club. I also saw the ability the group had to have success and now I am about to play in my first State game, played in the premiership last year and it has been fantastic.

Even though I am only in my third season at the club, I sure do feel like a West Perth person. Knowing a few of the boys already made me feel part of the club straight away, but we have a pretty young group and I'm kind of in between ages. We have the young boys, then guys a bit older like Strijky, Tedesco and Chipper who are 26 or 27 so I'm in between that so I get the best of both worlds being close to the young boys and a few of the older heads as well.

Back in 2012 in my first year at West Perth and my first year out of the AFL, I was injured at the start of the season hurting my ankle and foot in Round 3 and didn’t play a league game again until Round 9 so that put me behind the pace, but it was also tough adjusting to working. I tried three or four different jobs with labouring work and all sorts of stuff so I hadn’t sorted out my career off the field either. But once that got sorted and I got a job at the bank, it all fell into place and helped my footy throughout the way as well.

I was able to settle playing down back last year and I have really enjoyed it. Our back-line is a really tight-knit group and we are pretty mature there compared to the midfield and forward groups. Winning the premiership with that whole group itself of defenders, and the whole team, was so amazing and it's something I will never ever forget.

It might sound funny, but it kind of hasn’t sunk in in a way that we won the premiership and that I'm a premiership player. It's one of those things that you know happened, but you can't explain how good the feeling is. It is the reason you do all your pre-season training through October, November and December to get you fit, and then you work during the year with it in the back of your mind, but it's not at the forefront. Your focus is winning each week, but to get the opportunity in a grand final and win it was just unbelievable and it's not something that comes around very often. To do it again we will have to do everything possible to try and get there. If we do that, we will be a good chance again.

There has been a bit of difference this year with us being reigning premiers. We have a bit more confidence as a result of winning, but the big difference is the attitude of the teams playing against us each week. Last year nobody rated us or thought we were any good, but we kept winning games and I think we really thrived on that and enjoyed being the underdog or not rated. We had a point to prove so we would go out and prove that point, but it still wasn’t good enough for some media and pundits out there. This year we have been the hunted more by other teams who have done their work on us, and we lost some games early on that we should have won. We had another challenge last week, though, against the top side Subiaco and we played well. We have the belief in our abilities that we can beat anyone we play, but it's just a matter of making sure we beat the teams that we know we should be beating more often at this stage.

Now this week, I am really looking forward to the chance to play for WA. It's a great opportunity and it's a personal achievement to make the team. I can't wait. I haven’t played in any state footy over here in the WAFL yet so I'm looking forward to that, and to represent the club as well as I can on Saturday.

It's great that Shane Nelson, Jay van Berlo, Laine Rasmussen, Nick Rodda, Kody Manning and Chris Keunen will be there from West Perth as well. The more players you get in from your club it shows the depth of our group and we are all looking forward to it. Out of the seven of us, six of us are making our debuts for WA which is really positive for the group. Having seven guys there, shows that we have a lot of young talent and how good we are and how good we can be. Hopefully with such a young group we can be a real powerhouse over the next few years.

It's great for the young guys, but for Keuns it is just fantastic. He works his butt off on the training track and he does everything right to get himself ready each week. It's a real credit to him. He has risen to all the challenges. There were a lot of them last year that he rose to and he was the No. 1 ruckman in the competition at some point this year, and he has started this season really well again. It's a fantastic credit to him and he will love the opportunity to play for WA.

Our opposition from the NEAFL is going to be very talented given it's NSW, Northern Territory, Queensland and the ACT all combined. They had quite a big group to pick from and there's a lot of ex-AFL players running around in that competition so I dare say they will be pretty talented, and skilful.

A few of the boys have talked about the ground at Blacktown and when you think of a Sydney ground you think of a small and pokey kind of oval compared to a ground in Perth, but I think it's a reasonable sized ground. It doesn’t really matter, though, there will always be plenty of space on a footy field and I'm looking forward to getting out there.

At our jumper presentation on Wednesday a few ex-State representatives presented our jumpers like Steve Malaxos, Marty Atkins and Michael Broadbridge, and they gave an insight into what it was like for them to play State footy and how much it meant to them. They really talked about the passion of the state and some of the stories they told like being told if they didn’t perform they would never play for WA again, that's how cut throat it was. I don’t think it's quite the same now, but the passion is still there and you want to represent your state, and we want the WAFL to be known as the best league in the country. Last year the boys knocked off the VFL and that was a bit of a scalp so this year is another challenge that we have to fight through to get a win and prove that we are the No. 1 competition in Australia.

BY JORDAN JONES