“AT THE end of the day, we want to live the values that we hold high at the Club. I think the rest will follow.”
“We’ve just got to go out and get a job done, and that’s pretty plain and simple. Another one is our brutality and competitiveness.”
The first quote is attributable to new Carlton co-vice captain Sam Walsh, and the latter is from his counterpart Jacob Weitering: two players who are very much cut from the same cloth.
The journeys of the duo continued to intertwine on Saturday, when they were announced as the understudies to new sole captain Patrick Cripps for the 2022 season.
It was on the eve of the 2020 season when both were announced as inclusions into the leadership group on the same day, so it seemed only fitting that the weekend’s news marked the next step.
It’s a journey not dissimilar to that of two of their mentors. Cripps and Sam Docherty came into the leadership group in 2016, and announced as co-vice captains two years later.
For the duo, the new status and elevation in leadership position was a source of pride for their families and the respect they’re held in amongst their peers.
“It’s obviously a huge privilege and I called the parents straight away: they were pretty stoked with it. I think it’s more the satisfaction of family and friends, knowing that my peers have nominated myself and ‘Walshy’ for that role,” Weitering said.
“To be recognised by the boys is something that you always appreciate. To find that out was pretty cool, and to have the fans here watching us train and finish it off with a big session before a break is a good way to top it off,” Walsh added.
The last two seasons has seen the pairing take out the top two places in the John Nicholls Medal. It was Weitering from Walsh in 2020, before the inverse occurred in 2021.
While they’ll continue to bring their elite individual performance to the table, the next step that comes with their leadership is bringing others along for the ride with them.
There’s also the support they will offer to Cripps himself, with both individuals keen to praise the 26-year-old for his impact on them from the moment they walked through the door.
“He’s been amazing for me individually and the way he goes about it. The role for us will be to support him as much as possible and bring what we’ve got to the table,” Walsh said.
“’Crippa’ is an incredible leader by example. He’s always self-educating and he’s always learning and helping others, and he’s someone you want to run through a brick wall for and run out to war with,” Weitering said.
“It’s our role now to allow him to lean on us for any support that he needs, so he can go out and do his job for the team.”
Leadership groups can take on many forms in terms of numbers and their make-up, but on Saturday, it was hard not to look at this as setting something in place for the future.
However, for Walsh and Weitering, it’s very much about the present.
“The first one is earning that respect out on the track and out on the field: we’re not worried too much about the future at the moment,” Weitering said.
“Michael Voss has come in with a new coaching group that is a pretty bloody good coaching group. Competitiveness and earning respect are the two [key focuses] at the moment.”
“We’ve all got our different styles which is going to make the group unique, but we want to live our values. I think the rest will follow,” Walsh said.
“Hopefully that can lead to us standing up for our teammates and vice versa… that starts out on the field and flows into our actions off it as well.”
