GRATEFUL.
Coming up to his 150th AFL game, Sam Docherty couldn't have more appreciation for the chance to get this far in his career, considering his up-and-down journey.
Speaking on AFL 360 on Tuesday night, Docherty detailed his career to date, the impact of his family and the Club and the upcoming clash with his former side in the Brisbane Lions.
Here's what he had to say.
On his journey and perspective:
"I think the journey itself has been so up and down, so many hard things to go through from a personal point of view, but my family rides that wave as much as I do.
"I think you start to cherish these moments a little bit more as you get older. The start of the week has been thinking about the whole journey and how hard it’s been at times: I’m definitely very grateful to be able to run out there.
"I feel like I’ve grown as a person and an individual from going through what I have. It makes these things at the backend very special to you and the people around you, so I’m very excited for Friday night.
"I get to run out with my daughter in my arms, I’m pretty excited for the whole day and hopefully the boys can get up and get a good win."
On the West Coast win:
"I think that the narrative that has come out of our whole year is that we’re chasing the best versions of ourselves and it doesn’t matter which team that we come up against. We weren’t playing our best footy and getting wins earlier in the year – on the weekend, we played a good brand that we see as a core to who we are.
"West Coast - as much as everyone seems to be hounding them - they were great around the ball on the weekend in terms of their pressure and their inside game, they were quite strong. It was just our ability to break it open on the weekend, which was something we’d been working on for a number of weeks that we were pretty poor on the week before.
"I’m proud of the group: once we get to work on something, generally it turns around pretty quickly. The weekend’s game was a good four-quarter effort and we’re pretty happy."
On looking at the next month of footy:
"I think everyone knows who they’re coming up against, but it’s pretty naive to think we think beyond one week.
"Brisbane is a very good side and if we’re thinking about the weeks after and what's coming up in detail, that takes our eyes off what we need to do and our job is to get the job done on Friday night and play our brand of footy to the highest level we can. Whatever happens over the next month, the results will take care of themselves if we play that way."
On Carlton Respects:
"The Carlton Respects program, we’ve been down that road for a number of years now and based around gender equality and the prevention of violence against women and the Club does a great job in this area.
"We're starting to bring overall action to schools in grade 5 and 6 in terms of the learning about respect for women and gender equalisation. The Club does an unbelievable job and it’s just another week we get to go out there and play in a great jumper that highlights those issues."
