IT’S AN anecdote which Patrick Cripps touched on a fair few times in the team’s run to September.

He always felt as though he understood the impact of Bluebaggers everywhere ever since arriving a decade ago, but he received a constant reminder from Shane O’Sullivan.

The veteran administrator who’s been involved in football for over 40 years - and at the Blues for the vast majority of it - also told the captain one thing.

“You wait until we make we make finals, you’ll see the energy of the Carlton army.”

Cripps and the Blues felt that and then some this September.

For the skipper, who had the longest drought of any Blue before his finals wait ended, it was a movement and a journey which summed up how far the Club had come in 2023.

“We all felt that,” Cripps told Carlton Media.

“Ed summed it up in his retirement speech: ‘it’ll turn, it’ll turn — and it’s bloody turning’. It’s definitely turned, and it’s taken a lot of hard work to get here. It’s something all of us dreamed of as kids.

“None of us will forget it and nobody in the crowd will forget it. The slogan for the finals was ‘Stronger Together’, and it was really powerful . . . it really encapsulated the end of the year and what it felt to be a Carlton person, a Carlton player and a Carlton supporter.

“There was a lot of commentary throughout the year about walking off after losses and stuff like that, but what I felt was we had a really galvanised club.”

It was so powerful that Carlton fans all over the world couldn’t help but get involved: not least, rockstar Robbie Williams and Tottenham manager Ange Postecoglou.

Williams’ song about Blues ruckman Tom De Koning made waves in the AFL world, while dyed-in-the-wool-Blue Postecoglou - who's also received a serenade from Williams in 2023 - took the opportunity in his press conference prior to the North London Derby to send his team a message of support.

As Cripps revealed, there were also some messages behind the scenes in the lead-up to the preliminary final.

“We had Robbie, Ange as well who’s always been a Carlton supporter — we had some pretty cool messages, we got another one from them pre-game. It was pretty sick,” he said.

“Sometimes you have to sit back and see the impact you can have on people. We love playing footy with our mates and we’re always going to have a crack out there, but to sit back and see how much joy we were bringing to a lot of people was pretty cool.

“How many young kids were rocking up and smiling, coming to open training and things like that — you realise it’s something much bigger than actually playing. It’s something that, as players, we take a lot of pride in.”