A BIG week for Jacob Weitering, his team and his football club.

The Blues are all too familiar with this situation under Michael Voss. Not for the first time, they enter a weekend knowing that for all intents and purposes, only a win will do. 

As the team braces for a crunch clash in front of a capacity crowd against the in-form St Kilda, Weitering spoke on SEN about how the Blues would need to take hold of their own destiny this Sunday.

This is what he had to say.

On the home-and-away season reaching its climax:

“It’s certainly feeling that way. It’s a very exciting week for the Club I think. 

“It’s a situation we’ve put ourselves in on the back of our last eight weeks: it’s just one of those things where you can take it as a challenge or run away from it. I certainly know what the boys are looking to do. 

“Off the back of last week, with the way ‘Vossy’ and ‘Cripp’ led to go over to Perth and do a job with a team that was quite inexperienced and a few new boys, it was quite an achievement. We’ve got to do it all over again against St Kilda, which is exciting.”

On what the week looked like heading into West Coast:

“It started off not great, if I’m being honest. Looking at the review of the Hawthorn game, it was certainly tough to watch. As a team and as leaders, sometimes you need that reset. We watched the second quarter in a fair bit of depth. When you go back, the vision doesn’t lie. 

“The first half of that game, it was pretty obvious for us that we weren’t playing our brand of football, we weren’t selfless, we weren’t connected and that’s when they got on top. The injuries compounded the hurt. It was one of those games, but the early part of the week was a good reset. The energy on the track, the way we trained and framed the week in terms of going over to Perth and giving younger boys the opportunity, it was a fresh way of going about it. 

“Being the underdogs again, I’ve certainly felt that in my nine years at the football club, so it was somewhat refreshing. To go and travel, Cooper Lord in his first game, Ashton [Moir], Jaxon Binns practically in his first full game, we had 11 guys under 50 games which was exciting for them. We went back to our brand, which is pressure and contest.”

On key players standing up: 

“The leaders led, I thought ‘Crippa’ was excellent, George Hewett and the guys who were doing roles, if you’ve got guys trying to do too much and not connected with each other and the lines not doing what they’re meant to in defence, it’s not going to help in the long run. 

“Everyone was connected in defence, I think it was the second lowest score West Coast have had in Perth which was a good little stat. The way the guys executed, you’ve got to celebrate them. 

“Guys like Brodie Kemp and his attitude, he should be pretty happy with the way he went about his stuff and I think he had three of four forward-50 tackles. It was built off pressure and contest, and hopefully we can go again against St Kilda.”

On potentially putting his hand up to play forward:

“I didn’t, I think I’ve been there and done that earlier in my career. I’m pretty comfortable down back. Matty Kennedy is another one, the small forwards were unbelievable, I thought Corey Durdin played like a tall forward for a few quarters there. It’s good to know we can play a different style, we’ll see how we go with Harry and Charlie in there if all ends well on Sunday.”

On Patrick Cripps’ leadership:

“He’s always the optimist, ‘Crippa’. Sometimes that’s a real strength and other times you need to pull him back into line and be a realist! He’s always celebrating the strengths of individuals, the lines, the team. For us, he was very much along the lines that it’s a week we have to get it done. 

“We’re wondering if we talk about finals or if there should be a wildcard round, but quite simply it was win or go home. The way he led himself by actions, he’s done it before in many games. I still remember the Brisbane game [in 2019] when he had 38 and four goals and we got the win. 

“He’s quite an inspirational captain, he pulls you along with his actions. His composure and the way he went about himself, at quarter time and even three-quarter time, to go back to the simple things in pressure and contest, he was always on the front foot. He got it done, it was very impressive to watch.”

On the prospect of St Kilda this week:

“It’s a different contest again. We’re back in Melbourne, we’re against a completely different team and game style. We’ll see about some tests we have in terms of injury at the end of the week, who knows what the team looks like. We’ll go about that tomorrow with our main training session. We’ve got to treat it as somewhat of a final. 

“For us, quite simply, it’s in our control. We know the scenarios that can play out on Sunday, and we want to be in control of our fate. We’ve got to focus on what we can control, which is bringing our identity, guys bringing their roles. Whatever team we put out there - whether it’s a small forward line again, changes in the midfield, a young crop again - we’ve just got to go back to playing our roles, that defensive mindset which certainly helped me and the whole defence on the weekend. 

“I know it’s a pretty simple answer, but we’ve got to do it all over again. We can’t be too complacent. It’s going to be a big match for us, I’m very much looking forward to it.”

On what the team could look like this week:

“There’s a couple of tests, I know that. I can’t remember the entire list, but I do know there are guys that are going to be trying to get up for it. 

“’Gov’ is in that situation down in defence for us, he’ll be doing his utmost to get back and recover. He felt a bit of hamstring tightness, he’s been battling through some stuff and certainly been a soldier. If there’s ever a time to get up for a game and create a win for this club, it’s this weekend. 

“There’ll be a lot of motivated boys, I’m sure.”

On the team’s injury list:

“It’s hard to look at, a lot of them are uncontrollable. Even for me with the corkies, they’re out of my control and it does affect your performance a little bit. With the Andrew Russell announcement, there were conversations around that and a celebration of where we’ve come from, thinking back to 2018 and where we were as a football club, our training standards, our culture, our high performance — we’ve come a long way. 

“The way the boys - especially the senior crop that have been around - have developed their bodies and developed as players, you can credit him with a lot of that. The boys will be doing their utmost to get back, there’s certainly a real positive that we don’t want to look too far down the track but we’re going to get the majority of that injury list back if we do a job this weekend. There’s an incentive there to get the job done, that’s for sure.”

On how things have shaped up:

“You can’t dwell too much on the past. I’ve spoken before about being a consistent football club: 12-13 wins is going to get you most times in finals, 16-17 wins is going to get you top four. That’s the reality of really good football clubs, of consistent football teams. That’s definitely a goal of ours. 

“Unfortunately we’ve put ourselves in a position where we’re still battling to stay in finals contention, but at the same time we’ll treat it as a great challenge. When you lose some pretty close games, the Port Adelaide game we started really well but only played a half in terms of our brand where they ran over the top of us, the Collingwood game we all know how that ended. That was controllable: our last quarter was back to us. 

“You have the North game thrown in there which was a win, the West Coast game and then the blip with Hawthorn. It’s a close year, we’re only a game and percentage out of the four — it’s going to be an exciting weekend for everyone watching at home. I love being part of it, but at the same time it’d be an amazing watch.”