HAWKS v BULLDOGS
JARRYD ROUGHEAD says playing next to Lance Franklin is like living in football nirvana.
"Yeah, well, you get to play next to the guy who's arguably going to be the best bloke to ever play footy, and sometimes you get the second-best defender, so it's a win-win every week. You get a good view of watching 'Buddy' do what he does and you have a good chance of beating your opponent," said Roughead, the lower-profile member of Hawthorn's duo of tall forwards.
Speaking before yesterday morning's goal-kicking practice for tonight's qualifying final against the Western Bulldogs, Roughead explained: "You can feel like you're in the crowd because he can do things that blokes just shouldn't be able to do. If I get to sit there and watch him do that for the next 10 years, then I'll have a pretty good view. You hear this thing about me being the sidekick and whatnot, but I've got no problem if people say and write that and we win every game and Buddy kicks 100 goals. You don't want two big egos in the club that argue and fight."
When they first met as 15-year-old All-Australian representatives, Roughead and Franklin formed an instant bond. As 21-year-old teammates, they remain best mates despite their differing personalities.
Franklin is confident; Roughead is a worrier. The flashy 2008 Coleman medallist is showered in glory and behaves like he was born to it. The bloke with the old-fashioned playing style drafted three picks ahead of him sits sixth on the league's goalkicking ladder but still can't believe it.
"It's kind of a weird feeling," Roughead said. "You look at yourself and at your name there each week and you think: 'How's that possible?' You've got Buddy up top on 102 goals or whatever, then you've got [Matthew] Pavlich, [Brendan] Fevola, [Jonathan] Brown, [Daniel] Bradshaw and me. I look at them and think I shouldn't, or I don't feel like I should, be there. I still feel like a little kid half the time."
Off field, however, Roughead, the eldest of three kids raised in Leongatha, has matured quickly.
When he was 13, his father. Michael, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.
"Oh, it doesn't get any better," Roughead said. "He's 48, so he's young, but he's had it nearly seven or eight years. It's just his nervous system, so his balance is shot and if he does things for too long, he just gets wrecked."
It was his father who convinced him to switch from basketball to footy when the skinny redhead was 15. "Dad said if I quit basketball he'd coach me in under-16s footy back home."
But it didn't work out quite as planned. Roughead was so good that the seniors wanted him and, despite reassurances offered by retired AFL players Andrew Dunkley and Paul Hudson to Cheryl Roughead about protecting her son, the greenhorn had his collarbone shattered not too far into proceedings.
"So Dad got me for a total of four games," Roughead said.
He described Hawthorn as becoming "more confident" during the lead-up to tonight's final.
Personally, he hasn't been sleepless with anxiety, just excited. He has been waiting for this moment for several years.
"I remember we just turned around and smiled at each other," Roughead recalled of draft day four years ago when he and Franklin knew they had both joined the Hawks, "and I thought, 'This is going to be good fun."'
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