The post-season break is a good opportunity for players to get a physical and mental break.

For me, it’s more mental than physical this year.

My body actually feels quite good. I was injured for a good two months and didn’t play as many games or pick up the same amount of bumps and bruises as a lot of the other guys.

It was a long and frustrating season.

It was frustrating from a team perspective because our performances were so inconsistent.

Going into the season, I had high expectations of myself and the group.

After getting Eddie and ‘Pods’ to the Club and ‘Tex’ coming back, I thought we’d be a genuine finals contender. So, I found it frustrating that we couldn’t live up to that.

I hate losing and it gets to you pretty quickly.

Our list is young and our core group of best players are still only early-to-mid 20s. There’s a lot of development and improvement to come, but we should’ve played finals this year.

We know that and we’ve got no one to blame but ourselves for our performances.

We were a bit lucky a few results went our way, which kept us in the mix until the final round.

If we’d performed to the level we expect of ourselves, we would’ve played finals.

It’s frustrating because we had plenty of chances to put ourselves in a position to be playing now.

At the same time, we’ve learned a lot about ourselves and each other. Hopefully, it holds us in good stead next season. But that doesn’t make it any easier now.

I watch all the finals. I even watched a couple from Bali last year. I find Grand Final day hard though because you want to be there playing.

The season was also frustrating from a personal point of view because I missed so much footy; first with my Achilles over the pre-season and then with my broken leg. I wasn’t able to help the boys out there as much as I would’ve liked. Like most players, I hate watching.

I was reasonably happy with my form when I played, so it was disappointing I couldn’t get out on the park more. I’m aiming to come back in good nick and, hopefully, get through a full pre-season and have a crack at Round One. I’d love to play 22 games, but that’s out of my control to an extent.

I’m actually looking forward to pre-season. I genuinely am.

Last year, I virtually missed the whole summer because of my Achilles. I’m looking forward to getting out there and running and training with the boys.

Maybe, ask me a couple of months in if I still feel the same way!

Even though it’s a ‘break’, we still need to train while we’re away from the Club.

We normally get two weeks of full rest and then it builds up gradually after that.

Towards the end of the break, you’re training four or five times a week getting ready for the start of pre-season.

You find yourself worrying a bit over the break because you have to keep your skinfolds down.

You want to have a break, but you can’t afford not to come back in good shape or you’ll be behind the eight ball and waste important time catching up.

When I do my offseason training, even when I’m in Adelaide, I like to train in a different gym or run outside at a different oval just to mix it up.

When you train at the same place every day for nine months, it gets a bit repetitive.

It’s handy that Matt and I will be able to train together when we’re back in Ballarat. He trained with me a bit last year before the draft.

I daresay we’ll be spending a bit of time together over the break!

One of my good mates, Nick O’Brien, plays for Essendon, so the three of us will probably train together while our other mates are at work during the day.

I’m a 1-4-year player, so we start pre-season two weeks earlier than the older blokes.

We’ll be slugging it out while the older boys are still on break, but at least we’ll have a head start.