BulldogBelle
13-07-2008, 12:45 AM
A very good article....
http://www.realfooty.com.au/ffximage/2008/07/13/camHargrave3_narrowweb__300x423,0.jpg
The Underdog (http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/news/the-underdog/2008/07/12/1215658195051.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2)
The Age
Emma Quayle | July 12, 2008
IN THE past seven weeks, Ryan Hargrave has played against Jeff Farmer, Matthew Campbell, Cyril Rioli, Michael Osborne, Rhan Hooper, Jared Brennan, Paul Medhurst and Brett Ebert. Each time, his club has ranked him in its best four players for the day.
Hargrave has done his work in typically quiet, no-fuss style. He has been what he has always been - unobtrusive - but has been known to make more dramatic sporting statements, and isn't a person who should be underestimated. Unless you want big trouble.
Until this year, the defender spent his spare time practising Brazilian jiujitsu, the martial art of ground fighting. Why did he give it up? "I'm getting a bit old these days. I need all the recovery time I can get," said the soon-to-turn 27-year-old.
"Oh, and I broke the instructor's leg. I was starting to get a bit confident with the rolling around on the mat, and then I went and did that. It was an accident ... but he hasn't wrestled with me again, so I sort of got the point. I haven't done much of it since then."
It is almost nine years since Hargrave became a Western Bulldog. He walked into his new club on the same day as Robert Murphy, Daniel Giansiracusa, Mitch Hahn and Lindsay Gilbee, and can still remember them, as teenage boys, looking just how he felt.
"We were all such little kids," he said. "The thing I remember is how small we all were. Rob Murphy looked about 12, and Gia was like this smart-arse little schoolboy. Mitch had a bit of size about him, but I remember looking at the others and thinking how small we all were.
"Then we walked into the locker rooms and saw Chris Grant, Danny Southern, Craig Ellis and Kingsley Hunter, all of these really big monsters, and it made me feel a bit sick. I thought, 'What am I in for here? I weigh about 70 kilos, one of these guys will murder me and they're meant to be my teammates'."
Hargrave was chosen as the last of his draft lot, at No.66 in 1999. He was the smokey in a speculative bunch and has slowly been catching up since. As a teenager he wanted to get drafted, and he wanted to play for Footscray, but he didn't think that either could happen.
At Perth, he played in some of the same junior sides as Darren Glass, Chance Bateman, Leon Davis and Scott Stevens but, unlike them, he didn't make Western Australia's under-18 team. He thought that was where things would end, and had started work as a mechanic when Bulldogs recruiter Scott Clayton called and asked him to come and do a few fitness tests for him.
On his own, having also missed out on draft camp invitation, Hargrave went straight from work, covered in grease. He did a beep test, ran a three-kilometre time trial, did some jumping and reflex testing and, by the end of it, could barely move. He thought no more of that either, and was genuinely surprised when his mother walked into his room on draft day, just after he had woken up, to tell him he had been picked by the team his father, Steve, had once played for.
"All I could think was, 'What ...?' It felt so out of the blue," he said. "I'd always wanted it, I just thought it was too hard for me - or too big a dream, I suppose. I didn't think it was something that would actually happen."
Hargrave had no choice, in his first days as a Bulldog, but to trail his draft class. He felt sick the night he flew from Perth to Melbourne to start his new life, and spent his first day at the club throwing up. Throwing up for no reason was something he had not done a lot of before, but he kept telling himself to keep going, that surely there was nothing wrong. "I didn't want anyone to think I deliberately wasn't trying hard," he said.
After three weeks, he still felt sick, and wound up spending a fortnight in hospital after an orange-sized abscess was found growing in his bowel. So far from home, it was an experience that has made him keep a closer eye in recent seasons on how his new, out-of-state teammates are going, to the point where he has had some live with him for a while. "When you come to the club, you have instant friends," Hargrave said. "I was really grateful for that when I was so sick. But when you go home at night, you still think of what you're missing out on."
Having missed out on his first pre-season, Hargrave then had to watch as Murphy, Hahn and Patrick Wiggins made their debuts in 2000, followed by Giansiracusa, Gilbee and Patrick Bowden the following season. He liked watching them play, because it made him think he could do it to, but there were things still to learn about how he could join them.
In his second year in Melbourne, Hargrave moved in with Hahn, who got on his case about what he ate, where he went and what he did - "about my whole life, basically" - and has become a close friend, living right behind him in Maidstone these days. The new Brad Johnson and Rohan Smith? "A bit," laughed Hargrave. "We haven't had any family portraits done together yet."
He also had to believe he should be there. "He needed some self-esteem," said Clayton. "He'd never been made a fuss of before, he'd never made any squads, he'd never been talked up. He needed to hear people telling him he was good."
At the end of the 2002 pre-season, he spent round one in the senior side. "It was a funny time for it to happen," he said. "I remember before the game I still didn't know if I was able to play AFL. I was really, really worried about it when I got told I was in because I wasn't sure I could do it.
"Then after the game, I remember talking to my dad on the phone and it was so awesome, it was such a rush. I just couldn't believe I'd done it and I actually started setting goals and things after that. I started to get things in my mind that I wanted to do, so that was a pretty big jump for me."
Since then, he has inched his way up to the others. Hargrave's name was one of the first to jump into coach Rodney Eade's head last week when asked who had been among his most improved players this year. The Bulldogs' defensive stars have finally aligned enough for Hargrave to play on the small to medium-sized opponents Eade has always wanted him up against, and the player himself is doing things with some consistency.
"He's always been highly rated at the club, I've rated him highly since I've been here, but he hasn't delivered consistently in that time," Eade said. "In fairness, we've had him play above his weight at times, but we're a bit taller now and I've always wanted to get him on the mediums and smalls.
"He tests as one of the quickest at the club, if not the quickest, so he's got great closing speed and the long arms and reach, too. That enables him to still play on the taller players too, but I think playing against the smaller guys he's got a good understanding of his own capabilities. That gives him confidence, I think."
It is not often that five players in the one year get to spend so many years together, and Hargrave has enjoyed having players to catch up to and watch them grow out of their baby faces, even if they have all remained essentially the same people. "I think about Gilbs and he's always been so comfortable. He was the most comfortable of us back then and I think he still has that side to him," Hargrave said.
"Even with Gia, he's still the same guy he was back at the start, but I see all the younger guys looking up to him now and he's such a leader around the place. You don't think to look at people like that when you're a kid with them, but Mitchy's a bit the same and I've probably changed a bit, too.
"It took me a lot longer than those guys to realise footy wasn't just something where you got to mess around with your mates, that it was a full-time job. Those guys picked it up pretty quickly, I wasn't so quick. But I think, over time, I started to realise how important it was to me, too."
http://www.realfooty.com.au/ffximage/2008/07/13/camHargrave3_narrowweb__300x423,0.jpg
The Underdog (http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/news/the-underdog/2008/07/12/1215658195051.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2)
The Age
Emma Quayle | July 12, 2008
IN THE past seven weeks, Ryan Hargrave has played against Jeff Farmer, Matthew Campbell, Cyril Rioli, Michael Osborne, Rhan Hooper, Jared Brennan, Paul Medhurst and Brett Ebert. Each time, his club has ranked him in its best four players for the day.
Hargrave has done his work in typically quiet, no-fuss style. He has been what he has always been - unobtrusive - but has been known to make more dramatic sporting statements, and isn't a person who should be underestimated. Unless you want big trouble.
Until this year, the defender spent his spare time practising Brazilian jiujitsu, the martial art of ground fighting. Why did he give it up? "I'm getting a bit old these days. I need all the recovery time I can get," said the soon-to-turn 27-year-old.
"Oh, and I broke the instructor's leg. I was starting to get a bit confident with the rolling around on the mat, and then I went and did that. It was an accident ... but he hasn't wrestled with me again, so I sort of got the point. I haven't done much of it since then."
It is almost nine years since Hargrave became a Western Bulldog. He walked into his new club on the same day as Robert Murphy, Daniel Giansiracusa, Mitch Hahn and Lindsay Gilbee, and can still remember them, as teenage boys, looking just how he felt.
"We were all such little kids," he said. "The thing I remember is how small we all were. Rob Murphy looked about 12, and Gia was like this smart-arse little schoolboy. Mitch had a bit of size about him, but I remember looking at the others and thinking how small we all were.
"Then we walked into the locker rooms and saw Chris Grant, Danny Southern, Craig Ellis and Kingsley Hunter, all of these really big monsters, and it made me feel a bit sick. I thought, 'What am I in for here? I weigh about 70 kilos, one of these guys will murder me and they're meant to be my teammates'."
Hargrave was chosen as the last of his draft lot, at No.66 in 1999. He was the smokey in a speculative bunch and has slowly been catching up since. As a teenager he wanted to get drafted, and he wanted to play for Footscray, but he didn't think that either could happen.
At Perth, he played in some of the same junior sides as Darren Glass, Chance Bateman, Leon Davis and Scott Stevens but, unlike them, he didn't make Western Australia's under-18 team. He thought that was where things would end, and had started work as a mechanic when Bulldogs recruiter Scott Clayton called and asked him to come and do a few fitness tests for him.
On his own, having also missed out on draft camp invitation, Hargrave went straight from work, covered in grease. He did a beep test, ran a three-kilometre time trial, did some jumping and reflex testing and, by the end of it, could barely move. He thought no more of that either, and was genuinely surprised when his mother walked into his room on draft day, just after he had woken up, to tell him he had been picked by the team his father, Steve, had once played for.
"All I could think was, 'What ...?' It felt so out of the blue," he said. "I'd always wanted it, I just thought it was too hard for me - or too big a dream, I suppose. I didn't think it was something that would actually happen."
Hargrave had no choice, in his first days as a Bulldog, but to trail his draft class. He felt sick the night he flew from Perth to Melbourne to start his new life, and spent his first day at the club throwing up. Throwing up for no reason was something he had not done a lot of before, but he kept telling himself to keep going, that surely there was nothing wrong. "I didn't want anyone to think I deliberately wasn't trying hard," he said.
After three weeks, he still felt sick, and wound up spending a fortnight in hospital after an orange-sized abscess was found growing in his bowel. So far from home, it was an experience that has made him keep a closer eye in recent seasons on how his new, out-of-state teammates are going, to the point where he has had some live with him for a while. "When you come to the club, you have instant friends," Hargrave said. "I was really grateful for that when I was so sick. But when you go home at night, you still think of what you're missing out on."
Having missed out on his first pre-season, Hargrave then had to watch as Murphy, Hahn and Patrick Wiggins made their debuts in 2000, followed by Giansiracusa, Gilbee and Patrick Bowden the following season. He liked watching them play, because it made him think he could do it to, but there were things still to learn about how he could join them.
In his second year in Melbourne, Hargrave moved in with Hahn, who got on his case about what he ate, where he went and what he did - "about my whole life, basically" - and has become a close friend, living right behind him in Maidstone these days. The new Brad Johnson and Rohan Smith? "A bit," laughed Hargrave. "We haven't had any family portraits done together yet."
He also had to believe he should be there. "He needed some self-esteem," said Clayton. "He'd never been made a fuss of before, he'd never made any squads, he'd never been talked up. He needed to hear people telling him he was good."
At the end of the 2002 pre-season, he spent round one in the senior side. "It was a funny time for it to happen," he said. "I remember before the game I still didn't know if I was able to play AFL. I was really, really worried about it when I got told I was in because I wasn't sure I could do it.
"Then after the game, I remember talking to my dad on the phone and it was so awesome, it was such a rush. I just couldn't believe I'd done it and I actually started setting goals and things after that. I started to get things in my mind that I wanted to do, so that was a pretty big jump for me."
Since then, he has inched his way up to the others. Hargrave's name was one of the first to jump into coach Rodney Eade's head last week when asked who had been among his most improved players this year. The Bulldogs' defensive stars have finally aligned enough for Hargrave to play on the small to medium-sized opponents Eade has always wanted him up against, and the player himself is doing things with some consistency.
"He's always been highly rated at the club, I've rated him highly since I've been here, but he hasn't delivered consistently in that time," Eade said. "In fairness, we've had him play above his weight at times, but we're a bit taller now and I've always wanted to get him on the mediums and smalls.
"He tests as one of the quickest at the club, if not the quickest, so he's got great closing speed and the long arms and reach, too. That enables him to still play on the taller players too, but I think playing against the smaller guys he's got a good understanding of his own capabilities. That gives him confidence, I think."
It is not often that five players in the one year get to spend so many years together, and Hargrave has enjoyed having players to catch up to and watch them grow out of their baby faces, even if they have all remained essentially the same people. "I think about Gilbs and he's always been so comfortable. He was the most comfortable of us back then and I think he still has that side to him," Hargrave said.
"Even with Gia, he's still the same guy he was back at the start, but I see all the younger guys looking up to him now and he's such a leader around the place. You don't think to look at people like that when you're a kid with them, but Mitchy's a bit the same and I've probably changed a bit, too.
"It took me a lot longer than those guys to realise footy wasn't just something where you got to mess around with your mates, that it was a full-time job. Those guys picked it up pretty quickly, I wasn't so quick. But I think, over time, I started to realise how important it was to me, too."