‘ Family’ helped Lion to recover
LIONS vice- captain Harris Andrews knows what it’s like to be crunched in the jaws of the beast – and he’s prepared to go back.
Andrews has shaken off the scar tissue of one of the modern era’s most brutal collisions – when he threw himself in front of 96kg Giant wrecking ball Jeremy Cameron – to declare if the situation arose again he would not hesitate to go back with the flight of the footy into an oncoming pack.
Andrews, who returns against Geelong today after a month out with the concussion he suffered in the sickening blow, which earned Cameron a five- week ban, looks at the numbers and understands he was unlucky.
He also looks at the types of players who find themselves in a position to get unlucky, the courageous ones, and knows what those acts do for a team.
“I have been playing for 15 years and it hasn’t happened before and there are a lot of AFL games played every season and you don’t see it that often,’’ he said. “So if the same situation happens tomorrow and I have to go back with the flight I will certainly commit.
“I remember watching Beau Waters ( West Coast) always going back with the flight and I admired him and in my own team Mitch Robinson will always commit. Seeing blokes play with courage is uplifting for the team.’’
He has seen the incident more times than he would like and says it was tough on his family in the early days but he no longer thinks about it.
“I remember early on it was pretty much being played everywhere and it was all over my social media,’’ he said. “So I couldn’t really avoid it. “It caused a bit of a scare for my family but we moved on from it pretty quickly.’’
Andrews said the Lions’ purple patch of form, when they won three straight games in his absence, had come at the perfect time because the buzz was so contagious it spread to the injured ranks.
Even the constant sledging that there might no longer be a place for him in the team, which came from CEO Greg Swann down, was taken in the spirit it was intended.
“When you cop an injury you are not overly happy about it, but the boys brought my spirits up. That is why they have become a bit like a family to me,’’ he said.
“It helped me out to come into work and feel the excitement and to see the smiles on the faces, but also to know they were getting the reward for all the effort was great.”