EASTON JOINS TOP DOGS
Former Geelong Falcon Easton Wood (pictured) will on Saturday join Charlie Sutton and Ted Whitten as the only men to have captained the Bulldogs into a VFL-AFL Grand Final.
STAND-IN skipper Easton Wood shook hands with the late Charlie Sutton many times early in his career and, while he never knew Ted Whitten, can’t help but respect the legend surrounding the man in whose honour the Western Bulldogs’ home base is named.
On Saturday Wood, 27, who took over the captaincy after Bob Murphy suffered his season-ending knee injury in Round 3, will join Sutton (1954) and Whitten (1961) as the only men to have captained the Bulldogs into a VFLAFL Grand Final.
The magnitude of that achievement won’t really hit Wood until after the Grand Final showdown with Sydney — he is too focused on the task at hand.
“That is something I will look back on a little later,” the former Geelong Falcon said of the link he will have with two of the Bulldogs’ most revered characters. “At the moment I am just taking each moment as it comes.
“But I was very fortunate to shake Charlie Sutton’s hand a number of times. He was fantastic. He always had a smile on his face and was a calming influence.
“I never met Ted Whitten, but I know all about him.”
Sutton, captain-coach when Footscray won its sole premiership in 1954, was a regular around Whitten Oval until his death in 2012.
Whitten, who died in 1995, was the club’s captain-coach in the 1961 Grand Final loss to Hawthorn. Wood said Murphy’s words of advice had helped him immeasurably during a sometimes difficult but exciting season. “I keep going back to the first thing Bob said to me,” Wood said. “He said, ‘All you can do, mate, is be yourself, and that is always going to be enough’.
“If you are trying to be a person you are not, then you just end up separating yourself from the group, and you can trip yourself up.
“I’ve just been able to lean on those around us, including Bob. He is the captain of this group and he has been at the helm of this ship the whole time. He might be yelling out directions now and others are steering, but he remains our guiding influence.”
Murphy would almost be like a “23rd man” heading into the Grand Final against the Swans, Wood said.
He said the calming effect of Murphy and senior coach Luke Beveridge had been so important during the Bulldogs’ injury crisis through the season.
“The challenges we faced, particularly injury-wise, in a bittersweet kind of way has been one of the reasons why we are here now,” he said.
“All you can do with challenges is to meet them and you address them. I feel like this group says, ‘This is the next challenge and you just get on with it’.”