TYQUIN REVEALS EXTREME LENGTHS TO PLAY DECIDER

chamber sessions), because I was told it’s meant to help. I was giving everything a go to get myself back.”

Tyquin started on the bench and had to wait three minutes into the first quarter before he was unleashed on the contest, but he wasted little time throwing himself in.

He finished the match with a deep cut to the side of his head after a clash late in the final term.

“I can’t see it, so I don’t know what it’s like,” Tyquin said of his head wound.

“I went for the ball, I don’t know what got me, but I just got cleaned up when I was going down to pick it up.”

He failed a fitness test before last week’s preliminary final against Werribee Centrals, watching on from the sidelines as his team won its way through to a grand final.

While he was disappointed to miss the match, Tyquin said he was not sure if he would have come through the Centrals clash.

“I don’t know, to be honest. It was touch and go last week, I was still feeling it,” he said.

“I felt like if I had have played, if I had have done it again early in the game, it would have been a waste.

“We would have been a rotation down in such a big game.

“I didn’t want to put the boys at risk by doing that.”

The fitness test on Friday before yesterday’s grand final was designed to push Tyquin to his limits.

Riccardi had to know his star would not break down in the heat of battle.

“If he was going to do his calf, he would have done it on Friday night — we put him through a rigorous test,” the coach said.

“I asked him to text me the thumbs up or thumbs down. I said, I don’t want to talk to you, and I got the thumbs up, which was fantastic.”

Tyquin described it as “a pretty solid” fitness test.

“I was blowing after it,” he said with a laugh.

“There was a lot of repetitive stuff — sprints, side-toside, up and back.

“It gave me some confidence after that. I felt like I was right to go and it gave ‘Ricco’ confidence to pick me.”

Tyquin played in the 2016 premiership loss to Bell Post Hill and said that defeat made this year’s success so much sweeter.

“There are blokes here who have played footy with me all the way through from Auskick,” he said.

“It’s amazing to win one with your home club. It’s the best feeling, I’m speechless.”