Player Column – Ryan Cook Round 18

THIS is now my fifth year here at South Fremantle and I'm very desperate to be part of some finals success and hopefully that's still a chance of happening this year.

In my first year here back in 2011 we managed to play in a first semi-final against Subiaco which we lost, and I probably thought it was just going to happen the next year, but this wasn’t the case and hasn’t been for the past three years. We had a lot of experience still in that team, most of which has now gone, we haven’t been able to play in September the last few years so hopefully we're able to this year.

We have our backs against the wall now after what happened against East Perth and we've got four games to go, and I'm pretty sure we'll have to win all of them to play finals but I'm confident we can still do that. It’s a very tough run home but if anyone can do that, I think it’s us as we have shown to finish strong the past couple of seasons.

Playing finals is the reason we play footy. You play with the dream of winning a premiership one day with your mates, but our platform is trying to firstly get into the finals and get a taste for it  make some building blocks for the next few years with the amount of talented youth we've got coming through. Hopefully we get a chance this year and then when those younger guys are hitting their peak, they know what it's all about, and we can chase that success we are all dreaming of.

I was lucky enough to play in two finals at AFL level with Collingwood and a couple of prelims in the VFL, but I haven’t been lucky enough to hold the cup up since under-16s footy so it's been a long time for me personally.

It's very hard watching on in the finals knowing you haven’t made it. It's why you play footy and you'd be silly to say that it doesn’t hurt to sit and watch. The last three years have been quite hard to not be part of it, so we're desperate to change that this year.

We've made a lot of changes this year and I think the coaches who have come in have implemented a good game plan, and good brand of footy. We've seen stages this year where we have really played how they want us too especially at the start of the season. The first three games are the best we've played in a long time but a footy season can be very up and down, and you can lose that form from week to week. We're still trying to find it consistently but the only way is to have all 22 players that run out playing our role and playing team first footy.

It's been great to see how well our reserves have been going this year to be clear on top of the ladder. We might see a fair few changes this week after the thumping loss last weekend and hopefully we bring some more youth in. We are really looking forward to the challenge of taking on Subiaco this Saturday who are the benchmark of the competition.

They are the juggernaut at the moment and they play a physical brand of team footy. We just have to bring effort, have our heads screwed on for the full duration of the game and get the jump on them. Our starts have been a problem of late, but it's just such a big game and we have to match their intensity early and put in a big four quarter performance of team footy.