Player Column – Dylan Ross Grand Final

IT has been hard over the last couple of weeks to keep this Sunday's grand final out of your mind. Any grand final is an exciting time to be part of and this is always the time of year you want to be playing footy. With the week off that we earned last week it kind of magnifies things, and it really gets you going and excited for what's to come.

We set ourselves for a big game against Subiaco in the second semi-final and Wilbur has been onto us through the whole finals series about keeping things similar, and keeping our attitude right. When that attitude is right, the effort is naturally there and we set ourselves for a big one two weeks ago, and we ended up with 23 contributors in a strong team effort to make the grand final. You only have to look at the statistics from the game and apart from maybe Colly and Bewy, most of the other blokes shared the load which was good.

I'm definitely feeling really fresh. A couple of weeks ago I talked about the new final five system and some of the downfalls of that, but it's definitely going to help make sure that we are all really fresh once we run out there on Sunday against Swan Districts. We haven’t copped any knocks for a couple of weeks which is good, but we've still trained hard and got the running into our legs to make sure we are ready to go.

It's hard to know what effect it will have, but once you cross the line it won't enter your mind and we are expecting the first five or 10 minutes to be pretty hot and everyone will be fairly nervous. But after that we should all settle down and nobody will be thinking about whether we had last week off or not.

Swannies have got a reasonable side in and they taught us a lesson out here the last time we played them. They have a pretty potent forward-line, but in saying that we've got a fairly strong back seven ourselves and most of the boys down there have been played league footy, or if they haven’t they have been knocking on the door. Whatever they throw up at us, I'm sure we'll be able to match it that's for sure.

This season didn’t pan out how I hoped in terms of being a regular in the league side, but now with this being a grand final on Sunday I'm certainly motivated to perform to the highest level possible. I'll definitely be trying to make sure I have a good one and to make sure the boys around me in the back-line, and all over the ground have a good one to put their hands up for next year. With such a young group there are only going to be exciting times going forward.

You try to keep a grand final as normal as possible in your preparation, but not many blokes of played on Subi so that's something different and the intensity definitely goes up, and you expect the first five or 10 minutes to be pretty hot. But once that dies down it drops off a fair bit.

I remember in the last quarter back in 2010 when we won the ressies flag at Claremont, it was pretty awesome with the crowd rolling in and it was a great atmosphere to be part of. Hopefully we are going fairly well by that stage and we can start enjoying it.

Paul Mugambwa has not only been amazing for South Fremantle, but for the WAFL with how he's been such a big contributor on and off the field with his multicultural work. He is a very close friend of mine so I'll be doing everything in my powers to make sure we send him off in the best possible way.