That loss on Saturday against the Bulldogs, it hurt me. I just laid in the middle of the MCG, holding my tears in.

In the last quarter I looked up to where my family were in the stand, and I was thinking to myself, this is my time now to win the game. I tried so hard to help get us over the line. Me and my brother always talk about big stages and big games and that was a big game and we needed it.

I baulked my opponent and the ball landed on my chest for a mark. I went back and I could hear the Bulldogs players saying ‘lot of pressure’, but I had no nerves and I thought to myself just go back and kick it like you do in training.

I did kick the goal but we just couldn’t get there in the end. I’m not too sure what went wrong, we just gave them a couple of easy goals in the second quarter and got their momentum up again.

When the siren went I just sat down right in the middle of the oval. It was the worst feeling ever and I never want to feel that again.

I saw my mum in the rooms after the game, and she is proud of me no matter what the score is. In the past two weeks my family drove from Bunbury to Sydney to watch us play Carlton and then to Melbourne for the Bulldogs game, and they won’t be back home in WA until Friday.

It has been an exciting year for me being my first year and how many games I’ve played. The whole thing with my goal-kicking, how many points I kicked. I think I ended up with seven goals and 21 behinds! It was a fun season, the best I’ve ever had so far.

I learnt I had the confidence to go and get the ball when the bigger bodies are there. Everyone is human and you are not going to get killed. You might get a cork or an injury but you are not going to get killed so go and get the footy no matter how hard they hit you.

I learnt to keep trying and have a crack at it when things didn’t go right, such as when I missed goals.

Now I’m going to start to recover, get my body right, have two to three weeks where I lay back, get a tan and then get straight back into training. I’m heading home to Bunbury and I might go down south west in WA and go bush but just stay near home.

There will be a lot of hunting because I haven’t been for about two years now so it has been a while.

But I can’t wait to get back to the club in eight weeks. I’m already hungry to play next year!