At 34 years of age, Matthew Boyd is the elder statesman of the Western Bulldogs premiership team.
The fact perhaps only dawned on Boyd in the minutes after Saturday’s AFL grand final win over the Sydney Swans during an exchange with young teammate Zaine Cordy on the hallowed turf of the MCG.
“I asked Zaine on the field, ‘how many games have you played?, and he said, ‘11’,” Boyd recalled.
“I just said, ‘Get stuffed’. I’ve had to play 282 games [for a premiership]. It’s still sweet as; it doesn’t matter how many you’ve played.”
Boyd has never been part of a tighter-knit football team than the 2016 version of the Western Bulldogs.
Despite their varying ages, the Bulldogs have blended beautifully in the past two years under premiership coach Luke Beveridge. They boast a handful of veterans, a smattering of players in their prime and a bevy of youngsters making their mark.
“Most important out of anything, this group is the tightest I’ve ever been involved with,” Boyd said.
“We care for each other. It sounds a bit cliched, but it’s a brotherhood.
“We’ve been through some really tough times. We went through adversity this year with injuries and off-field stuff and it’s brought us closer together.”
Just as important to Boyd is the chance to play a brand of football that excites the players.
Beveridge has found the right mix of defence and attack in his strategies and has empowered his players to think about their own games and how they can impact the contest.
Even Boyd has been reinvented under Beveridge, going from a hard-working midfielder to a damaging ball user off the half- back line.
“He’s always looked at the strengths that we’ve got rather than the weaknesses,” Boyd said. “He’s brought a game style that we love playing, and I think that’s half the battle.”
So many obstacles were placed in front of the Bulldogs this season that most people wrote them off as a flag contender. They suffered season-ending injuries to captain Bob Murphy, full-forward Jack Redpath, centreman Mitch Wallis and defenders Marcus Adams and Josh Prudden, and the aftershocks of the Essendon drugs scandal were felt with forward Stewart Crameri suspended for the season.
History was also against the Bulldogs with no team having come from seventh to reach a grand final, let alone win a premiership.
Through it all, the players, young and old, never lost belief. “We just knew that the way we played we could challenge anyone in the competition,” Boyd said.
“We’ve never put a ceiling on ourselves, never put a time frame on when we would have success, and it just shows that if you’ve got belief in each other and belief in the way we play, anything is possible and today is proof of that.”
Boyd admitted to getting a “little bit emotional” in the days leading up to the grand final. The three-time Charles Sutton medallist has seen plenty of ups and downs in his career, but this was undoubtedly his finest moment.
