There have been 675 AFL/VFL footballers to reach 200 games but few have been asked to do more or earned such universal admiration as Patrick Cripps. The remarkable thing is that he’s only played 200. It feels as if he’s been playing for ever. For those Carlton supporters who have been in the trenches with him from the beginning, who endured those turgid, post-Malthouse, pre-Covid games where he carried the entire midfield and club on his wallpapered shoulders, his milestone must feel like 400.
Players like Cripps always mean more to the supporter base. Matthew Richardson, Robbie Flower and Trevor Barker managed just half a dozen finals between them. But they were footballers who coaxed their fans off the ledge, who provided a glimmer of hope when things were dire, and who rank among the most beloved one-club players of all time.
Some footballers are hit on the arse by a rainbow. Some get to 200 and you barely notice them. Some coast, tease and make it look so easy. But Cripps’ entire career has been conducted with no elbow room, with multiple opponents hanging off him and, for at least half of it, with little help. It has been football as a form of hand-to-hand combat, consisting of thousands of scrimmages and stoppages. It has encapsulated what a brutal, attritional game this is.
The closest modern-day comparison is probably Sydney’s Josh Kennedy. But Kennedy was brought into a very competitive team, a team where scrapping and fighting for every possession were valued above all else, and where the burden was evenly shared. Cripps had none of that. His first act as a senior footballer was to hurl himself into a contest. It was always his head in the hole, always his body in the most vulnerable positions. It was always he, when the coaches were sacked and when the dawns were false, who was supposed to lead the club back into the light.
In recent times, he’s been a convert to DNS training. It’s an unusual training protocol, championed by Chris Judd, Luke Hodge and Tom Mitchell. It’s unorthodox and often incomprehensible. It’s built on how we move as infants, and endeavours to reboot those patterns. Cripps’ movement is noticeably not as laboured as he was in previous seasons. He’s also getting a lot more help around him – more blocks, more chopouts, more selfless teammates. As a result, he’s arguably in career-best form. He’s had the better of some of the best young midfielders in the game – Tom Green, Matt Rowell and Jason Horne-Francis. He demolished Port Adelaide in about 10 minutes. He’s winning conspicuously more ball on the outside. His creativity by hand, his core strength and his complete refusal to go to ground when being gang-tackled have all been standouts.
When champions are measured and ranked, we invariably go to the highlight reels, to the pyrotechnics, to the premierships. Cripps isn’t really that player. It’s often still photos that best do him justice – the grimace, the bandaged head, the slap of the palms as he chastises himself, the swivel of the torso as he handballs out of trouble – the reminders that none of this has come easily. Michael Wilson captured him perfectly a fortnight ago – a colossus, one of the few footballers not dwarfed by the MCG and one of the best to play at the ground this century.
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