Ex-Tiger keen to change his stripe
By Emma Quayle
realfooty.theage.com.au
October 25, 2004
After Essendon packed Justin Blumfield off to Richmond two years ago, he hoped his old club would have reason to keep watching him.
The premiership player had convinced himself the trade was made purely for business reasons but, while not overly bitter, wanted to play good enough football for the Bombers to wish, just a bit, that they hadn't given him up.
Certainly, Blumfield did not want to be recalled simply because the Tigers had delisted him. But when one of the first people to make contact after he was cut last month was Essendon conditioning coach John Quinn, he happily took the call.
Quinn prepared a rehab and training program for the 26-year-old, which he began after having post-season knee surgery. Blumfield bumped into Kevin Sheedy during a quick trip to Windy Hill, where he hopes to train leading in to the national draft, and would love to again wear the red and black.
"I always watched Essendon closely and I haven't really spoken to anyone officially there, but Quinny's the one who gave me a call and said, 'I really want to get you fit and we want to get you back here', which was great, because he had me as fit as I've ever been as a player," Blumfield said.
"It would be great to go back. It would be fantastic to finish my career back there, but with the position I'm in right now, I just need another opportunity and another chance to show I can play. I don't care where that turns out to be."
The first thing Blumfield must prove is that he is healthy. The midfielder was just starting to find his place at Punt Road early in 2003 when he tore a quad muscle from the bone, missing three months and returning when his new club's season was one loss short of being shot.
He had a knee operation at the end of that year, needed another clean-out before the 2004 season, and again got back into the seniors only when the finals were a lost cause - so, too, was the coach - and the club's new buzzword was "youth".
Blumfield booked himself in for more surgery almost as soon as Richmond football director Greg Miller told him he would not be offered another contract. He had some floating bone removed from the knee, saw his surgeon, Julian Feller, again recently, and has been told it is as good as ever. So, too, is his thigh.
"That's fine. I just do a lot of flexibility work with it now, and a lot of strengthening work, and it's a little bit like the knee. I've been in Melbourne playing footy for 10 years now and there's a bit of wear and tear after that amount of time," he said.
"It takes a bit of a toll, but I haven't run for about eight weeks now and it's what I've really needed. Last year, I came back and, with hindsight it's easy to say, but I jumped into too much running on hard surfaces, and you've just got to be so smart these days with your body.
"I've spoken to the club doctor at Essendon as well as Julian, and they're confident that the knee's going to be fine.
"It all depends whether a club wants to give me another opportunity and thinks I have something to offer. The big question mark has been my body, that's been my downfall in the last two years, so if I can train well and clubs see that, hopefully they can make their minds up then."
Apart from injuries, Blumfield had other issues at Richmond. He was frustrated with where he was being played and how much ground time he was granted. He knew, even when he was in the team, that he didn't have the confidence of coach Danny Frawley. "I'll be honest, I wasn't really happy with the opportunities I got from him. He gave me a game and I think maybe he might not have even wanted to give me a game, so I guess that was something. But that was it, really," Blumfield said.
"We had good chats about it, and he said he didn't think I was fit and that he didn't have the confidence in me to play four quarters, which I didn't believe, but that sometimes happens with coaches.
"It sort of got to me when I played 29 minutes against St Kilda at Telstra Dome. I sat the whole second half on the bench, and that was it. There was nothing wrong with me and I didn't find out until two days later the reason for it. He didn't have any confidence in me, basically. The match-ups weren't good and he didn't have confidence in me in any match-up on the field, which I thought was a funny one. You wonder why you're even in the team."
Blumfield was similarly frustrated that he could not sell himself to Terry Wallace.
"I'd only spoken to Greg Miller. He was the one who called me, but then I had to go and get all my stuff from the club and I bumped into Terry Wallace then and we had a bit of a chat," he said. "He said he thought that with where I was at, I didn't fit into the club's plans and that he'd be the first one to say he'd made a mistake if I went on and played some more good footy.
"That's a bit of motivation, I suppose . . . Hopefully there's another club out there that needs a bit of bolstering in the midfield and thinks I can help out."
http://realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2004/10/24/1098556295286.html
