Most people may not know that the first 24 hours after a match are pretty hectic.

When the siren sounds we don’t switch off, there’s still plenty to do. On Sunday night we’d had a good win against the Bulldogs, so at the end of the game we celebrated amongst ourselves, shook hands with our opponents and then we are given footies to hand to supporters. We run down to the fence and meet the fans, giveaway our footy, then we slap hands and give high-fives to loyal fans. It’s always much more fun after a win!

Then we walk off the ground together and get congratulated by the coaches as we walk in to the rooms. The board members and other staff are often there too.

We then form a circle to sing the song in the Blue Room. On Saturday night we had a first gamer, John Meesen, so he goes in the middle of the circle and we give him a good showering of Powerade!

After the song, we sit down along the wall, catch our breath and have a bit of a break. (Crows media manager) Dave Burtenshaw then brings members of the media to some of the players to do interviews about the game as well as how the player and the team went. It makes me a bit nervous when he heads in my direction!

Once the media stuff has finished, Craigy (Crows coach Neil Craig) usually calls us in to the meeting room to have a brief review of the game. If we win, he congratulates us, but if we lose we go through some of the reasons why – this is while the game is still pretty fresh in our heads.

We then warm down. Everyone walks through to the gym area. The big guys jump on the bikes first – for eight minutes just at a recovery pace. The medium-small guys stretch with (Performance manager) Stephen Schwerdt. After that the groups swap over, with the smalls jumping on the bikes for eight minutes and the big guys to do their stretches.

The guys that may have got injured, or have bumps and bruises, will go see the doctors and physios who will then decide who may need to stay overnight and ice up their injury. For these unlucky few, they pretty much have to sit around the club with the head trainer, who hooks the players up to an ice machine which covers the injury with icy water while they sleep at the club! A couple of years ago it was worse, every hour we’d have to wake to ice up the injury! But it is worth it and valuable to a player’s recovery.

For the guys that are ok, they then jump in the ice baths for about seven minutes. After all of that, we then hit the showers.

Some players then have commitments at either the Crows Shed or the Crows Tavern, where they are interviewed about the game and meet some of the supporters.

At 9.30am the next morning (Monday) a recovery session had been organised at Glenelg beach. We did eight run-throughs along the beach, still at a slow recovery pace, because some of the guys are obviously still pretty sore. We then played a game of volleyball, to loosen us up and have a bit of fun. Then we stretch again. After this we wade in the cold sea water for 15 minutes and then we are finished.

We then walked across to the ‘Beachouse’ (entertainment venue) to spend time playing games and riding the dodgem cars with some seriously ill kids from the Women’s and Children’s Hospital, Childhood Cancer, Camp Quality, Make a Wish and Starlight Foundation. As well as being some good fun for us, it was really good to see the kids smiling and having a ball – because they’ve been doing it really tough.

After some fun and games at the ‘Beachouse’ we then had a couple of hours off, before making our way back to the footy club at West Lakes at 2.30pm for the game review with the coaches.

We firstly go into the meeting room and analyse the game, going through all the videos and work out what we did really well and the things that we can improve.

We then go outside onto Max Basheer Reserve and the guys that played on the Sunday night do a very light skills session with the balls. It is mainly just stationary skills with not too much running around. For the guys who had played in the SANFL on the Saturday, they have more of a training session and go a little harder.

After the session most of us have another ice bath and stretch down!

It is a long process, but it is the best way to give us a good start to the week and head into the coming match in good condition.