Originally publishedin the latest edition of The Pridemagazine, Andy Otten talks about the challenges of the past few years and hisreturn to fitness and form this season, in his own words …

After a frustrating couple of years and only playing six games in 2012, I wanted to prove a lot of people wrong this season.

I thought I owed both myself and the Club a bit too. I was disappointed with my season last year, but the way I finished off in the Preliminary Final against Hawthorn gave me a lot of confidence going into the pre-season.

Even over the pre-season, my form was only okay. It was a weird pre-season because we played three games in 35-plus degree heat and I think it took it out of everyone a bit. I got dropped for the last NAB Challenge game, which hurt because I really wanted to play in Round One.

Fortunately, I got picked for the first game of the season against Essendon. I almost played with a chip on my shoulder. I was so sick of getting dropped. I went in with the mindset that, if I played well then I wouldn’t get dropped again.

I never doubted my ability to play at the level; I just needed to be given a chance. I begged for an opportunity last year, but when I got one against West Coast late in the season I got injured. I’ve had a bit of bad luck the past few years, but this year I’ve had good luck (touch wood), so it’s nice the footy Gods are evening it up.

I think trimming down a bit over the summer helped too. I deliberately lost a couple of kilograms to try to help improve my speed and agility. Looking at most teams in the competition; the bigger and running players have trimmed down and it’s particularly noticeable with Hawthorn. We have to cover a lot of kilometres in games these days. The rotations are quick and the game is just so fast. I thought for me to succeed I needed to be lighter on my feet and it’s probably worked well so far.

In the first six rounds of the season, I felt really confident going into games. I had a little lull after that, but I think I’ve been back up the last few weeks. I’ve been fairly consistent; even my bad games haven’t been that bad, if that makes sense. I’ve been more consistent with my effort and performance and that has been the most pleasing part for me, personally.

I’ve also had a similar role for most of the season, as the third tall defender. Last year, Sam Shaw played that role a fair bit. I was really happy for Sam last season. He played some terrific footy after two or three years of injury after injury. We’re pretty good mates away from the field, but we were both vying for the same spot and we knew that whoever was playing better footy would get it.

I’d love to see Sam get back this season. He’s been training a bit with the forward line and I think he’d be really good up there. He’s got a bit more speed than me. He’s really dynamic and explosive. We really need that type of player to give us a different look in our forward line, and it means we might be able to play in the same team together, which has never happened before.

I got my turn as a forward when Taylor Walker injured his knee against Carlton. It’s what the team needed, so I was happy to do it and I’d be fine to do it again at any stage – I’ll do whatever the coach and the team needs me to do in order for us to win. Unfortunately, we didn’t get the win that day against the Blues. I’ve gone into attack in fits and spurts since then, but at least the coach knows I’ve done it before if the opportunity presents itself again.

I can’t watch the vision of Tex getting injured because having missed all of 2010 with the same injury, I know how painful the injury is and the year Tex has ahead. I kept all my rehab programs and information and I’ve forwarded that onto Tex. I’ll try to give him hints and tips along the way because it’s a long year. You’re going to have ups and downs, but when the boys are chatting to you and making you feel involved, that’s when you feel the best. Tex is that kind of character as well. He’ll be floating around and annoying everyone. He’ll stay involved. We want him back as soon as he can, but he can’t rush it because that’s when things can go wrong. He’s just got to take his time and feel confident with it.

Having missed so much footy through injury, probably in excess of 30 games, it was a bit of a relief to finally play my 50^th game in Round Three. Patrick Dangerfield and I were selected in the same draft and he’s just cracked 100 games. He’s been outstanding and only missed a handful of games. Hopefully, the games can just keep ticking along for me now … I’m just happy to play each game.

Remarkably, my 60-odd games make me one of the most experienced players in our backline. Since Brent Reilly got injured, there’s a big gap between Ben Rutten, who has played over 200 games, and the rest of us. Losing Radar (Reilly) was a big loss for us. He was almost All Australian last year and has played close to 200 games as well. It’s a lot of experience lost on top of Michael Doughty retiring last year.

I’ve tried to be more of a leader out there to help Truck. Part of that is knowing the structures inside out, so you can confidently give feedback and direction to the younger fellas. Luke Brown and Rory Laird are basically first-year players, but they’ve played consistently. They’re both very quiet and Brodie Smith is a bit of a mute as well – Sando always tells us we’re a quiet backline, so we’re all trying to share the load in that area.

Watching Browny, Lairdy come through and Smithers take his game to another level has been great. Lairdy has a bit of white-line fever about him. He’s a terrier out there and doesn’t take a backwards step. He’s one of those guys you want in the trenches and the same with Browny. He’s had some massive jobs this year. It’s never easy playing on those dangerous small forwards, but he’s got some serious pace and is going to be a very good player for us for a long time.

It’s important we keep developing and exposing our younger players to AFL. We’re a very young group. We’ve got a few older blokes around, like Truck and Scotty Thompson, but then we’ve got young players like Laird, Brown and Brad Crouch coming through.

We need to keep getting games into those younger guys while they still have those experienced heads here to learn from. It makes the transition so much easier rather than waiting for the senior guys to leave and having to blood new guys, almost cold.

I believe we’re very close to success. We’ve had some narrow losses this year and a lot of that has been our fault because we haven’t been able to close out games. We’re very confident with the side we’ve got going forward and we won’t give up on this year at any stage.

I really want to be a part of success at this football club. I love Adelaide. I want to play for Adelaide and in a premiership for Adelaide. I definitely don’t have any thoughts about going back home. I’m almost an Adelaide boy – I’ll never say that, but I’m as close as it gets. I’ll probably still go back to Melbourne when footy’s finished but at the moment I’m very much enjoying it here.