CLAYTON Oliver has started the season swimmingly.
And even though he was tagged by North Melbourne’s Ben Jacobs during Melbourne’s 37-point win at the MCG last round, Oliver still managed to collect 20 touches and kick two goals to put the icing on the cake.
The reigning Keith ‘Bluey’ Truscott Memorial Trophy winner picked up from where he left last season and is already averaging 28 touches per game this season.
And his will to, not only equal his 2017 season, but better it, could be partly attributed to his dedication over the pre-season, as he explained.
“Me and ‘Weido’ (Sam Weideman) at the start of the pre-season thought we’d just do something a bit extra to get our fitness up – as we’re not the fittest players at the club. So, we thought we’d swim 100kms during the pre-season. [I] was a keen swimmer at primary school and kept it up for fitness when I went to high school,” he told Melbourne Media.
“We went swimming five to seven kms each week, about one to 1.5km per session, so it was good fun.
“We did our first swim on the first day back at pre-season and then finished on the first day of round one, when Richmond and Carlton played.”
Remarkably, Oliver has notched up 30 disposals or more 13 times in his 38-game career – an outstanding achievement, given he has yet to play 40 games.
And although he faced the challenge of having Jacobs run-with him last round, he still managed to impact the game.
“Jacobs did a good job – he’s a good player and is a very disciplined tagger, so full credit to him,” he said.
“I’ve had Mark Hutchings and Brayden Maynard, from West Coast and Collingwood [respectively], and they have spent a couple of quarters on me, but it wasn’t for the whole game.
“It was the first time, so it was a bit different, but it was good that the team got the win, so it doesn’t really matter.”
Oliver said he hadn’t had a run-with player play that closely to him before.
“It feels a bit weird. We’ve got players like Christian Petracca, Nathan Jones and Jordan Lewis, and when Jack Viney comes back – they’ll probably get tagged too,” he said.
“It’ll probably get changed from week-to-week – who’s in form or whoever is most damaging that week.
“’Chunk’ (Jones) and ‘Lewy’ (Lewis) have been tagged plenty of times, so it could change from week-to-week.”
Having been one of Melbourne’s youngest winners of the best and fairest award, Oliver said he didn’t feel the weight of expectation entering this season.
“You have expectations as a team and hopefully we can do what we want to do – play finals,” he said.
“We’ll take each week as it comes, and hopefully what happens, happens – and it’ll be good.
“We could’ve been three [wins] and zero [losses], but we just lost the Geelong game. So, hopefully we’ll keep up our start for the rest of the year.”
