Jezza’s Journal: West Coast vice-captain Jeremy McGovern shares how confident he is of playing this week, a long-awaited family catch-up, holiday jealousy and debutant Harry Edwards

West Coast Eagles champion Jeremy McGovern is keeping his home town Albany in the loop during this unprecedented AFL season. Read Jezza’s Journal every Thursday in the Advertiser. Missing another game with my broken thumb gives more opportunity to a young kid. Young Harry Edwards got an opportunity for 15 minutes the poor bugger. Played his first game and got knocked out. He was a rookie pick like myself and like myself wore No.42. This week with all the protocols it was too hard to get in and watch the game in the stands. Which led to an extremely rare situation, watching the game at home. Madi said it was the first time we’ve watched West Coast together and it probably is. When I’m playing Hudson says Dada, so he knows the West Coast colours, and it was nice to share the time at home with Madi and the kids. In terms of the game it was a mature, four-quarter performance. A few teams we’ve noticed in the last few weeks have started well and then dropped off in games but it was a really good hit-out. Geelong are a good side and it was that high-pressure footy you see in finals. If you go by impact on the game and not stats, clearly Nic Nat gets three votes. We’ve seen it firsthand plenty of times before but he gave our mids first use and we set the game up on the back of him. It’s been a great story, the medicos have been pretty wary of him but they are building him into as much game time as possible. I had to do some running the morning of the game but it has been business as usual since the game with meetings, training and recovery. The thumb is still in a splint and I’ll probably have that on for most of the year to look after it. We caught up with Madi’s immediate family during the week and we will hopefully see my family this weekend. We play Carlton on Sunday and hopefully Mitch gets up from his hammy to play. I’ve played him a couple of times at Adelaide but I don’t know if I’ve got him at Carlton yet. Mitch gets out of quarantine on Sunday after the game and he hasn’t met my youngest Marlee yet so it will be good for him to meet her and catch up with Mum and Dad as well. After finding out about a few quarantine breaches, it’s a reminder to be so careful with what you are doing. You know the rules are there and a few clubs have broken them which has cost a lot of money in fines and at this time it hits harder than ever. The strict rules are something you’ve got to have in the back of your mind and always be trying to do the right thing. The weird fixture continues. We look like we might have another game here against Greater Western Sydney. There are rumours flying around about another possible hub in Queensland for four weeks and then finals after that depending on how deep you go, but all that is yet to play out. With so many balls in the air it is difficult to predict and we still cling to the hope that there might be a few more games in Perth given the atmosphere created by our crowds and the fact it seems to be the safest place to play. My social media is full of people on holidays up north in our great State. We normally get the bye this time of year and go up to Broome, Exmouth or Karratha. A lot of people are travelling up north and it’s freezing here in Perth so I’m a bit jealous in a way. I think Premier Mark McGowan has done a great job with all this. West Aussies are spending money locally and it will help everyone bounce back in business. It is really vibrant around WA and I love that. I definitely think I’m a better chance to play than last week. It’s no guarantee until I’ve trained but I’ll give it a good test today and figure it out from there.

Jezza’s Journal: West Coast vice-captain Jeremy McGovern shares how confident he is of playing this week, a long-awaited family catch-up, holiday jealousy and debutant Harry Edwards

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