There are players you love because they are so good, like Dusty, Jack or Rance. There are those you fall in love with at first sight, like your own kids who repay your affections a thousand-fold, like Sheds and Shai. The workers you grow to love like the dog you didn't want, like Lambo and KMac.
And then there's Trent Cotchin. What can you say but O Captain, My Captain.
I will never forget the sight of him mansplaining finals footy to Stagerfraud and the Scats in 2017. Bashing up their entire midfield (that *smile*'in goal. Jesus Christ, that goal), then doing the same two weeks later to the Giants. The spontaneous, roaring standing ovation from the MCC members as he ran to the bench having bustled Phil Davis into touch in the last quarter of the prelim.
It's beyond love. It's Love, Gratitude, Awe, practically Worship. It's what mere foot soldiers must have felt for great warriors leading them into battle in medieval times.
I'd say I don't understand how the wider footy world doesn't see this. Some do, of course. I say "I'd say" because I do see why the others don't. They are small men and women who seek to drag him down to compensate for and mask their deep inner knowledge of their own inferiority. True greatness makes some swell, others shrink.
This bloke's in the *smile*'in pantheon of Tigers. Shoulder to shoulder with Dyer.
would be a wonderful full stop.
