Lions.com.au’s Carl Nimb caught up with former Bears ruckman Damian Bourke, who played 22 games in three seasons with the Club from 1993-1995.

CARL NIMB: You started your career with Geelong in 1983. Did you get to the Cats via zone recruiting, or were you drafted in another way?

DAMIAN BOURKE: think it was zone recruiting back in those days. I got invited to train with the Geelong Under 19s when they still had the Under 19s, and it was pretty much open slather as to who they could invite down.

When I first got invited down, I said ‘no’ because I was in Year 12 at school and I made all the excuses why I couldn’t go.

Truth be told, I probably got bluffed to stay and play with my local club instead of going down to train with them. I was at school at St. Joseph’s and they had St. Joseph’s Old Boys, and being young and dumb as a kid, I was probably influenced by the older guys at the club.

Eventually Geelong came back and asked me to train again and just come and have a go. Because I was studying they even suggested I just come down and train one night a week.

Naturally I said lets make it Thursday night, as that was the easiest night at training. So I went and trained one night a week all year in 1982 as I was still at school and playing school footy.

I was playing once a week or once a fortnight with the school, and then also playing in the Under 19s for Geelong. There was no real recruiting as such, it was a bit more through the old system in those days.

Did Geelong have a good advantage in that region, considering they could effectively hide away talented juniors before the Melbourne clubs could get to them?

It was probably not such a big deal back then as it is now. Actually Peter ‘Crackers’ Keenan came down to Geelong to make me an offer to go to Melbourne.

So here I was, as a 19-year-old kid and he tells me Melbourne wants to recruit me, and will me $30,000 to sign. At the time that was a massive amount of money. You could buy a house for that amount of money. I just said no I am not interested, I’m a Geelong boy and I want to play for Geelong.

Obviously it’s different today because even if you wanted to play for Geelong, you may never get that chance due to the Draft, trade periods etc. So while there have been some huge changes, which have been great for the game, you do lose those personal stories about going to the club you really wanted to play for.

I think the Father-Son rule is terrific. Traditions like that in our game are fantastic. I think it’s great.

So in 1983 you joined the Geelong list as a VFL footballer. Did you play seniors straight away? Or were you working your way through the reserves?

I started in the reserves and by about Round 13 or 14 I got the call-up to play in the seniors and was actually one of the few players that didn’t make a mistake in my first game – because I didn’t get on!

I guess back then they didn’t use the bench the same way they do these days?

Not at all. You only had a couple on there and they would only really be used as a last resort.

We got belted by Melbourne at the MCG and after the game Tommy Hafey was doing his nut in in the change rooms. I still had my tracksuit on and was freezing my ass off all afternoon and thinking I need to go and get a pie to heat up!

I had my family there from Geelong and didn’t even get on, and Tommy says to the group “there was only one bloke that didn’t make a mistake today” and I’m thinking that it has to be me and I am ready to stand up and take a standing ovation and then Tommy says it was John Mossop who also played in the ruck!

The next week I played and played on Mick Fitzpatrick (Carlton). I was 18 and he was probably early 30s and a legend of the game, and here I was smacking him around all afternoon. I can guarantee you that even today he wouldn’t like me for that. He didn’t deserve that.

Was there a feeling in the mid-80s at Geelong that you guys were building towards something special?

Oddly enough, not until that 1989 year.

During the John Devine years of 1986-88, the last of those in 1988, we were still a young side but were all starting to hit the 50-70 game mark and we felt that we were playing some good footy even though we missed the finals. It would have been great to see John get an extension to his contract, but then Malcolm Blight came along and we just clicked.

Blighty had two rules:

1.      Score goals quickly
2.      Revert to rule number 1

That was it and we had some great firepower with Ablett, Brownless and Dwayne Russell - great guys who kick goals.

It is one of those things I miss about today’s football – just go long to a contest to your big forwards and give them a chance and stop this basketball nonsense of keepings off we see.

I just wonder if we will see the day when a team wins the premiership with a Centre Half Forward and Full Forward that says “I am going to stand my ground down here and take marks and kick goals”.

I mean you have Gillon McLachlan inviting all the coaches around to his house for dinner to discuss why the game is not as exciting as it used to be and I think it is missing the contest to be honest. Big strong marking forwards like Brereton, Stewey Loewe, Gary Ablett and Stephen Kernahan – just exciting forwards who took big grabs and kicked plenty of goals.

As the 1989 season was drawing to a close, was Hawthorn firming as the most likely opponent in the Grand Final?

We had an incredible season that year and as a team we had an objective to kick 20 goals a game. There were a few games we played that we achieved that and still lost!

We played a game against Hawthorn earlier that year at Princes Park which was almost identical to the Grand Final and just an exciting game, but heading into the finals series we did not think about Hawthorn as a benchmark nor did we go into it thinking we would play in the Grand Final.

Essendon belted us in the first final in horrible conditions. At the start of the game, before the first bounce, I looked over to a teammate of mine who was shaking the hand of Simon Madden and wishing him good luck. It rattled me and we were just not ready for the finals.

We beat Melbourne the following week and then belted Essendon in the preliminary final by ten goals, so we learned fast. We had nothing to lose in that finals series.

Looking back on it Hawthorn were a better team than us. We tried to rough them up and it didn’t work. They were simply better on the day. They were experienced and had already won a couple flags, and we were just coming up as a team.

I actually think that we just ran out of time on the day – I am sure that the timekeepers dudded us on the day!

In 1989, your teammate Paul Couch won the Brownlow Medal. Do you think he was underrated as a midfielder of his time?

Certainly not at Geelong, but he had a couple of things in his advantage.

One was that he was a left footer and the opposition was not as heavily scrutinised as it is today. He always put on a step to get on his left foot – he was a sneaky bastard like that.

The second was that he was a good player, but Geelong didn’t quite have the profile of the top two or three sides. He just knew how to find the footy and did it all year. The next year he had two guys playing on him!

In 1990 you missed the entire season with a knee injury. How tough was that sit out the entire season?

I actually tore my Posterior Cruciate Ligament (PCL) two years earlier in 1988, but it was misdiagnosed at the time. They thought it was just a strain so I played the entire 1989 season with a tear in my PCL and playing in the ruck just created havoc for my knee.

After the 1989 Grand Final, I made the decision to get the knee operated and get surgery, it had to be done. And I actually resigned as Captain before the surgery as well. I had to get it fixed and concentrate on that so I gave them my letter of resignation. It was heartbreaking as a Geelong boy who was now captaining the club.

When I had the surgery they found that the PCL had actually detached and was just flapping around so it had to be re-attached. It was a 12-month recovery process.

In 1992 Geelong got back to the Grand Final to face the West Coast Eagles. Was the club confident that they could win that one against a team viewed as a virtual WA State of Origin team?

They sort of came from nowhere in the space of 12 to 24 months to become a very good footy team and they were just huge, everyone of those blokes. I think they caught the competition a bit by surprise that year, but the Cats still knew that they if they played good footy they had a chance to win.

The culture at the Cats was to perform the best you possibly could, win or lose it didn’t matter. It was about putting in your best effort every time you walked out on the ground. It also was not a team that needed egos to be stroked, we were happy for other peoples’ success in the team.

You finished with Geelong at the end of 1992, how did you arrive in Brisbane in 1993?

That’s a really long story so I will give you the readers digest version. In 1992 there was a massive meeting with the players about the Collective Bargaining Agreement, and I was a player delegate at that time.

At that time I had actually retired/resigned from Geelong – and that was after doing all the pre-season and actually playing the first pre-season game. But I still decided to leave. The concentration on football in the town was driving me nuts. I needed to get out and Brisbane contacted me.

They were keen for me to come up and I saw some good business opportunities up there, so I came out of retirement and moved to Brisbane. They drafted me in the mid-season draft.

At the time I was doing some coaching at North Melbourne when Dennis Pagan was running the show, and North Melbourne offered me $1,000 a week cash to keep quiet and they would draft me in the mid season draft.

I said no because I didn’t want to be indebted to anybody and I knew that when I went to Brisbane there was great work opportunities. Then, when Brisbane drafted me, North Melbourne accused me of draft tampering!

I couldn’t believe it considering what they had offered me with the intention of drafting me themselves.

At Brisbane you would of seen a few of those guys like Marcus Ashcroft, Shaun Hart, Nigel Lappin, Michael Voss etc kicking off their careers? Were you and the other senior players aware of their potential?

I saw the potential in those guys because I could see their desire. Justin Leppitsch and Nathan Chapman, I just loved watching them as an older player.

I had a massive blues with Robert Walls about them because I told him that he really needed to teach these guys. We had a difference of opinion on what was required to get the best out of this talent at the club.

Vossy was as focussed then as he was at the end of his career. He was manic as a 17-year-old. Aker was a cheeky kid and that never changed. Chris Scott was the same from start to finish with how professional he was.

I saw Nathan Buckley for the one year as well, but he always gave the impression that he was going back to Melbourne. The club probably did the wrong thing by recruiting him with that knowledge in their back of their minds.

How did you come about becoming an Assistant Coach with the Brisbane Lions?

The year after I finished, I took a year off and had nothing to do with footy.

Leigh Matthews and I were at the same birthday party some time later, and it was just before he was going to take over at Brisbane, and he asked if I was keen to come down to possibly help out. I went down and had a chat and then it sort of kicked off from there.

I did about seven to eight years all up with a combination of coaching at the Lions and also down at Geelong during that time.

How good was it to be involved from a coaching perspective with Brisbane when they won those Premierships?

It was a terrific feeling seeing guys that you have been helping such as Clark Keating doing well and succeeding.

One of the best moments of my football career was after Brisbane won their first Premiership in 2001. I was standing in the middle of the MCG with Mark Bayes just looking around at the crowd and thinking “how good is this?” because neither of us won a premiership as players.

It was just fantastic. I still have a photo of that moment.

You saw the potential of some of those guys at the start of the career, did you think that there was the chance of multiple premierships for the club?

I think a lot comes down to the potential, but also the shift from semi-professional players to full-time professional players. At the end of 1995, in my last season, it was becoming a full-time occupation to be an AFL player as opposed to when I started and everyone had jobs and trained after work.

Leigh Matthews was crucial for the club also because he had the ability to have everyone on the same page and heading in the same direction for a cause.

These days everything has become very mathematical because everyone knows how many games you should roughly win to make the top eight, and how many roughly to make the top four. It has become very clinical current day with everyone focused on statistics and using them to make the finals.

Do you still keep tabs on your former teams?

I was never a big follower of footy, even when I played. I was in the State squad and didn’t even know some of the players when we turned up to train for the first time together.

I don’t have a passion for footy. I had my time with footy and I do different stuff now.

I watch it with a different interest now. I like to see people that I know who are involved with the AFL having success. I like seeing Justin Leppitsch involved, Chris Scott, Nigel Lappin and Simon Black.

I get down to see my son Jordon play in the Lions Reserves occasionally, and it is probably the most footy that I watch these days.

Who would you rate as your toughest opponent?

From a skill point of view, it was certainly Simon Madden. He had all the tricks.

Which were the teams and grounds that you really disliked heading to when playing away?

Princes Park – as they were always tough games against Carlton, Hawthorn and Fitzroy.

The worst grounds were Moorabbin and the Western Oval.

I swear at the Western Oval they always turned off the hot water so you could never have a hot shower after the game. At Moorabbin, they not only turned off the hot water but they also watered the ground so that it was always a mudhole!

There were some times that we travelled back to Geelong on the bus covered in mud to open up the change rooms and have a shower down there.

If you were the CEO of the AFL today what is the one rule that you would change?

I would make sure that all change rooms have really big shower heads like they used to have at VFL Park back in the day (laughs).