I can honestly say that last Sunday was the most amazing win I’ve ever experienced in my time playing footy, and capped off a pretty great week for me personally.

Only a few days earlier I’d extended my contract for a further two seasons.

I’m loving it up here in Brisbane and had no intentions of leaving, so it was an easy decision to make in the end.

Getting the deal done early in the season was also important as it ended that ongoing speculation which seems to get a fair run in the media.

I consider myself a pretty loyal person and would like to think that I could end up playing with the Lions for the rest of my career. But what attracts me most is that I believe the Club’s heading in the right direction, and hopefully the win against Geelong is just a sign of things to come.

I’m now in my seventh AFL season and haven’t experienced a whole lot of success at AFL level. Even during the Club’s last Finals campaign in 2009, I was out for most of that season with a knee injury. 

So I’m pretty determined to stick around to be part of that next wave of success. In a sense, I feel as though I still have some unfinished business.

And it’s hard not to get excited about the future when you look at our young list, which is led by Tom Rockliff, Daniel Rich and Jack Redden, who have been around for a while, but are still only 22-23 years old.

Then there are guys like Sam Mayes, Billy Longer, Sam Docherty, Elliot Yeo, Justin Clarke and others who have shown plenty in just a handful of senior games.

I obviously can’t speak on behalf of my teammates, but I’d suspect that any other Lions player weighing up his AFL future would feel the same way.

Daniel Merrett and Joel Patfull didn’t hesitate in committing to the Club earlier in the year, even though they probably could have tested the free agency market. They knew where they wanted to be, and went ‘all in’. It really set a great example for the rest of the team.

The topic of contracts is one that we don’t generally discuss in the locker room, mainly because players don’t like to get too involved with the process – that’s why we hire managers!

But what I can say is that everyone at the Lions is deeply invested in this Club and believes that if we can stay together and continue to work hard, that the rest will begin to fall into place.