SANFL Player of the Week: West Adelaide’s Adam Hartlett

ADAM Hartlett doesn’t shy away from the fact that celebrations were pretty large on the night West Adelaide ended a 32-year premiership drought last September.

Adam Hartlett on the run. Photo: Sarah Reed.

ADAM Hartlett doesn’t shy away from the fact that celebrations were pretty large on the night West Adelaide ended a 32-year premiership drought last September.

“We tied it on,” he said.

It’s just that Hartlett didn’t think the hangover would last until June, but finally the Bloods are on the board after beating North Adelaide by four points on the weekend.

Hartlett is known for his larrikin nature off the field but fierce competitiveness on it so has seen both the lighter and more serious side to what has happened to the Bloods this year.

After the grand final win over the Eagles last year, players posted pictures on social media with the hashtag #won1.

“And on Sunday the hashtag went from winning one premiership to winning one game,” he joked.

It’s probably a good thing because when the reigning premier is 0-9 and is working as hard as it possibly can to turn things around, smiling about it is all you can really do.

The Bloods didn’t do anything completely random to try to turn their fortunes around. There were no unscheduled trips to the pub, or karate nights or going paintballing.

“All it came down to was hard work and hopefully it would start to transfer to on-field,” Hartlett said.

“We had to keep the bloke’s spirits up and to the club’s credit we’ve stayed pretty upbeat considering the horrendous start we’ve had.”

Hartlett is the SANFL Player of the Week after his dominant performance at full back in the win over the Roosters on Sunday. The win almost got away from them after they coughed up a 37 point lead.

“There was talk at three-quarter-time a few of the boys were saying ‘we can’t let this slip’ and I had a bit of a crack at them I said ‘that shouldn’t even be a thought at the moment, we have to stay positive’,” Hartlett said.

“We’d been dominant for three quarters, we shouldn’t even be thinking about that but that’s sort of where our heads were at.”

Hartlett missed the start of the season as he recovered from knee surgery but has no regrets about playing on.

“The surgeon told me to hang them (boots) up and don’t play ever again, that’s been mentally and physically challenging getting back this year,” he said.

“I went on at the end of last year thinking we were a good chance to win two or three (flags) in a row ... and I finally came back into the side and we were 0-5.

“In the last five weeks even though we hadn’t been winning we’d shown patches of footy that we’re more than capable of winning games but just had really bad fade-outs.

“It’s been a mental thing and we do have a young group, and it is a different group to what we had on grand final day last year.

“I sort of felt like it wasn’t too far away and it would come and I’m glad we’ve got that win out of the way because I reckon we can string a few together now and finish the season strong.”

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