Geelong key forward Josh Jenkins indebted to teammate Patrick Dangerfield for selling him to Cats
Josh Jenkins is confident he can coexist with Tom Hawkins and Esava Ratugolea in Geelong’s forward line and says he’ll be deserving of a spot at the Cats if he can play “somewhere near my best”.
Geelong
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Josh Jenkins sits opposite Chris Scott over lunch in New York’s East Village.
By complete coincidence, they are staying in the same area of New York at exactly the same time.
And fatefully, it’s the middle of the trade period.
Jenkins’ wife, Hannah and one-year-old daughter Lottie, join the Cats coach and the former Crow as they “chewed the fat”.
“I caught up with the Cats before trade period, so a little bit sneaky,” Jenkins admits.
“We met Chris and the staff before the trade period and then we were both going overseas. It was at his house, actually, he said ‘I’m going to New York’. I said ‘so am I’. He’s like ‘I’m staying in East Village’, and I was like ‘so am I’.
“We were in the same place at the same time. We caught up for lunch late in the piece and were there for an hour and a half, two hours.
“No footy chat, Lottie and Hannah were there, we were chewing the fat a little bit. It was during the trade period. We shook hands and said ‘hopefully we can make something work, but I can’t promise anything’. And off we went.”
Jenkins, 30, had knocked back big offers to stay at Adelaide in 2016, but that all changed last year.
The club and the key forward agreed they would work to secure a trade and Jenkins was even willing to take a pay cut to continue playing elsewhere.
He’d had contact from several clubs, he said, but felt a responsibility to at least meet Geelong given the groundwork put in by former Crows teammate and Brownlow Medal-winning Cat Patrick Dangerfield.
“I felt a little bit indebted to Pat, because I knew he’d put a fair bit of work in and put my name up in lights a fair bit,” he said.
“I don’t know how much they listen to him, but I knew the situation and the environment.
“There’s a bit of legend around the league about how Geelong runs their program. So I was really eager to get here and try it out and immerse myself. The bonus was, they compete deep into September almost every year.”
As Jenkins, Hannah and Lottie took in the sights of famed New York — Central Park, the Empire State building and Brooklyn Bridge to name a few — his manager Paul Connors worked through the nitty gritty in Melbourne.
Jenkins caught up on the happenings in Australia as he awoke each morning.
On the final day of trade period — with Scott in the air on a 20-hour trip to Melbourne — “it all went down”.
“A lot of my friends back in Australia said they were watching it really nervously,” Jenkins said. “And I said ‘I wish you had said so because I could have put you at ease a little bit’.
“I wouldn’t say I was supremely confident that we were going to land in Geelong, but it was always an intention. A few clubs really jumped up late, but I was really committed to trying to get to Geelong. I don’t know what would have happened if I didn’t. I probably would have gone back to Adelaide.”
His first day pre-Christmas was like a student’s first day at a new school, but luckily he had an old classmate in Dangerfield to show him the ropes.
They’re “opposites”, but Jenkins can’t undersell the extra comfort of having the star midfielder as a “safety blanket”.
“Everyone’s always going to be welcoming and pretty warm, but there’s those moments early on where guys are sitting down for lunch or getting strapped,” he said.
“It was just that ability to not have to worry about who you’re going to talk to or how you’re going to interact with people. That made it pretty easy.
“We are different. We’ve got similar core values, though. We value the same things. We certainly can interact quickly and we’ve always overstated our own abilities. But we think we could take over one of those radio programs one day.
“Football-wise, with media access and all that, we’ve got very similar views.”
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It would take multiple segments of that radio show to unpack Jenkins’ past two seasons at the Crows.
After falling well short of Richmond in the 2017 Grand Final — a game Jenkins has admitted he was “completely shot” for — things unravelled on the field for the Crows.
They went on to finish 12th and 11th in the next two seasons.
It got tiresome for Jenkins, who struggled with his form and culminated in his eventual exit.
“The games just became hard,” he said.
“(The leadership group) were spending so much energy and time on ‘why are we playing like this?’ and ‘why is it feeling like this around the club?’. ‘Why have we gone from one of the best two or three sides in the AFL to we can’t win two in a row?’.
“It just wears you out, when you sit around — often for two hours at a time, multiple times a week — and then not be able to come up with the answer. It was more or less two years of that.
“The guys who don’t think about it as much are probably able to just carry on and go about their business.
“I’m a person who will stand up for what I believe in. I was voted into that leadership group for a reason, and I have a duty to carry that out.
“It probably put me in more of a predicament than I could have been, but that’s what happens.”
It was almost a relief when it was decided with the club to explore a trade after 147 games and 246 goals.
The intense scrutiny of football in Adelaide had taken a toll.
The abuse Jenkins received when he was dropped to the SANFL was so heavy that he asked Hannah not to watch him play.
“There’s no place like Adelaide for that ferocity and intense scrutiny of everything you do. It’s not only from media — it’s from everyone in the street,” Jenkins explained.
“Often it’s Port fans who are desperate for you to lose. I often used to get people come up to me and say ‘I don’t care if you lose every game, as long as you beat Port’. I would have had that said to me 10 times in the street. I’d say ‘that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard’.”
It wasn’t all bad and Josh and Hannah built a life and home there.
“I was there eight years, and the first six years, every single year was better than the last,” he said.
“That’s what I said a few times upon leaving — I had eight years there and seven of them performance-wise was great and one was poor. If you had offered me that in the start of 2012, I’d probably take it. It’s not all doom and gloom. And I’ve been able to land on my feet here.”
How he’ll “fit” with Tom Hawkins and Esava Ratougalea up forward at the Cattery is a hot topic, but not one Jenkins is losing sleep over.
“Maybe all three of us don’t fit in Round 1. Maybe the Giants have got great running backs and we’re too tall,” he said.
“But there’s never been a team that’s played the same 22 from Round 1 and gone through and won the Grand Final.
“I’ll be as flexible as I can. I don’t have any expectation. I’ve got one responsibility and I’ll just ensure I’m in form for as long as I can be, because I know if I’m playing somewhere near my best, I’ll be deserving of a spot.”
Originally published as Geelong key forward Josh Jenkins indebted to teammate Patrick Dangerfield for selling him to Cats