Merewether captain Sam Bright, Newcastle Herald, August 23, 2024

Sam Bright talks about the lead-up to a grand final and the response of the Merewether faithful after winning.

Transcript

00:00Mate, this is your fourth Grand Final, do they get easier? Is there a different feel about them?

00:04Um, they get easier in some ways that you can sort of relax a bit more and enjoy the week but

00:10still I think excitement and sort of good kind of nervousness coming into a Grand Final is pretty

00:17normal and I think I've still got that feeling. This will be the fifth time you've played Maitland

00:21this year, is there anything you've learned about them that you didn't know at the start of the year

00:24or is there anything you really need to be A-game to produce to make sure that you get the win on

00:29Saturday? Um, there's nothing really new like we played them a lot I think five times last year and

00:34then another five this year already so there's no sort of big surprises I don't think but we

00:42we know that we've just got to come and play as well as we can and keep the discipline in check

00:47and that should hopefully help us get the result on Saturday. We know all the Meriwether will be

00:52here mate, can you describe the feelings like when you win for Meriwether and you get stormed,

00:55the field gets stormed by a wave of green? Yeah it's the best feeling, you just sort of

01:01have the whistle go and kind of looking at your mates that most of them you've grown up with,

01:06I think we've got even with the high turnover we've still got 11 out of the 15 starting on

01:12the weekend club juniors and then a fair few more on the bench so it's just you're looking at all

01:16the boys and then suddenly there's 500 or 1000 people in green, painted green, green wigs all

01:23high-fiving you, patting you on the back and it's just you're out there for half an hour,

01:27it seems like two minutes just goes so fast and it's a really good feeling.