Post-game Subi walk watershed for Mick
Through a 44-season playing and coaching journey that has stopped in at six clubs, Mick Malthouse admits he has rarely felt a deep feeling of belonging.
Malthouse, who breaks Coll- ingwood legend Jock McHale’s VFL-AFL record of 714 games coached when Carlton play the Magpies at the MCG on Friday night, concedes it is a feeling that has gained complexity with the passing of time.
That meant a surprise ovation from West Coast fans at Patersons Stadium in round four, 2013, even after his Blues had beaten the Eagles by 24 points, delivered a memorable moment for the famously hard-nosed veteran coach.
Malthouse described it as one of his career’s most endearing moments.
“When I walked around the boundary after the game, people were clapping,” he recalled.
“I remember looking around and thinking, ‘West Coast aren’t out (of the finals race), what’s going on?’ Then I realised what was happening.
“You know, I’ve got so much respect for my friends in WA.
“But for all the time I was coaching over there, I never viewed myself as a West Aust-ralian and never really felt like one.
“I always felt like an intruder, but I was left with no doubt that night what the feeling was and it didn’t mean as much to me until I walked that boundary.
“And then I thought, ‘You know, those people actually think I did contribute’. I had never read that myself and I’ve never gone chasing accolades.
“For something like that to happen, it was an emotional thing and something that I couldn’t wait to tell my wife.”
Malthouse, who makes an hour-long walk to and from his East Melbourne home to Carlton’s Ikon Park ground every day, said he still had no true clarity of where his final football loyalty will rest.
“I went across to WA, coached, did my time and did what we possibly could to enjoy the football and had some good results,” he said.
“But I knew that Jock McHale would always be Collingwood, what am I? Am I a St Kilda player or a Richmond player?
“Am I a Footscray coach, Coll- ingwood coach, West Coast coach or Carlton coach? Where do I belong?
“It will be an interesting thing to consider at the end of my career.”
