Some of the best football of Patrick Cripps’ career has come in the wake of coach sackings. In 2019, after Brendon Bolton had finally been shown the door at Carlton, Cripps played one of the best games of the century. His statistics, astonishing as they were, don’t quite do justice to how well he played that day. “It’s probably one of the best individual performances I’ve ever seen on a football field,” his Brisbane opponent Dayne Zorko said.
Cripps was a wreck heading into that game. The final few months under Bolton had been a slog. The team was hopeless. Cripps was the youngest captain in the AFL, had two opponents hanging off him every week, and then had to go and say what a great job the coach was doing. On a miserable Sunday afternoon, he’d been held to 11 possessions by Essendon second-gamer Dylan Clarke. To watch him six days later was to watch a completely different athlete. It was the fusion of rage, relief and release. It brought to mind one of those corporate smash rooms, where burnt-out white-collar workers don overalls and face masks and take a crowbar to a room full of crockery.
