I wore my Xavier College jumper to training this week, and it brought back my best memory from school.

It was last year and we were playing St Kevin’s, who hadn’t beaten my school for 12 years, no matter what sort of team we had, and whether it was home or away.

There’s a really strong ongoing rivalry in Melbourne between Xavier and St Kevin’s, which are the two main Catholic Schools in the APS competition.

Whenever the fixture comes out at the start of the year, that’s the first game that kids at our school would look for.

Whenever we play them, our home ground gets packed with 800 kids and all the parents, and they have a similar cauldron at St Kevin’s in Toorak with all their supporters there.

So there’s always a lot of competitiveness between the two schools.

Josh Kennedy, Ted Richards and I all went to Xavier, and we all wore our jumpers to training this week, and Ryan O’Keefe went to St Kevins and he wore his school jumper, so there was a bit said!

It gives us something to talk about and argue about so it’s good we can wear our jumpers and continue that rivalry.

So anyway last year, St Kevins hadn’t beaten us in 12 years and it was going to be a massive battle for us because they had given scholarships to all these good players, and we had six of our best players out sick or injured.

At quarter time, we were six goals down, and one of my best mates had dislocated his shoulder, so we were also one short on the bench. We were really depleted.

But somehow, by three quarter time we were two goals up. I was captain, and at three quarter time I told the players a story my Dad told me about when he was playing for the Old Xav’s firsts and they were in a similar situation. They were weaker and had players out and ended up coming out and tackled them all day and won the footy and got home by a few goals.

So in our game, there was one instruction - just tackle them and harass them. We had no game plan or structure but we ended up winning by three points at their home ground. Afterwards the whole ground was covered with people. The St Kevins people were pretty disappointed but we were all going crazy.

We only won two games for the year and they ended up winning the premiership, but that day meant so much to all of us.

I have to add that unfortunately, just last weekend, Xavier’s 13-year winning streak against St Kevin’s came to an end. Playing at our home ground, St Kevins beat us by 20 points.

There is so much passion in school footy, and until I started playing AFL last year, that was the best win of my life.

The win against Brisbane at the SCG this year was such a similar feeling.There was that camaraderie with all your mates.

It was the same passion and team unity we felt for the first six rounds this season, and that has probably been lost the last three weeks. We need to get that back and get the confidence back and draw on it and hopefully win a few games, starting with Hawthorn this weekend.