Jezza’s Journal: West Coast Eagles star chats about his ankle rehab, bringing footy to Perth and being allowed out to eat

Stuck in a hub for the most bizarre AFL season, Eagles champion Jeremy McGovern is keeping his home town in the loop from the Gold Coast.

Pick up your Advertiser every Thursday to read Jezza’s Journal.

Hub life has thrown up plenty of challenges.

Saturday night’s game was disappointing again, our effort was a lot better but the Lions were a bit tougher and cleaner around the contest.

I obviously played in the practice match earlier in the day.

It was actually a breath of fresh air playing with the younger boys and I got to see a few play for the first time so out of a bad weekend that was something good.

I rolled my ankle and thought it could have been worse.

It happened in a marking contest, one-on-one I bodied my opponent out, jumped up to mark and landed on his foot.

I’ve rolled my ankle and then he’s fallen on it.

Everyone was a bit worried but the scans revealed it was a stock standard roll thankfully.

It is a big week for me rehab wise.

I’m pretty optimistic, my chances of playing improve with every day.

I’m working closely with Steve “Gravy” Gravina.

I call him “Magic Hands” as he helped me get up for the grandy a couple of years ago.

The first couple of days is heavy icing compression and they’ve got a machine that you wear in bed that ices and compresses the injury every couple of hours but it compromises your sleep a bit.

To give yourself the best chance to get up you have to do a lot of small things.

I’m up in the morning to get on the bike for a 10-15 minute spin to get the blood flow going then you walk in the water, straight into a massage to flush the blood out that makes you hurt and then it’s a tight re-tape. You do that two, three times a day plus training.

On Sunday the boys had a little Ambrose golf day, I couldn’t do that.

No surprises our best golfer Gaffy; he and Sheed’s team won.

I just got the new surfboard and now I can’t surf which is frustrating.

I was able to head up to the Hinterland, like a rainforest during some time off and it was amazing up there one of the prettiest things I’ve seen.

I had the feet up in my room watching a bit of the footy when the news about Conor McKenna broke.

At the time I wasn’t surprised, someone was always going to get it.

I do feel for Conor a bit, no one wanted to be the first one and I hope he’s going OK.

We are closer to knowing when we are getting home and we don’t have to quarantine in a hotel, we can be with our families, which is great.

After that we get to play in front of our fans and that’s huge to know in WA we can have 60,000 in a stadium soon.

WA is a clean State, we can get fans at games which helps clubs, so I don’t know why they don’t shift the whole competition there.

As a club we are under the pump a fair bit and Simmo is trying to keep the morale as high as possible and I’m confident we can respond.

Every day we see the Freo boys in our common areas.

There are actually a few good blokes on their list and it hasn’t been an issue for us.

Not sure how the Port and Crows boys go, don’t think they like each other much.

Port, who we play this week, are in great nick and I caught up with Scotty Lycett this week for a coffee.

I miss him, he’s one of my boys and I’ll catch up with him in the hub while I have the chance.

The AFL let us dine in at a restaurant for the first time today, they filmed it and everything.

It was called Beachside Pavilion and Paul Dimattina is the owner.

He closed the place for us, the boys were pretty excited; there were a few pizzas flying around and I ended up having some fish.

Finally Jack Darling plays his 200th on Saturday.

JD has long arms and short pockets.

I got drafted with him and he was under a lot of pressure for a few years.

I think he was very harshly judged but he got through it, the form and criticism, and showed he is an elite player.

He’s a good family man and hopefully I get this ankle right to get out there and play alongside him.