Dion Prestia doesn’t hold a grudge against Tom Stewart for knocking him out last year. And he doesn’t want the Cats player booed on Friday night, but he does think Stewart got off lightly at the tribunal.
“I know that’s not in his demeanour at all [but] honestly, I thought he should have got more,” Prestia said of the four-game ban Stewart got for running past the ball, shirt-fronting Prestia and leaving him knocked out and concussed.
Dion Prestia will play his 200th game on Friday night. Credit: Eddie Jim
“I look at different incidents that happen throughout the season and think he should have got more, but it is what it is.
“I appreciate he [Stewart] reached out to me and Joel Selwood as well reached out at the time. I know it was something he definitely didn’t go out and try to do during the game, it was a brain fade.”
Prestia said he didn’t hold it against Stewart and wouldn’t look to retaliate when the pair meet on Friday night, and nor would he expect a teammate to do so.
“No, not at all, no grudge at all. I think you go into the game with so many other things going through your head and what you need to do. It’s not something that I’m going to worry about.”
Tom Stewart’s bump on Dion Prestia, for which the Cat was suspended for four matches last year.Credit: Fairfax Media
Stewart said in a radio interview this week that he expected to be booed by Richmond fans and felt he probably deserved it given the hit, but Prestia hopes that doesn’t happen. He doesn’t like booing and encouraged Tiger fans not to boo Stewart.
“I actually hope they don’t boo him. I don’t think it’s a great look, seeing the stuff with Jason Horne-Francis I think is a bit disappointing,” Prestia said.
“I’m sure there’s gonna be people in the crowd who pay money to go the footy and support and stuff [who will boo] but yeah, hopefully not. If I’m over it, they should be.”
For an incident so much talked about, Prestia recalls little of it. He remembers the immediate play beforehand, tapping the ball over to Jack Graham, and then waking up to the looming face of a doctor in the changing rooms. Looking back at video of the incident now becomes an otherworldly experience, watching yourself do something you have no memory of.
“The confronting part [now] was where the trainer was with me and I don’t remember,” he said.
“I ran off the ground during that. I was, like, talking to people on the bench. And I remember that. That was probably the thing that was a bit weird.”
The return match against the Cats, and Stewart, deflects from a celebration of Prestia’s career. He plays his 200th game. Coincidentally, it is also the 200th game this week of his former Gold Coast Suns teammate and still-close friend Steven May.
It feels a world away from then to consider May and Prestia as Suns players, indeed May as the captain. Since leaving they have won four flags between them at their new clubs, been All-Australian (May) and won a best and fairest in a premiership year (Prestia). It’s a reminder of what might have been at Gold Coast when you also consider other former young Suns Tom Lynch, Jaeger O’Meara, Jack Martin, Charlie Dixon and Tom Hickey are still toiling and performing at other clubs.
The Suns days: (From left) Dion Prestia, Tom Lynch, Gary Ablett jnr and Steven May.Credit: Getty Images
“I absolutely loved my time on the Gold Coast. I have so many friends who live with up there who are still there or moved clubs as well. We learned how to grow up together and everything like that. So that’s why you always have that connection,” Prestia said.
“Big Steve May’s playing his 200th this week as well. I’m real close with Steve, like, we pretty much bonded as soon as we met each other up there.”
One of the more remarkable things about Prestia is he is essentially the same build now as he was then.
“I was looking at of photos from my Calder Cannons year. I’m like, I actually haven’t really changed all that much,” he said. Which partly explained why he quickly earned the nickname “Meatball” at the Suns.
Though Lynch, his teammate at Richmond and the Gold Coast, said he also picked up another nickname at the Suns – “The Box”. He was just a block.
Lynch recalled that the Suns told Prestia when he came to Melbourne for games and went home to Craigieburn that he had to tell his mum not to load him up with so much pasta because he had to trim down, not bulk up.
“I look for my first goal against West Coast, I’m actually pretty big there,” Prestia said.
But the home cooking hasn’t rubbed off on Prestia.
Game breaker: Dion Prestia’s three-goal burst in the third term gave the Tigers an advantage they did not relinquish against the West Coast Eagles on Saturday.Credit: Getty Images
“I’ve lived with him for two years, and he has cooked me a meal once,” said teammate Ivan Soldo. Though the ruckman is not complaining, he joins Prestia at the Craigieburn family home for meals once or twice a week and always comes home with a big spread of left-overs.
Often the man-child in football can come to earth when the other teenagers catch up, and the physical edge the teenager has diminishes. That hasn’t happened in Prestia’s case, primarily because while his strength gave him an edge, so too did his explosive pace. And if you have pace, you don’t lose an edge.
Now he has a very tailored gym program and doesn’t do any upper body weights at all because he gets too big.
The other reason Prestia has retained an edge is that he has an intuitive understanding of the game. Soldo reckons he will be a coach when he finishes playing.
Andrew McQualter, one of the assistant coaches at Richmond who also played with him briefly at the Suns, had little doubt he would transition to coaching because he is already doing it now.
Prestia is one of the conduit players on the ground. He sees problems on the field in real time, and makes changes he knows the coaches will want before messages are sent.
“His ability to see the game is incredible. Him, Shane Edwards and Kane Lambert are the smartest players I have seen. He helps the group understand what it is we are doing,” McQualter said.
“But if we ever do anything at training that he thinks doesn’t relate to the game he pulls us up straight away. He gets grumpy. You get ‘Grumpy Dion’ and ‘Happy Dion’ and if we have ‘Happy Dion’ we are all happy.”
His football intelligence was one of the reasons that Tigers coach Damien Hardwick re-deployed him from the midfield last week into the forward line with a very simple instruction: you will work it out.
“I was actually pretty lucky, ‘Dimma’ kind of gave me a blank canvas and said ‘You’re smart enough to know the role, see how you play that role’,” Prestia said.
It worked out OK. Prestia kicked three goals in minutes and turned the game.
“The first one was like, ‘Finally I’ve kicked a goal this year’. And then I think by the end of it we were all like half laughing at it because it’s such a rare thing for someone to do let alone a midfielder who isn’t known for kicking goals.
“I did say to them [the other forwards], ‘It’s not that hard’.”
Surprisingly, he ran further and at a high pace for longer than he did as a midfielder. But he didn’t get knocked around in packs quite the same way.
Managing his body has been an ongoing thing. The frustration for Richmond fans, as much as for Prestia, is how noticeable it is when he isn’t there. He is a talismanic player.
“The way I play probably exposes me more to injury issues. Being more explosive and things like that it’s accepting that injuries are a part of the game,” he said.
“I haven’t had anything with my knees since I’ve been at Richmond. Touch wood the body is in good shape. That’s why I feel like I’ve still got a fair bit of footy left in me.”
After 200 games, the former Sun is still rising.
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