AS THE much-anticipated clash with old foe Collingwood draws ever closer, Carlton Captain Patrick Cripps has doubled down on the Blue Collar mentality he has poured his heart into across 13 seasons (and counting) at the club.

That Blue Collar spirit will be worn quite literally when Cripps and his teammates take to the field on Saturday night, in the 1926 reproduction collared guernsey with the scrolled emblem proudly stitched front and centre.

But for Cripps - the five-time John Nicholls Medallist and dual Brownlow winner - this is about far more than aesthetics. Speaking candidly during a break in the recent promotional shoot at Mills Place, he opened up about what the jumper truly represents.

“Through our journey, especially a lot of us who have been at the club for a while, we’ve always tried to lean on the history of Carlton and tap into what it means to play for Carlton - and at the same time create our own identity and a culture that binds us together and is bigger than ourselves. Obviously the collar is a great reflection of that,” Cripps said, his voice carrying the weight of years spent building something meaningful.

“A lot of how old Carlton was built was on blue-collar work and getting your hands dirty, and we’ve really tried to dive into that theme with the Navy Blue and the blue collar . . . [that] what we do is hard work and it’s got to be done as a team.”

And that connection isn’t just spoken – it’s lived. Every time Cripps’ Carlton runs out, you can see it: in a desperate defensive act, in a hand reaching down to lift a fallen teammate, in the pure, unguarded joy of celebrating someone else’s goal. These are the threads that bind the boys in blue together, game after game.

“I get a lot of joy in rewatching games and seeing how much some of our young guys are growing, but also seeing how much everyone gets around them as well,” Cripps said.

“Everyone’s playing for each other, everyone’s happy for each other to do well, but most importantly we’re playing for something that’s bigger than us. This blue collar stuff is really connecting us to what we want to be about, and it’s a higher purpose.”

The years may have passed, but they’ve only deepened Cripps’ reverence for football’s fiercest rivalry. He doesn’t shy away from the hard truth - that he and his teammates have “been on the wrong end of a few close ones” - but he’s unwavering in his belief that stepping onto the field for a Carlton-Collingwood contest is a privilege shared equally by both sides of the battle.

“These are significant games - the rivalry ones always are - but this one might even carry a bit more weight,” he said, the gravity of the moment clear in his words.

“It’s a privilege to play for Carlton, and once you play long enough you get entrenched in the history of Carlton and what it means to play . . .”