“Play each game as if it’s your last”. It’s a hackneyed football expression, but it mattered much to Brock McLean in the lead-up to Saturday’s drawn match with Essendon on the MCG.

At the time of writing, McLean still isn’t certain whether he’s a required Carlton player in 2015, and so he approached the Round 23 contest as if it was his last hurrah.

A 30-possession return in is 157th (and final?) senior League match best reflected the mindset of the 28 year-old McLean, who was traded by Melbourne for selection 11 (Jordan Gysberts) in 2009. Though he’s not the quickest bloke off the first ten, McLean is a man in a hurry.

Will he go again?

“I’d like to go again and the club has indicated that that’s going to happen, but until the contract’s signed it’s never a done deal . . . fingers crossed,” was his response to the question in the rooms afterwards.

“I went out with the mindset today that if it happened to be my last game on the ’G then I wanted it to be a good one. The performance was good, but it’s just a shame the result wasn’t better.”

The weekend’s tied scores left McLean, and no doubt his Carlton contemporaries, with a palpable emptiness.

“It’s a weird feeling, being part of a draw. I’d probably nearly rather lose because then you know what to feel,” McLean suggested. “At the moment I feel frustrated that we had a chance to punch the ball through the posts . . . I don’t know how much time was left but we just needed to get the ball through, take the lead and hang on for dear life.

“I don’t like draws, but they’ve happened since the start of time, so why change it? The conversation comes up every time there’s a draw, but it’s the first draw this year so just leave it the way it is.

As ever wearing his heart on his sleeve, McLean wanted to set the record straight on his shepherd on Brendon Goddard. Mystified that he was penalized for the incident, McLean insisted he had no case to answer.

“I got him (Goddard) low, I hit him in the ribs and I think we might have had an accidental head clash. There’s nothing you can do to prevent that,” McLean said.

“There’s as much onus on the guy who gets hit knowing what’s around him. He’s got to have special awareness and vision of what’s coming, who’s coming and where he is on the ground.

“The good thing was that he (Goddard) got up and played the second half, he wasn’t injured and hopefully the Tribunal, the AFL and the umpires take that into account.”

In reflecting on the team’s showing in 2014, McLean, who was there for 16 senior contests this season, was just as candid.

“(This was) definitely a year of two halves - the first half (was) very disappointing, there’s no other way to look at it . . . the second half of the year was a lot better in terms of competing . . . ,” he said.

“In saying that we’ve got to let that stew a little bit in the off-season, have a good mental break and come back physically ready for another big year because it goes so quick . . . hopefully the young guys realize that and they come back in really good shape because that’s where the real development for the group’s got to come.”