Photo Gallery: Rd 7 2010 v St Kilda
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DISCUSSIONS about Carlton this season generally revolve around its famed midfield, its prized No.1 draft picks and its three livewire forwards who have pace to burn and innate goal sense.
Rarely do the back six get a look in.
And rarer still does one of the back six find more football than Chris Judd or Marc Murphy or Bryce Gibbs.
But at Etihad Stadium on Monday night when Carlton put last year’s runner-up St Kilda to the sword, a 188cm, 24-year-old half back outshone all of his higher profile teammates with a stunning 35-possession, 14-mark game.
But if Jordan Russell was ecstatic with his own form and his role in putting a huge hole in the guts of football’s Great Wall of China, he wasn’t showing it.
His focus was next week when the team travels to AAMI Stadium to take on Port.
“[Playing] the two grand finalists, two wins, its an amazing effort so far but obviously we’ve got Port this week who are travelling all right and had a good win against Essendon on the weekend, and our focus is straight to them now,” he said after the game.
“It’s been a pretty hard stretch the last four games and to come through that and get three wins out of those that was what we wanted to do…but obviously we go to Adelaide now.
“It’s a good little run but obviously we’ve got to take it one week at a time.”
For many, Russell is a non-descript defender in a team that has several talking points; so it’s easy to forget that he finished sixth in Carlton’s best-and-fairest last year.
What is not easy to forget is Russell’s role in Carlton’s extraordinary 61-point demolition of the Saints.
On his own form Russell conservatively rates it as “good”.
“I feel really comfortable back there now with all the boys. It’s good to play on someone and defend but also then get involved on the way out,” he said.
“All the six spots down there work together and share the load with each other which is really good.”
It is a modest assessment of a defence that took the ball into the corridor and was instrumental in the surprise result of the season so far.
“That’s one of the things, especially against Geelong and St Kilda who zone up really well, you’ve got to move the ball quickly and you’ve got to go through the corridor to beat those sort of sides,” he said.
“We had a very disappointing loss last week. We had eight days or nine days to think about St Kilda. We obviously got really close to them last year so we knew how we wanted to play them and we knew we wanted to run and go through the corridor and it all came off.
“We jumped them early and we were able to sustain it for four quarters which was very pleasing.”
Photo Gallery: Rd 7 2010 v St Kilda
Click here to view the photo gallery
