MOST athletes get written off at some stage in their career. Most athletes, when they do, use it as motivation. It's the chip on their shoulder that drives them to go that extra mile, train that little bit longer, and play that little bit harder.
Patrick Cripps isn't like most athletes, though.
It's almost become an annual fixture to write Cripps off. The game's gone past him. He's too slow. He's getting old. Can Carlton challenge with him in the side? Do they need to trade him? It's commentary that's surrounded Cripps since before he won his first Brownlow Medal, and has followed him even after winning his second.
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But while he hears the noise, it doesn't fuel the internal fire the way it might for others in the football landscape. For one of the toughest, most courageous, physically imposing, clean and dominant inside midfielders of his generation, it's perhaps something else that has made Cripps so good for so long: his disposition.
"Honestly," Carlton assistant coach Leigh Adams tells AFL.com.au this week. "He could genuinely be the most optimistic person I've ever met."
Cripps does still go that extra mile. He does train a little bit longer than most and plays a lot harder than most. But blessed with a laidback and easy-going nature alongside his physical gifts, it's the work Cripps has done away from the field on the mental side of his game that's kept his performance levels so strong throughout so much adversity.
"I just don't like the 'prove people wrong' stuff," Cripps tells AFL.com.au.
"I feel like it's just such negative energy. You're doing it for the wrong reasons. I've always been big on knowing your ability, building the right habits, doing the right work. Prove yourself right, so you know you can play to your potential and keep helping the team as much as possible. I've always gone down that space.
"I think it's more of a stable way to think. If you're constantly in that battle of proving people wrong, then you're listening to them too much. At the end of the day, they're just trying to do their job in the media. But for me to do my job, I just focus on what I can control and get after it."
Carlton has never needed Cripps' sanguine nature quite like it has this season. At 1-8 just a couple of months ago, on the back of seven straight losses, the Blues parted ways with Michael Voss. It was the fourth coach sacked during Cripps' tenure in navy blue and, not for the first time, it felt like the walls were closing in on those at Ikon Park.
Cripps' form was scrutinised. His future was debated. It was relentless. But seven games, and seven wins later, and all of that feels like a lifetime ago. Josh Fraser's part in the side's turnaround has led to the Carlton interim being linked with the position full-time, but just as crucial has been Cripps' role.
Yes, there's been an uptick in the Carlton captain's form across the seven-match winning streak that has led into Saturday night's blockbuster clash against Hawthorn. But speak to anyone at Ikon Park and it's clear that Cripps' attitude has been the underrated guiding light to restoring confidence and shifting the vibe at the club from gloomy to great again.
"Players and coaches can ride wave of the emotions a fair bit week to week, particularly at Carlton," Adams says. "But he must be the most optimistic person I've ever come across.
"We could lose and he'd see the positives out of it. He'd say, 'We could try this next week' or, 'This might help us'. He's always looking at how he can get better and how the team can get better. He is that perfect middle all the time. Sometimes he knows he's not going as bad as people say he is. Right now, he's going really well. But he'd be saying he's probably not going as well as what people are saying. He's just so level-headed.
"He's got the extra burden of being the captain of the footy club, too. Every move he makes, it's going to be followed by the players. But he's a big reason – with his ability to be so consistent – why we've probably been able to come through that pretty tough time and bounce a little bit. It's due to his leadership.
"He can flip anything to be positive. I've never seen anything like it before. He does it really well and it rubs off on his teammates."
Cripps has led Carlton from the front in a manner few others across the competition would be capable of since the departure of Voss back in May. He won 46 of a possible 60 coaches' votes in the six games following the coaching change, was voted in the top three players on the ground in five of those six matches, and has polled in six of the seven games since Fraser took charge.
The fact that extraordinary run coincided with a period when the dark clouds lingering over Ikon Park were at their thickest, and the commentary surrounding Cripps' own future was at its loudest, is testament to his unwavering attitude.
"I reckon in the middle part of my career, when I first had a lean year, it probably had an impact on me more than what it does now. I read into it more back then," Cripps says.
"You go from early in your career getting built up, then the first time you get challenged is a bit of a shock to the system. But that adversity does build thicker skin. It happens once you separate your identity from yourself as a footy player. I'm big now on if you just do the work, work on your mindset and listen to the people in your corner, then good things will come your way.
"It doesn't always go to plan straightaway. There are certain times when people still talk about it, but I feel like over my career, most years I've been pretty consistent and I've always fronted up.
"The nature of when you're a leader at a club, if you have times as a club when you're not going where you want to be, then your leaders are the ones that are going to get scrutinised. That's just the nature of it. That's the business we're in and you've got to learn to thrive in the chaos. That's how I've always attacked it. You've got to just keep backing yourself in and keep getting to work."
And yet, while Cripps is laidback, he's never rested on his laurels. To simply state that his attitude alone is reason for his continued ability to bounce back from any adversity or scrutiny he's faced would be to do the work he's completed behind the scenes a disservice.
Cripps will clearly go down as one of modern football's most dominant clearance and contested beasts, but the game is changing. It's a running man's competition now, not necessarily built for the 195cm big-bodied midfielder that Cripps has been for more than a decade. So, he's tried to catch up. And, even at 31 years of age, he's worked to evolve so he can stay involved.
"As a person, I don't think you're going to meet anyone more genuine," Adams says. "He's engaging with his conversation, he loves talking footy. He'll do that all day. He's got a real thirst for knowledge. But probably the one thing that I've found so good about him is that he's won two Brownlows, played 250-odd games, however many best and fairests, he still wants to learn and he wants to be coached hard.
"You can get some guys that are probably at his stage of their careers that can get really comfortable with where they're at and the way they play. But he wants to play footy for as long as he can and understands that the game is changing away from contest and obviously that's his biggest asset.
"He's looking for ways to improve. How he can get involved in transition more, if he does something wrong he wants to know and doesn't want to get away with anything. He's happy to be whacked in front of the group if he needs to be. I've found that the biggest positive working with him. He wants what's best for the team. If that comes with a consequence to him, having to change roles or get better in a certain area, he's more than open to that.
"His ability to try and understand and get better, it's allowed him to continually do that week on week. We're winning now and he's having a really big say in those wins. A lot of that has been him being curious and trying to understand where he could best serve the team. If that was changing his role just a little bit to stay involved in transition, then he was willing to do it.
"He's still having his seven, eight, nine clearances a game. He's probably not having the 12 to 15 that he was, but that's probably because stoppages have dropped so much between the arcs and also because he's a little bit more wary of the transition game and doing a really good job at staying involved in it."
Indeed, that's reflected in the fact Cripps' influence across the past two months has grown immensely while his numbers haven't. According to Champion Data, while his ball winning figures have improved (24.9 disposals per game through the first nine games compared to an average of 29 disposals across the last seven), everything else has been relatively stable across the board.
He's averaging slightly fewer contested possessions under Fraser than he was under Voss, fewer centre bounce clearances, fewer tackles and fewer inside-50s, while his clearance numbers have stayed exactly the same. And yet the way he's defined matches has shifted completely, as evidenced by the fact he's won 47 coaches' votes from his last seven games compared to the 12 he polled in his first nine.
"I felt like I wasn't playing as bad as what was getting said at the start of the year," Cripps says.
"I knew I could still get to another level, but sometimes you've just got to feel that. I feel like from about round five onwards, I was starting to hit form again. I maybe had a bit of a mulligan against the Saints, but from about round five I started to really find my form again. There were a few little tweaks in amongst that, but nothing big.
"I'm big on stacking the days. If you build good habits and do the work – and I did a lot of work in the off-season and in the pre-season – I knew my body still felt as good as it had since I was in my mid-20s and I've still got the drive and the passion for the game.
"Sometimes it doesn't always go to plan straightaway, but I knew I was always going to get back to my best. Now, for me, I've always said I still love my footy and I just have to try and play at this level for as long as I can.
"I just know I've got a lot of good footy left in me. I've still got the passion for it, so for me the drive is still to achieve the ultimate. That's where my mind stays."
There's no doubt that passion can wane. It certainly did in the first half of the season, when Carlton found leads impossible to retain and victories difficult to secure. But Cripps' positivity never fluctuated in amongst that challenging period.
What made Carlton's first half of the year so hard to comprehend was that the Blues were in just about every game they played, and the energy at Ikon Park remained so high, throughout the defeats. The respect Carlton players had, and still have for Voss, was a key part in that. But the endless optimism stemming from Cripps was just as crucial.
But now that the victories are stacking up again, Cripps' importance both on the field and inside the Carlton Football Club is truly being reflected in the win-loss column.
"When you win, it makes coming into the club a little bit more enjoyable," Cripps says.
"But one thing we've done over the year, and a lot of boys have talked about it, is that the energy around the club has actually been pretty rock solid all season. We obviously just weren't ticking over the wins and losses.
"It's just great to see for everyone, but especially some of the younger guys to have that winning feeling and the buzz you get when you build some momentum. We're all enjoying it at the moment and we've just got to keep that momentum going now."
Cripps was speaking as part of his role as a Kayo Sports ambassador.