Retired Bulldog Lin Jong experienced a lot in his 10 years at AFL level, but will never forget the phone call he received from Luke Beveridge after he was busted touring the facilities at Collingwood.
In the middle of the 2016 season, Jong was spotted by the media at the Holden Centre, as the out of contract midfielder weighed up his future.
The story naturally leaked, and all parties were left red-faced and needing to work out how to move forward.
Jong, who had a career-best year for the Bulldogs in 2016 – playing 16 games, has revealed an awkward phone call from senior coach Beveridge after the fact.
“When it came out into the media, the lowlight was probably the phone call from Bevo,” Jong told SEN’s Bob and Andy.
“Basically he thought it was a joke at the start and said ‘I’ve just been told this, there’s no way you did that did you?’ and I said ‘ah, yeah’.
“He tore me a new one and ‘how am I supposed to play you if you’ve done this and how can the boys trust you’ and it took him maybe a day to get over it and that was probably the lowlight.”
Bob Murphy was Bulldogs captain at the time and added that Jong called him to work out how he could get the playing group back onside.
The two concocted a plan involving photoshop, a Collingwood jersey and fronting the entire team.
“Lin rang me and said ‘what are we doing?’ and I said ‘front foot. We have to get on the front foot’,” Murphy said.
“So we mocked up a photo of him in the Collingwood jumper and said ‘look, we’ve got to address the elephant in the room’ (in front of the whole group).”
“Bang (it went up on the screen) and there was a big roar and it was done because we loved him and it was one of those difficult spots where he was too good not to be playing senior footy and he wasn’t playing senior footy and a club chases him.”
Jong retired with 65 AFL games to his name after many and varying injury setbacks.
He was drafted with pick nine in the 2011 Rookie Draft and played one game in 2021.