FOR THE sake of our supporters, I thought it was important for me to share my thoughts on two fronts: my relationship with Dean Laidley and where I'm at with my hip injury.

Yes, Dean and I had a chat last week but we catch up once a week anyway. A lot of the time it's not even about footy, which makes a nice change, but this time we needed to clear the air.

We had to talk and it was good that we were both man enough to understand that. We didn't beat around the bush and both had our say but, truth is, we squashed it on the head in five minutes.

We shook hands afterwards. He's my coach and I'm his player - it's as simple as that. There's no rift or anything and I want to play for him this year and beyond.

Dean played a part in recruiting me and has backed me from day one. We've had a really good relationship the whole time but you're not going to get along well every single day. That's just life.

He's a passionate man and wears his heart on his sleeve. You have to admire that. Sometimes people can say things or do things that they normally wouldn't but if you worried about every single little comment someone made, you'd be pulling up a lot of people.

Dean puts himself on the line for his players and there are times we've let him down.

The last couple of weeks we haven't really been playing to the game plan we learned over the pre-season, which is pretty disappointing.

Dean's a deep thinker and puts a lot of time into the opposition but it all depends on how we, his players, follow the plan.

You've got to consider that other clubs are doing the same thing, yet we still go into every game thinking we're going to win.

I ran on Tuesday for the first time in a couple of weeks and I didn't pull up sore. I'll have another run again tomorrow to really test my hip out and see where it's at.

That will be a bit more top-end speed, maybe 70 to 80 per cent, and then on Saturday I'll probably have a GPS session.

If it pulls up fine again, I've taken another important step towards a return. The strength is back now, so it's pretty good.

The injury was restricting me when running and turning at top pace. When the heat's on you can't mix it with anybody.

It was getting pretty painful after games but I gave it two weeks' rest, doing nothing but upper body weights.

I felt like a bodybuilder getting large but I'm not putting any weight on. I've also been hitting the bike and swimming - all of the fun stuff you do in rehab.

My recovery has been a bit slower than I expected. The injury is so hard to read because when walking around, you don't really feel it. It's pretty frustrating.

So was watching the boys getting beaten on Saturday night. There's no point dwelling on the past and we moved on from it pretty quickly after our team meeting.

Watching from the stands, I was pretty disappointed with the way we went about it but I'm confident we'll get a better effort this week.

To see Boomer get injured in the game was heartbreaking. He's our skipper and our best player. If there is even a small positive, he still has a lot to offer off the field. It also means one of the young kids can come in and really show what they've got.

It's phenomenal how long Boomer's gone without being injured. It's going to be difficult to cover him but he'll still have a huge role around the club.

As the captain he had to get straight back on the horse.

He's got terrific spirit and will almost become another coach for the next couple of months while he gets himself right.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the club.