Former Western Bulldogs ruckman Will Minson has been moved after his note to the club's next No.27 resurfaced, a decade on from the end of his AFL career.
The 191-game veteran departed at the conclusion of the 2016 premiership season, having played in the VFL grand final success and watching on as the AFL side completed the double a week later.
During his final days at Whitten Oval, Minson picked up a pen and left a heartfelt message — complete with some comedy and money — in his locker for his replacement.
“Dear the next No.27, good luck to you,” Minson began. “Wear this jumper with pride and I hope it brings you much joy and success. Buy yourself a coffee on me. Work hard, listen and find meaning in everything you do here. Remember to always shower nude. Nil bastardum carborundum. Sincerely, Will Minson.”
Minson laughed as he explained on Channel 7’s The Front Bar that the quasi-Latin phrase meant ‘don’t let the bastards get you down’. But he then revealed he had never taken a photo of the letter, with the picture stirring up old memories.
“It’s fabulous to come on this program and thank you for the opportunity — I didn’t have a copy of that,” Minson said. “So I know I wrote it, because I remember doing that, but I didn’t record it and so it’s really nice to see that.”
The Front Bar host Andy Maher said it was an “absolutely beautiful” note as Sam Pang asked why he felt compelled to write it.
“Genuinely, I’d spent my entire adult life at the Whitten Oval. I finished school on a Tuesday, drafted on a Friday, moved to Melbourne on a Saturday and you’re a footballer five days after you were doing your maths exam,” Minson said. “Fourteen years later I’m 31 and I’m leaving, and it’s like, as I said, my entire adult life, it was a really heartbreaking thing to leave. I don’t know anyone who leaves on their own terms, other than maybe Shane Crawford who retired on the dais (after Hawthorn’s 2008 premiership). But very few players leave on their own terms. The experience I’ve had with Red Dust (a charity working to improve conditions in remote Indigenous communities) came from my association at the Whitten Oval. I just wanted to let the next person know it’s a pretty remarkable journey and have a go.”
As it turned out, the No.27 locker was given to a draftee who would have been well aware of Minson’s exploits. Diehard Bulldogs fan Pat Lipinski was selected by the club only weeks after he attended the 2016 grand final. Lipinski went on to play 56 games in the No.27 jumper before moving to Collingwood and becoming a 2023 premiership player.
On a lighter note, Minson also addressed the shower advice. “I was worried there’d be an insufficient amount of nudity after I left,” he joked. “(Team showers in the nude) was waning significantly and it was concerning. You think about all the great cultures — the Romans, the Japanese — they all had a bathing culture and there were huge benefits that came from it.”
Minson poked fun at the Bulldogs’ long-time rivals GWS over their shower situation. “I remember going to Western Sydney to play a game of footy in the pre-season, and they had cubicles,” he said. “And we all said it’s just not going to work. We had great concerns for GWS from our first practice game out at Rouse Hill or wherever it was, because they had cubicles.”
Pang laughed: “I’m not going to lie, one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen in football took a bit of a turn in the end there.”
