The thoughts still run through Jack Martin’s mind nearly every time he laces his boots. Sometimes, it’s as simple as, ‘Can I get through this game?’. If he does, the next question inevitably follows – ‘Am I going to pull up OK?’. At his lowest points, even trotting out to training has begged the thought, ‘Will I finish this session?’.
Martin’s fitness had failed him towards the end of a five-year Carlton career that yielded just 54 senior games. More than that, his mind had started playing tricks on him as well. While he was always confident he could get back to being the player he had long promised to be, he needed to find an environment that could cater for a body that was fast becoming unreliable. He’s found that at Geelong.
“To be honest, I don’t even know how to explain it,” Martin tells AFL.com.au on the eve of his long-awaited return to September. “It’s a funny one, because half the battle for me has been the mental game. It’s between the ears. I haven’t played a lot of footy over the last couple of years. Even now, during the week at training, I’ll ask, ‘Am I going to get through this?’. I’m sort of still facing those challenges.”
Finally, Martin feels like his body is starting to feel normal again. He describes it as being in “a good place”. But it’s taken a lot to get here. A lot of planning, a lot of trust and, most importantly, a lot of time. That time is best measured in months, rather than weeks or days or hours.
The Move to Geelong: A New Beginning
The story of Martin’s season dates back to late last year, when he first met with Cats coach Chris Scott and the club’s football boss Andrew Mackie about the prospect of a move. At the time, with his days at Carlton numbered, Geelong was attempting to lure the forward down the highway, as opposed to across the country and back to his home state of Western Australia, where Fremantle had also shown interest.
The Geelong list management team ultimately swayed the 30-year-old with a carefully curated and meticulously designed plan to get his body back to peak condition. It was one laid out by science and medicine consultant Steve Saunders, high-performance manager Des O’Sullivan and physiotherapist Richard Citroen, backed by Scott and Mackie, and requiring the full buy-in of Martin himself.
“As much as we’ve got this finals series to play out, I’m really excited and optimistic about another pre-season and what next season holds and beyond that as well,” Martin says.
The depth of planning meant Martin barely required any more convincing. But if he had, one comment would have been the final selling point. While he now looms as perhaps September’s biggest finals wildcard, a player built up throughout the year to perform purely across the next four weeks, that wasn’t how the Cats saw him, or how they sold him their vision. Instead, they told him they saw him as a player for the years ahead, not just the month ahead.
A Meticulous Recovery Plan
The detailed Geelong plan that was presented to Martin unfolded across the first half of this season. It started with the veteran playing only a half of a VFL practice game against Port Melbourne in February. He was scheduled to play another half for the VFL side against Essendon the following week, but pulled out due to some calf tightness in the lead-up. He wasn’t seen again, at any level, for three months.
But that was all part of the equation. As speculation in certain quarters swirled around whether another significant soft-tissue injury was keeping Martin sidelined, that wasn’t the case. Instead, behind the scenes and away from prying eyes, he was completing a lengthy block of conditioning work, re-training his body – and his mind – to handle the rigours of a full season of football.
Such was the typically successful start to Geelong’s campaign – which helped result in a 15th top-four berth from the past 19 seasons – the club could preach patience with Martin.
Geelong was playing the long game, taking a wider lens to Martin’s availability. Fully backed by Scott and the club’s senior coaching team – who were all aligned with the high-performance staff’s planning – and with the support of the player himself, Martin was virtually taken out of contention for selection until every marker in his comprehensive return-to-play program was hit.
Return to Form and the Road Ahead
That moment eventually came on May 23, when Martin was cleared for managed minutes in a VFL clash against Footscray at the Whitten Oval. It was another crucial hurdle for the Geelong recruit to clear on his road to recovery. When he got through that, and another reserves hitout against Williamstown the following week, an AFL comeback finally beckoned.
That arrived on June 7, when Martin played his first AFL game in 300 days in a win over the club where he started his career, Gold Coast. If you needed an indication of whether patience was the right call, he’s played in 10 of the 11 games since. The only match he missed, against Essendon last month, was due to the club taking an ultra-cautious approach to his sustained fitness after he was initially named in the selected side.
“To be honest, it was more out of my hands,” Martin says of Geelong’s detailed fitness plan. “I left it to the high-performance and the medical team. I just trusted their process.”
Martin’s impact in Geelong’s fortunes through the second half of the season have been obvious. A big driver in the club’s decision to chase him towards the end of last season was his positional flexibility and, since returning to the park, he has indeed flourished at both ends of the field.
Having kickstarted his return in a long-forgotten role across half-back, resulting in a 21-disposal performance against Brisbane and a 25-disposal effort against Richmond to emphasise both his newfound sense of fitness and form, he’s since moved forward again and been just as influential.
He has kicked nine goals from his past five games – including a day out against Port Adelaide, where he was activated from the substitute’s bench and kicked four goals in his first five minutes on the ground – making him feel primed for September.
“It all happened pretty quickly,” Martin says, recalling his four-goal burst against the Power.
Martin is a player built for the big stage. It should be of no surprise that perhaps his two best games for Carlton came late in 2023, when he kicked two goals each in both the side’s elimination final win over Sydney and its preliminary final loss to Brisbane. There, he showed the toughness, aggression, x-factor, skill and flare that he was once recognised for. All have returned to his game across 2025, and all are key ingredients come September.
But perhaps more importantly, the fun factor is back as well. While he is by no means letting any complacency seep in – the doubts that occasionally creep into his mind are a constant reminder of his past – he is finally, and deservedly, enjoying his football again.
“I am, yeah,” Martin says. “I’m just enjoying it and enjoying every day. Especially with having a young family, bringing the kids along to the game and just making it an experience for them as well. I haven’t played a lot of finals in the past, so I’m excited. It’s Friday night, it’s a big stage, against the Lions. I’m super excited.”
