including concussion researcher <\/a>Alan Pearce, to question whether Liberatore should call time on his decorated AFL career.<\/p>\n\u201cI would love to play on next year,\u201d Liberatore said. \u201cI just have to stay injury-free and I should be OK.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s all pretty mutual (with the club keen for him to play on too).<\/p>\n
\u201cNext year will definitely be my last year. I couldn\u2019t see myself playing on longer than that.\u201d<\/p>\n
If he plays next season, he could overtake his Brownlow Medal-winning father, Tony in terms of games played with the Bulldogs. <\/p>\n
He has played 264 career matches, only 19 games behind Tony.<\/p>\n
While Liberatore acknowledges concussion has become one of the AFL\u2019s most serious issues, he maintains that he and the Bulldogs have done strong \u201cdue diligence\u201d on his footy return across the past month.<\/p>\n
He didn\u2019t read or hear any of the narrative surrounding his own future after his concussion at GHMBA Stadium in Round 6, but insisted he had \u201cabsolute faith\u201d in the club\u2019s medical team.<\/p>\n
He detailed how he had taken up meditation in recent years which has positively affected his approach to the game, both on and off the field.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t say I am worried about it,\u201d he said of the concussion debate. \u201cBut I understand why it is a big issue.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cI just sort of do my due diligence and make sure I lead the right lifestyle outside of footy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am pretty keen on psychology and meditation and all that sort of stuff. I\u2019ve done that for a few years now.<\/p>\n
\u201cMeditation calms your nervous system down \u2026 it allows you to train a bit smarter, and probably with the in-game stuff, it just sharpens your mind, so you can make decisions about where to put your body.\u201d<\/p>\n
The midfielder said the club gave him plenty of time to recover from his last head knock, which also allowed him to have minor surgery on his troublesome knee.<\/p>\n
\u201cI took the time I needed (after the concussion) but it also gave me the chance to get the knee done \u2026 It was really sore.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe body is getting there now. It\u2019s all good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Liberatore believes the Bulldogs can make a late season charge into the finals after winning five of their past seven games.<\/p>\n
They take on an out-of-form Gold Coast on Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a massive game in the context of both of our seasons,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m tipping the midfield battle will be a good one.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a really good crop of players, and we\u2019ve got some strong leaders as well, so hopefully we can set things up for the next four or five years for the club.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Western Bulldogs premiership hero Tom Liberatore has refused to bow to external calls for him to retire, adamant…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":526554,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[260370,138,246,111,139,69,244,245],"class_list":["post-526553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-personal-finance","tag-teamid20016","tag-business","tag-finance","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-personal-finance","tag-personalfinance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=526553"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/526553\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/526554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=526553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=526553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=526553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}