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StJosephs fcGeelong Advertiser |NICK Maxwell has waited 26 years to see St Joseph’s win a GFL premiership but, if the time finally arrives on Saturday afternoon, he’ll barely have time to enjoy it.

The Joeys director of coaching and player development will have to hit the highway ­almost immediately after Saturday’s decider to make it in time for another of his roles.

Maxwell has spent the year working with Melbourne Storm as a leadership development coach, and will be on the sidelines as it hosts North Queensland in a preliminary final at AAMI Park that night.

But the Collingwood prem­iership captain said there would be plenty of time to celebrate afterwards if Joeys were to get over Newtown & Chilwell on Saturday.

“I’m sure I can play catch up. If we win, that’s the least of my worries,” he said.

“I’ll be there until the end (of the game) and then head up the highway.”

For Maxwell, St Joseph’s is a labour of love.

He’s been there all season providing support and expertise to coach Heath Jamieson — who he says is “an outstanding coach. I think he’s got a big future in the coaching game” — and his group of young assistant coaches.

He might have jobs that pay the bills with Storm, and in the media with Channel Seven and SEN, but the Joeys gig he does for the love of it.

“Absolutely. As my wife said, I’ve put in a lot of hours for zero dollars,” he said.

“But it’s not about that, it’s just about the love for the club and the love for the enthusiasm the players have and the want to get better.

“Obviously they have got better and they’ve been outstanding this year, but they’ve still got to make sure that they do it for another 120 minutes and then they’ll get to enjoy it.”

There are plenty of current and former AFL players who love the thought of giving back to the game when their time at the elite level is over, but there might not be as many who live it as fully as Maxwell.

St Joseph’s represents all that Maxwell loved about footy as a kid, and he clearly has not forgotten the role it played in helping him go on to play 208 AFL games.

“Just the grounding they gave me, if I didn’t have such great support down there when I was going through the juniors then I never would have been able to play the footy that I played and play at the level I played at,” he said.

“A lot of my heroes and guys I looked up to were the senior players at Joeys rather than AFL players because they were the ones who were real to me.

“You’d train and then you’d hang around and watch them train, or you’d be there on the weekends and you’d play in the under-16s or the under-18s and then hang around for the reserves and seniors.

“All the seniors boys, there was always a great culture, they’d come and look after you and answer your questions and make you a part of the club.

“There’s always been a great culture in that. The culture of success, we haven’t quite got to the end of that, so that’s obviously something we’ve been trying to build this year.”

Joeys might have lost just one game all season, but Maxwell says the team is not feeling any external pressure as favourites to finish the job.

“I think that with our boys, there’s no bigger expectation than the ones they put on themselves,” he said.

“So, I don’t think they feel the pressure at all. I think they just want to go out there and perform.

“Obviously it all starts with our midfield pressure, and during the game that’ll be the key — that our mids put the pressure on that they did against Colac a couple of weeks ago and the way they’ve performed for 18 out of the 19 games.”

Whatever happens on Saturday, a premiership drought will be broken. While Joeys’ wait has been 26 years, Newtown’s has stretched to 29.

“For both teams’ supporters, they’ve been through a long, long drought so it’s going to be huge for either club, whoever wins it,” Maxwell said.

“I’ve been there to watch plenty of times we’ve got really close but never got over the line in the last 26 years, so it would mean a hell of a lot to me for us to finally break that duck.”

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