From sidelines to centre stage, Blues ruckman ready to pit himself against Gawn the great

Early last year, Max Gawn looked across the AFL’s emerging generation and made an extraordinary prediction.Tom De Koning, Gawn suggested, had the potential to become the best player of his generation.Marc Pittonet is out to stop Max Gawn on Saturday night. The AgeIt was some endorsement from a man who knows a little about ruckmen. But when Gawn walks into the MCG on Saturday night with Melbourne’s season on the line, De Koning will not be there.Instead, standing opposite Gawn will be the man who spent much of last season unable to get into Carlton’s team because of De Koning.Marc Pittonet played just seven AFL games last year. De Koning was Carlton’s preferred ruckman, one of the most coveted players in football and ultimately departed the Blues as one of the game’s highest-paid players.Pittonet stayed.Now 30, 100 games into a career spent largely outside the spotlight, he has suddenly found himself playing some of his best football at precisely the moment Carlton needs him most.And his reward?A wildcard final against the man Pittonet believes is the greatest ruckman to have played the game.“I think he’s the best ever,” Pittonet said of Gawn, who was this week named in the All-Australian team for the ninth team, more than any other player.Marc Pittonet, in one of his rare AFL games last year, rucks against Melbourne great Max Gawn.AFL Photos via Getty Images“I think he’s a freak. The fact that he’s been this good for this long is just incredible.”There is no bravado about how Pittonet intends to deal with him, either.Pittonet and Gawn tangle in the 2023 finals.AFL PhotosAsked whether he had ever beaten Gawn before, Pittonet thought about it.“I don’t think I’d ever say the word ‘beat’,” he said.“I reckon I’ve held him, and then he’s had some great finishes. So I reckon I’ve definitely had some draws. But I don’t reckon I can ever say beat.”It is an unusually candid assessment from a footballer days out from perhaps the biggest individual assignment of his life.But Pittonet understands something fundamental about Saturday night: he does not necessarily need to beat Gawn for Carlton to beat Melbourne.He might simply need to make sure Gawn doesn’t beat Carlton.“If I can split that match-up, then we’ll go a long way to winning,” Pittonet said.“There’ll be times on the weekend where I put my ego on the hook for the team and just go, ‘you know what? It’s not about my hit-outs, my touches, my marks, my goals’ – whatever that looks like.“But if I can do what I need to on him and limit his impact, then we’ll go a fair way to winning.”That philosophy helps explain Pittonet’s resurgence.Marc Pittonet has thrived as Carlton’s number one ruckman this year. The AgeHe calls himself a “ruck nerd”, and within Carlton there are apparently conversations between Pittonet and former Blues ruckman turned coach Matthew Kreuzer that can become so technically obscure that others simply leave them to “talk ruck”, as opposed to talk shop.For Pittonet, ruckwork has become a study of geometry, timing and manipulation.He studies which leg an opponent jumps from. Which hand he prefers. The angle of his approach. The umpire’s throw. How high the ball travels. Which side of the circle it is likely to land on.Pittonet can jump from either leg and hit with either hand, a versatility he believes has become increasingly valuable under the AFL’s new ruck rules.Sometimes his objective is not even to win the tap.There have been games over the past six weeks when Pittonet has effectively told Carlton’s midfielders he might not get first hand to the football at a centre ball-up.What he can promise them is where the opposition’s hit-out will go.“If I don’t win it, it’s going to go to this spot the whole time,” he said of those conversations.“Let’s put Crippa [Patrick Cripps] there, Jagga [Smith] there, Walshy [Sam Walsh] there. And I’ll help you at ground level. We’ll beat them at ground level.”It is ruckwork stripped of glamour and reduced to its practical purpose: giving your midfield a chance to win the football.And it may be precisely what Carlton requires against Gawn.Pittonet spent Tuesday and Thursday studying him: deciding when to jump, which direction to attack from, which hand to target and how best to disrupt the timing of a player who has spent years perfecting his craft.Gawn himself feared the AFL’s ruck changes might favour younger, more athletic opponents. Instead, deep into his career, he has adapted again.Pittonet has noticed.“You see some of the stuff that blokes do – Gawn, for instance, will grab it out of the ruck by doing a two-hand push,” he said.“If you see how well he does the two-hand push when he does it, the other guy will often get his hand centimetres from tapping the ball. But he’s nailed his timing.Carlton skipper Patrick Cripps and ruckman Marc Pittonet lead the resurgent Blues off the ground after last week’s win over Fremantle.Getty Images“It’s that sort of granular detail that I think a lot of the rucks, like Gawn, have really picked up on.”Pittonet has needed to find those marginal gains himself. Through the De Koning years, there were obvious questions about where he fitted at Carlton. Pittonet, though, says he never stopped viewing himself as a No.1 ruckman.Even when he was playing in the VFL, he noticed a pattern: eventually, Carlton tended to need him again.“I knew that I’d come back at some point, and I only get one game to show that I’m good enough,” he said.“So I just need to be ready to take that on.”Paradoxically, being left out may ultimately have extended his career.Without the weekly pressure of preparing for an AFL opponent, Pittonet used his time in the reserves to work on parts of his game that had stagnated and learn from teammates with skills he wanted to develop.“How do I become more of a threat?” he asked himself.Marc Pittonet of the Blues high fives fans after beating Fremantle.AFL Photos via Getty ImagesThose extra layers are now revealing themselves.And they are part of a broader Carlton transformation that Pittonet insists is not simply a late-season sugar hit.The Blues have arrived in the wildcard round after a remarkable late surge, but Pittonet rejects the suggestion they are merely riding an emotional wave.He points to last weekend, when Carlton fell four goals behind minor premiers Fremantle but refused to panic.“If we’re riding on emotion, then right then we go, ‘Oh, it’s not our day. We are playing a good team. We’ve got a final next week’,” he said.“But that’s not where we go to.”Instead, he describes a team with a deepening trust in its method and in individual roles – precisely the mentality Carlton will need if it is to win five consecutive games to claim the premiership.Pittonet refuses to contemplate that prospect.“I haven’t thought past this week,” he said.“It sounds like such a blunt answer, but five is a lot of football.”Sam McClure is an award-winning AFL journalist and broadcaster.Connect via X or email.From our partners