Ben Jolley played his first VFL game in 2005. This week he’ll play his 300th, becoming only the third player in the competition to hit the milestone, writes PAUL AMY.
It was the start of a new VFL season and of a long career of a young Bendigo Bombers player.
The Bombers, then aligned with Essendon, played Coburg Tigers under lights at the beautiful Queen Elizabeth Oval in Bendigo.
Matthew Knights was their coach and Nick Carter their captain.
David Flood was guiding the Burgers.
And in the home team was a young Essendon draftee, picked up from the Calder Cannons after captaining them to the 2004 TAC Cup premiership and being named in the team of the year.
He turned out to be a good player. A jolly good player, you could say.
Eighteen years after his debut, Ben Jolley is still playing in the VFL, as durable as a diamond.
This Saturday the Williamstown great will become only the third player in the long history of the VFA/VFL to hit the 300-game milestone.
He’ll join Port Melbourne champions Billy Swan (302 matches) and Fred Cook (300) in reaching the mark.
The match will be at Williamstown, where Jolley has played the bulk of his 299 matches.
Jolley has looked up the careers of Swan, who played with the Towners after winning two JJ Liston Trophies at Port, and Cook, who also won a Liston and kicked goals by the bagful for the Borough.
He’ll be humbled to join such “exclusive company and true legends of the VFA/VFL’’.
Jolley says he’ll take the time this week to think about his journey.
“I am reflecting on it. It’s not one of those occasions where you treat it like any other ordinary week,’’ he says.
“It kind of opens up the avenues to reflect and look back on the people, the moments, because your life changes a lot over 18 years.
“Seldom do you get the chance to actually do that. So rather than being in the whole having to live in the moment I’m allowing myself to wander down a nostalgic path for a little while and just appreciate what it’s all been like.
“And it’s been good. That’s probably why I’m still doing it. There’s been missteps along the way undoubtedly but for the most part it’s been something I’ve thoroughly enjoyed.’’
*****
After being delisted by Essendon, where he had four AFL games in 2006 and played well enough in the VFL to win the best and fairest, Ben Jolley spent one season on Bendigo’s list before crossing to Williamstown.
Willy general manager Brendan Curry and coach Bradley Gotch chased him.
He was still at university (he’s now a teacher at Williamstown High School) and signed the contract at the Plough Hotel in Footscray.
The day after, Curry told veteran property steward Ronnie ‘The Count’ Williams that Jolley would probably be the next captain of the club.
Williamstown was his happy home for 11 years, a period that brought team and personal success.
Jolley captained the Towners to the 2015 premiership, was skipper from 2012 to 2017 and, as a courageous midfielder, won the 2011, 2012, 2014 and 2015 best and fairests.
Williamstown has an award named after the late Ron James. Voted on by the players, it recognises “the respect, professionalism and sacrifices’’ a player makes for the team.
Ben Jolley won the memorial trophy nine times.
At competition level he earned seven consecutive team-of-the-year plaques, represented the league and gained VFL life membership.
But at the end of 2018 Williamstown finished him up, with coach Andy Collins wanting to bring along younger players.
“Seagull great Ben Jolley retires,’’ a Willy press release trumpeted.
It was nonsense. He had not retired. He wanted to play on. His many supporters seethed at the way he was treated.
It was a bitter blow for Jolley, who at that time had played a record 217 games for the Towners and 269 in the VFL.
Yet here he is at the age of 37 back at Willy and on the verge of a mighty milestone.
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A lot happened to Ben Jolley in the five years that took in his departure and return to the Seagulls.
He joined their great rival Port Melbourne in 2019, playing the first 10 matches, averaging 21.2 possessions and then suffering an abductor injury that ended his season.
There was no football in 2020 because of Covid.
Jolley played what there was of the 2021 season, which ended with Port moving on the great Gary Ayres.
His replacement, Adam Skrobalak, told Jolley he could give him no guarantees about a contract.
Jolley, then on 287 games and keen to push on to 300, found his way back to Essendon in what was described as a playing assistant coach role.
It didn’t turn out how he was expecting.
He did a lot more coaching than playing, getting in only three games, and it looked like his career would end not with a major celebration, but disappointment.
One reporter suggested Jolley had come to the end of a long road in football.
But he believed his body was up to another season.
“That was the main criteria I was continually checking in with, if the legs and arms were still in one piece and would allow me to get there,’’ he says.
As for him being written off at the end of last season, “It’s funny how you latch on to little chunks of motivation’’.
“That view was obviously shared by a lot of people, but I was like, ‘Really? I still think I can’.’’
So did Williamstown coach Justin Plapp.
The Towners were coming off a thin 2022 season and Plapp figured they could do with the experience and stature of a player whom former CEO Jason Reddick had described in 2018 as a future legend in Williamstown’s hall of fame.
Plapp also saw the romance in Jolley returning for his 300th game at the club where he is so admired.
“The VFL’s becoming younger and younger and younger. Older, good role models and leadership figures are hard to come across. Is his best footy past him? Yeah, it probably is. But I believe he’s got a role to play and can still execute some stuff we need,’’ Plapp told CODE Sports in January
He made it clear Jolley wouldn’t be gifted games and he would ultimately be assessed on his performances, the same as every player on the list.
Jolley has played every match this season, averaging almost 20 possessions.
He appreciates that Plapp has been a “continual and constant support’’.
“He hasn’t deviated from what those initial conversations were,’’ Jolley says.
“It was never a 100 per cent guarantee. I had to prove myself throughout the pre-season, which I was able to do. And then when we reached that point of entering practice games and everything was going well, it was more of, ‘OK, let’s give this a shake’.
“He’s been encouraging of the role I play on game day and contribution to the team as a whole. He’s also been quite forthright in his feedback after games, on areas of improvement. Not in a negative or a harsh way, but sitting down and reviewing vision and saying, ‘This is an area you could improve on’. He’s not saying, ‘OK, he knows what he’s doing, let’s let him be, things are going OK’. He’s showing me things to help me play better than I did the previous week. For him to have the energy, to put his time and effort into someone like me and where I’m at in my career, and doing exactly the same with the 22 other guys who played on the weekend, that’s a reinvigorating thing.’’
Curry for one is pleased to see Jolley back at Willy.
He says he’s still “dirty’’ he was let go in the first place.
Curry signed many players for Williamstown and he reckons Jolley was the best of them.
“Yes, at the Plough Hotel in Footscray,’’ he says.
“We told him what we could do and he said, ‘Yep, this is the club I want to play at’.
“From that point on, everything he did was so professional. He was a hard trainer, he was committed, he had great care for his teammates, he played for the club, he was the first to sign every year. Money was never an issue. He wanted to play at the highest level he could, and to get everything out of his body to keep competing.’’
In future years, Curry told other Willy recruits that their best chance of success in the VFL would be to follow the example of the club captain.
Curry says it was one of his proudest moments in football when Jolley – the father of twin daughters who turn five at the end of the month – held up the 2015 premiership cup.
“I did get quite emotional. I was so happy for ‘Jols’. He’s an outstanding individual, a beautiful human being.’’
And an outstanding player, of course.
Werribee’s two-time JJ Liston trophy winner Tommy Gribble calls him an “all round player … he’d do it on the inside, he’d do it on the outside, he’d run all day’’.
Gribble says that when he came into the competition, Jolley and Port Melbourne’s Toby Pinwill were “enormous figures’’ and the players by which he measured himself.
Tom Wilson, another long-serving VFL player, agrees with the bracketing of Jolley and Pinwill.
The five-time Northern Bullants best and fairest marvels at Jolley’s competitiveness and longevity in a competition in which many weeks he comes up against AFL-listed players.
Wilson has always remembered a Jolley special at the Williamstown ground in 2016.
“He would have had 42 touches and kicked two goals. He was unbelievable that day. He was relentless,’’ he says. “That’s the thing about him. No matter the conditions or the state of the game, he just keeps going. That’s what I’ve always admired about him.’’
Wilson doubts any other VFL player will get to 300 games. Jolley will be the next and also the last, he believes.
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Back to the start of Ben Jolley’s VFL career in 2005.
Former Carlton left-footer Jordan Doering won the Bendigo Bombers best and fairest that year.
He now lives in Canberra and was unaware Jolley is still in the VFL.
“I knew he was still playing into his early 30s. I didn’t realise he was still playing … I’m out of the loop a little bit,’’ Doering says.
“Gee, it’s a fair effort, massive … I don’t know how his body can handle it, to be brutally honest.
“Pass on massive congratulations will you? He was one who always gave 100 per cent. You always knew what you were going to get with Benny.’’
Ben Jolley remembers that first game for the Bombers.
It was a night match and the Bombers won by 53 points.
“I started on the footy,’’ Jolley says. “And I actually remember the first play of the game. Centre bounce, the ball got tapped down and I ran through and laid a tackle. That was my introduction to VFL footy.’’
He’s since become well acquainted with it.
BEN JOLLEY’S BEST
Best players he’s played with
Liam Picken
Kane Lambert
Adam Marcon
Michael Gibbons
Brett Johnson
Eli Templeton
Best players he’s played against
Sam Gibson
Kane Lambert
James Magner
Brad Lloyd
Toby Pinwill
Myles Sewell
