"WISE men say … only fools rush in."ELVIS recorded these lyrics as a love song, but he could just as easily have been summing up proceedings at quarter-time at the Dome last Friday night.

The modern game is all about momentum — during a season, during a game and during quarters. How do you get momentum and how do you stop it?

These questions are still unanswered to a degree, which is why the game is still so interesting. Friday night's game against the Saints was evidence of this phenomenon.

Superstition is not something new to the modern game and, from my experience, you would be hard-pressed to find a more paranoid bunch than a group of footballers.

Not touching the banner, putting Vicks in my nose and doing a specific number of kicks with "Gia" before a game are just some of the lengths I will go to every week to have the football gods on my side.

For some reason, Friday night just felt a little bit off. When kicking the ball with Gia, I dropped the ball many times. At any other time, this wouldn't be of too much concern, but those two hours before a game can be crucial to your success in the two hours that follow.

Basically, the ball of self doubt began rolling at increasing pace.

Minutes later, when I forgot to put Vicks up my nose, the self-doubt juggernaut was really firing up. And just to top it all off, as we ran out onto the ground and I tried to avoid touching the banner, something went horribly wrong. I don't know if it was a freak gust, but the banner swung down and hit me in the face.

It was then that I feared the worst — that maybe it wasn't going to be a good night for the red, white and blue.

Early on, it certainly seemed the Saints were going to have one of those nights when everything clicks. As they went six goals up, with their tall timber putting on a show akin to the Harlem Globetrotters, I began pleading to my trainers for an emergency Vicks hit and cursing that damn banner.

It's funny sometimes, the things that go through your head in a game of football as fast-paced and frenetic as Friday night's. With the Saints surging ahead, as a player, I could feel the disappointment from our own supporters and I got the sense that they thought it was all over.

It's easy for me to say this in retrospect, but during that first quarter there was no alarm, no panic on the faces of my teammates and even the coaches came down to the quarter-time huddle with a real belief that we could peg the margin back.

I've known many similar situations in which this has not been the case and calmness has made way for a mad panic; often the most difficult thing to regain is not the lead but cool heads. And from that point on, we got back to playing the way we should.

You could say we always knew we had a sniff and, for me, that draws on one of the most powerful forces in football — the smells. For me, the sweetest and most powerful smell is that of the ball.

Even now as I pick up a football, I must smell it to identify whether it's authentic or not. I am immediately teleported back to the bedroom I grew up in, drifting off to sleep with my football tucked safely under my arm. The force of the smell is still that strong.

As I said, it's funny where your head can go during a game and, as we gradually regained control against the Saints, I found myself thinking of another smell I now associate with the game that is far less romantic than my love of football leather.

Striding through Glenferrie private hospital last week to visit Shaun Higgins, I felt queasy just from the smell. Hospitals have a distinct and somewhat disturbing fragrance that conjures up images of pain, suffering and disappointment. Seeing the dejection on Shaun's face only compounded feelings of disappointment.

Although he was putting on a brave face, it was plain to see that just under the surface he was shattered to be laid up with a serious ankle injury just two games into a season that promised so much for him.

He is an extremely well-adjusted young man, but when you are enveloped by pain and doubt, the worst fears are easily compounded.

If you are lucky enough, like Shaun, to have a good network of family and friends, then you need to place a lot of trust in them when they reinforce a positive outlook. Football is all about time and timing.

Shaun's injury is not great timing, but he has oodles of time to recover and be a force in the near future. He has a passion and maturity that is so rare in someone of his age, and is a great asset to our club.

As we sang our song after the game and finally sat to enjoy the spoils of victory over a Powerade and a banana, I thought again of our little mate Higgo, sitting in a hospital bed across town in pain willing us on via delayed telecast.

Dropped balls, errant banners and missing Vicks were a distant memory.