Fire fighting Strijk proud to reach 150 West Perth gamesFriday, April 3, 2015 - 2:13 PM - by Chris Pike

ANDREW Strijk's heart has always been with West Perth either side of his time with West Coast, and during, and now he is rewarded for his outstanding service by earning life membership reaching his 150th match on Saturday against Perth at HBF Arena.

Strijk has put together an outstanding WAFL career with West Perth since making his league debut in 2006 along the way representing Western Australia on three occasions and then the highlight came right throughout 2013 when not only did he play in the Falcons' premiership but he was the fairest and best winner on top of it.

The now 27-year-old spent three years with West Coast and played 13 AFL matches, but even when with the Eagles he still played 10 WAFL games in 2010 with West Perth, 19 in 2011 and 14 in 2012 before then returning to the Falcons full-time ahead of the 2013 season.

He then delivered the best season of his career to date in 2013 ending it playing for WA for the third time, winning the premiership and sharing the Breckler Medal with Shane Nelson.

He again had solid form in 2014 in his 14 matches before missing the last part of the season while conducting the final phase of his training to become a fire fighter.

Strijk has now started the 2015 season in scintillating fashion including a best on ground 38-possession performance in last Saturday's win over Peel Thunder and now he reaches 150 games this Saturday at the same venue against Perth to gain life membership.

While there will be no topping the 2013 premiership, to reach life membership at the club that he loves means the world now to Strijk.

"The premiership obviously is No. 1 and to become a premiership player at this club was unbelievable, but to now be a life member it falls into a very close second," Strijk said.

"It means everything to me to get to 150 games. I have put in a lot of time at this football club and I love being here, and love playing footy with all my mates here. To become a life member is a very proud moment and something that I will remember for the rest of my life.

"This club is a massive part of my life. I've only been part of two football clubs and obviously this is my only WAFL club and I couldn’t picture myself at any other football club in Australia.

"This club means everything to me and I'm pretty happy we have a good young bunch of guys to carry it forward now as well with guys like Blacky and Nelly. When I'm sitting on the hill retired I will enjoy watching those guys still running around."

Strijk is looking forward to the occasion of his milestone game at HBF Arena on Saturday but in recent years the Falcons haven’t done too well commemorating milestone occasions with wins.

That was again the case in premiership ruckman Chris Keunen's 150th game against South Fremantle in Round 1 and Strijk isn’t worried about the team winning for his milestone, but he does hope they win to string two wins together and to start building some momentum in 2015.

"Hopefully I can get a few family and friends down to support me, but more importantly hopefully we can just win for them. That will be great," he said.

"We did have a good win on my 149th and Keuns' 151st so hopefully we can change that trend of not doing too well in milestone games from the last few years. If we play half as good as we did to beat Peel, then we should be alright so hopefully we come out and play well against Perth."

Strijk was in tremendous form last week against Peel with his 38 possessions, but he was just happy the team bounced back from the opening round loss to South Fremantle and he is looking for 22 contributors again this week to make sure of the win against the Demons.

"I was lucky enough to get my hands on it a bit, but more importantly the team is in really good form at the moment and that's what we need to win games. We can't have individuals out there, we need a good team performance like we had last week. If we get that, we should win," Strijk said.

"As a group we were very disappointed after Round 1. I know Bill and the coaching staff were very disappointed as well. It was just the fact that we had such a focus over the pre-season to start the year well unlike last year when we started 0-2.

"We wanted to make sure we didn’t do that again and to come out against a team we thought we could beat, we put in a performance that was disappointing and it was just good that we rectified that by beating Peel to get to 1-1."

Strijk began his career as a dangerous half-forward before spending a bit of time on the wing with West Perth and then settling across half-back, and really making his mark by playing for WA in 2009 and 2010, and getting a chance in the AFL.

With the Eagles, he was looked at more as a half-forward again and as a result was never fully able to show what he could do best at AFL level, but upon return to West Perth in 2013 he settled at half-back again and was outstanding.

To start this season, he has so far played some good football again on the wing and half-forward, but in the second half against Peel he went to half-back again and was tremendous. He's happy to play either role, but does feel his best football comes from setting up play from the half-back line.

"I'd still like to play mostly off the half-back flank, but at the moment I'm enjoying playing on the wing and half-forward because it's sort of a bit of a new challenge for me after a lot of years at half-back," he said.

"This is a bit different and sort of refreshing too so it's good to have that new challenge and I'm enjoying it at the moment. I still ended up playing half-back in the second half on Saturday and I imagine I'll be doing a bit of both as the season goes on."

Strijk's life is now coming up trumps away from football as well with him now stationed as a fire fighter, and he's loving all that comes with it.

And it also works in well with playing in the WAFL as his old teammate Phil Smith and opponent Toby McGrath, among others, have proven over the years.

"It's all going very well. All the training is done now and I'm on station, and on shift. I still have a bit of study to do but shift life is a lot more relaxed than what it was like at the academy," Strijk said.

"It doesn’t interfere with my football training or games, and Bill has been very understanding with that as well which I'm very grateful for. My career is going fantastic, I really enjoy what I do.

"You do have a bit of down time at the station and you have gym facilities there so you can always do a session there if you can't make training one night, and you have a bit of time off too to do an extra recovery or massage. You have plenty of time to focus on your footy as well and hopefully I can now continue to mix footy and my work for another couple of years."