Miller aims to make best of difficult situation in final matchWednesday, May 28, 2014 - 11:42 PM - by Chris Pike

KRIS Miller doesn’t want his 150th match with South Fremantle and 303rd in the WAFL in the Foundation Derby on WA Day at Fremantle Oval to be his last, but it will be and it gives him the chance of a fitting send off and time to decide what he would like to do in 2015.

Miller has been playing WAFL football since making his debut in Round 1, 1999 and he thought he would be at least up until the end of the 2014 season, but that now won't be the case with Monday's game for South Fremantle against East Fremantle the last of his remarkable career.

Not only will the match be Miller's last, but also his 150th with South Fremantle and 303rd of his WAFL career. Earlier this season, he already became just the sixth player to reach 300 WAFL matches and now he makes history becoming the first to play 150 games at two separate clubs.

Along the way, Miller has won four fairest and best awards between East Fremantle and South Fremantle, played in the 2009 premiership for the Bulldogs and the Sharks losing grand final of 2000, and represented Western Australia.

Perhaps the thing to respect the most about Miller has been his ability to perform at a consistently high standard for his entire 300-plus game career. Never has he suffered a form slump, never has his influence on games diminished and he will go down as a true modern day WAFL champion.

Miller came into the 2014 season on the verge of playing 300 WAFL matches and 150 with South Fremantle, but that was never the reason the 33-year-old played on.

He did so fully expecting to still perform well enough to hold his place in the team at least until the end of the season.

However, things haven’t gone to plan with him spending four weeks in the reserves before returning in the Round 9 loss to Peel and now Monday will be his farewell appearance.

Miller makes no secret of the fact that the decision to retire wasn’t exactly his, but he will try to make the most of what will be a special day on Monday.

"It doesn’t feel great to be honest. It's something that has been taken out of my control a little bit. The honest truth of it is that it's not fully my decision. I got given an offer for a final game and I've sort of just taken that," Miller said.

"The fact that it turns out that it will be my 150th game for South, my last game and that it's against East Fremantle in a Foundation Day derby, that will be a good occasion. So it's good from that point of view."

Miller will certainly be going out on to Fremantle Oval giving it everything as well and doing all he can to try and help the Bulldogs score an important win that will keep them in the hunt for the finals. And if they end up playing finals, Miller will happily be cheering them on come September.

"I have never gone out there not trying to play the best I can so from that point of view nothing will change on Monday. I would like to win obviously and I haven’t even played in a win this year yet this year so that would be nice," he said.

"I would also like the side to win because I think the boys have been through a couple of tough years and they deserve a bit of success. I still want them to do well. If they were fortunate enough to win every game from here, I wouldn’t go and watch them in a grand final totally flat that I wasn’t there.

Miller told his teammates at training on Tuesday night of the decision that the Foundation Derby on WA Day this Monday will be his final game. It was probably the toughest thing in a football sense he's had to do. He just told the group the circumstances of his retirement though.

"It was harder than I thought to be honest. I just spoke to the players and told them the whole story, and basically just told them what was happening and how it happened, and why just so they were clear on what was actually going on," he said.

"I'm not stoked with it, but in saying that I have always said that when form doesn’t come into it anymore then I don’t want to be around. I've always said that the day you don't get picked for reasons besides form then you know your time is definitely up, and that's what has happened.