He played the first half of the season in the Northern Bullants as a safe-marking backman, before missing two months through injury.
Bower would ultimately finish seventh in the John Nicholls Medal, after being as high as second after thirteen rounds.
Michael Malthouse describes Bower’s delisting as ‘the most disgraceful day in Carlton history’ and ‘a stain on the great game that is football.’ (Source?)
[4] In 2014, he returned to Melbourne and signed with Heidelberg in the Northern Football League,[5] where he remains as of 2017.
Of Māori heritage, Bower is one of the few Maori Australians in the history of the VFL/AFL and proudly wears a tribal tattoo on his left arm.