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Ex-AFL star Darren Jolly has compared his and wife Deanne's disastrous auction result in The Block Glasshouse to losing a grand final.
"I've been through winning grand finals and I've been through losing them and I kind of knew that feeling," he said. "Saturday night was very similar to losing a grand final.
"It was really disappointing to see the hammer go down and only have made $10,000. I flogged myself to the edge numerous times to give something to our kids and help us kickstart our business and get something going. It was really flattening."
But the former Swans and Collingwood ruckman has slammed as "absolute bullshit" rumours that the couple is considering legal action.
"It made me really angry," he said. "I don't even know who would think of starting those rumours. There is no way in the world we are bitter and angry towards Julian [show creator Julian Cress] or Channel Nine about the result. It's just the property market. It's out of their control."
Jolly revealed that he and Dee forced themselves to swallow their disappointment and join other competitors and crew at a Prahran pub on Sunday night to watch the pre-recorded episode go to air.
"As much as I didn't want to watch our bit, we fronted up with our kids," he said. "It was good to have a few beers and watch it and talk about it.
"We're not going to hide under a rock. We accept that it's done. Money's not everything. It made us put things into perspective to be honest. There are a lot of people worse off than us at the moment."
Executive producer Julian Cress praised Jolly's philosophical attitude.
"He played a game and he lost – he understands that better than anyone else," he said.
Cress said he was "devastated" for the pair and wanted them to make the sort of sum pocketed by eventual winners, Tasmanian brothers Simon and Shannon Vos.
The Vos brothers walked away with $335,000 profit, plus the $100,000 winner's prize, after a dramatic evening in which three of the apartments barely limped above their reserve prices.
Cress rejected claims the reserves were set too high, pointing out that the eventual buyer of Maxine Stokes' and Karstan Smith's apartment, who paid just $10,000 above the reserve, admitted afterwards that he would have paid more.
"I don't think you can argue that the reserves were too high when the buyer of apartment three says he was willing to pay a lot more and when the first two auctions went $330,000 over the reserve," he said.
"On the question of whether there were enough buyers in the room – clearly in Max and Karstan's case there weren't because we had one bidder with a lot more money than he spent – and no one to make him spend it."
Stokes, who married partner Karstan on the show, said their relatively meagre return of $40,000 (they were awarded $30,000 in an earlier challenge) was a "really, really big shock", but she remained upbeat.
"We got a wedding out of it and a life-changing experience," she said. "It's reality TV, it's unpredictable and you can't go in with these high, high expectations but it's obviously hard not to have those expectations after watching the last series. If they asked us again to do it tomorrow, we'd do it."
She agreed the reserve price was "slightly high" and also felt they suffered from a lack of bidders.
"But you could make yourself go crazy going over it in your head," she added. "You just have to say whatever happened and you've got to move on and work for the future."
Stokes and Smith's plan for the immediate future is a 1200km charity walk from The Block to their Newcastle home, which they hope will raise $120,000 for the Starlight Foundation.
"All we want is the feeling of a reward and that will give that to us," she said. "To be able to put a smile on the kids' faces and know that we are doing something good will be a massive reward."
Series judge Shannya Blaze dismissed criticisms that the reserve prices were too high and pointed to a real estate market slump of recent weeks.
"The reserves were I think, spot on," she said. "They were great apartments that deserved that amount of money."
Speaking of the post-sales reaction of the contestants, with some walking out while others seemed almost embarrassed to celebrate, she said it was understandable.
"They're exhausted," she said. "They've lived this for five months and just to have that feeling at the end is devastating, it really is."
Blaze, who will be appearing at this year's Grand Designs Live Home Show in Melbourne at the weekend, said she watched the final sales with white knuckles and felt for those contestants who didn't make as much as the winners.
"You know what, this is almost worse than Richmond (the Block's fourth season in 2011 when three houses were passed in unsold) because two of them this time did brilliantly than three of them... it was just like a kick in the guts.
"But this is real life. You can do an amazing design and put a house out there, but that doesn't guarantee you're going to make a lot of money. And that, unfortunately, is the market."
