Coffee in hand, get back to the car, quick smart. The car is a sanctuary of sorts, although I’ve heard of more high-profile AFL players who consciously make sure not to pull up right next to another car at the traffic lights in case they’re recognised. From the cafe, it’s back to the football club, where the first duty of the week is filling out the morning health check – rating the soreness of each joint, stress level and quality of sleep. It’s a daily ritual. There’s bound to be a tension in the football department. It's nothing obvious but, as the morning progresses, you can feel it seep in through the walls like damp. Coaches move quickly between meeting rooms with laptops in hand, but ominously, they don’t look at you as you and your teammates roll the legs over on an exercise bike. In a break between sessions, you might check your emails while sitting at your locker. Your line coach has responded to the report you filed on your game last night. There seems to be a lot of text in each section. More than normal. Gulp. Having attended to the physical aches and pains all morning, with gentle activity, ice baths and massage, it’s time to work on the mental bruises from the weekend’s thrashing. Everyone goes to their seat in the meeting room. Creatures of habit. The air feels thinner; I suppose that could be the tension.

There is a steeliness to the coach's body language. It’s unsettling. He’s disappointed in us. You could write a book on why we play this game, but as motivating factors go, making your coach proud is on the podium. He tells us that we’re going to watch two clips that he thinks sum up much of what went wrong in the weekend's game. Just before he hits play, he leaves us with the most cutting line of the day: “I could’ve showed a dozen more though ...” Players of a certain generation all know where they were the first time behind-the-goals footage was used in the Monday morning review. It’s our JFK moment. All of a sudden, there was nowhere to hide on a football field. The big screen comes to life, and each player in the room - many of whom didn’t sleep well last night because they kept replaying bad moments over and over in their heads - can sum up exactly each sequence of play and their part in it in under one second. Creatures of habit. You can hear some of your teammates shift in their seats. Each piece of play only lasts about 15 seconds, but it takes close to half an hour to dissect it all. It isn’t pretty. There are issues with work rate, skill execution and a lack of understanding of the plan, but it gets really uncomfortable when one of your teammates doesn’t put his head over the ball. It’s mentioned, but it’s not replayed over and over like it used to be “in the good old days”. Still, it’s hard to watch. You feel for your mate, but at the same time, you’re glad it’s not you. It’s been you before, and you can call on the memory of that shame in an instant.

The new beginning. Credit:Fairfax Media As uncomfortable as the last 30 minutes has been, you can feel the heaviness in the room start to lift as everyone becomes aware that you’re close to moving on. The coach’s body language has changed too. He’s really coaching us now, in his element. Yes, he’s disappointed in what we served up on the weekend, but we’re still his boys. He doesn’t say it, but there’s something in the way he’s pacing the floor, and how the warmth has returned to the timbre of his voice. There’s a lightness to his phrasing. It’s subtle, but it’s there, and you can feel the tightness in your own shoulders loosen, and in those sitting near you, too. The coach shows one last clip, but it’s from a training session weeks ago. It’s very good. “That’s us!” he exclaims. There’s a better energy in the group as we leave the room. It’s over. For now. You might shower and have a laugh with the boys, put an arm around your teammate who had the worst time of all as you head for the car park. You turn your phone on, but you won’t be on social media for a couple of days. Not after last time. It’s been a heavy day, and you might listen to the golden oldies station as you navigate the commute home. The sanctuary of pop music from the golden age - and not a chance of talkback.

Monday might be dinner at mum and dad’s house, the ultimate safe haven. But when you walk in the door Mum asks: “How’s the feeling down at the club?” You choose to deal with the guilt later. “I don’t want to talk about it, mum.” On any given day, in a footballer’s world, everyone is watching.