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You personified Richmond – how much was that a blessing and how much a curse?

It wasn’t a curse at all. I’ll never, ever say anything’s a curse that’s involved with playing for Richmond. I never thought it was a pressure – coming over (from Tasmania), it was almost easy for me to get involved in the club, having a father who played there. People accepted you pretty quickly. I loved the history of the place. I enjoyed getting to know all the people who I read about in scrapbooks and watched over the years. I played with guys who I watched as a kid. So I wouldn’t ever say anything was a curse. I think it was always an honour.

Are you keeping your distance from the Richmond Football Club a bit this year?

I’m certainly keeping my distance from the footy department. You don’t want to be hanging around all the time. I think it’s important to step aside while Damien Hardwick and the (other) new coaches are going about what they want to do. I’m still involved in the club, I’m doing some work in the commercial operations. I’ll be there supporting and I’ll be at some of the games in the rooms and talking to the boys,  but I’m not involved in any official role.

The Bounce, your new show on Channel Seven, is the 17th different AFL program on TV, not including the games telecasts. Footy has exploded as mass entertainment in your time, hasn’t it?

It’s grown enormously. The money that’s come on board, TV rights (the AFL is asking for $1 billion in the next round of TV rights contracts) – the game generates that money. It’s provided for a lot of different footy shows. They wouldn’t be on air if people weren’t watching them. I think with The Bounce, it’s the right time in Melbourne to have another footy show.

Is that because The Footy Show has become a bit mean and nasty, paving the way for more gentle humour as in Before The Game and The Bounce?

Not really. I think there’s enough room for the different networks to have different footy shows. The Footy Show’s an institution, obviously, but The Bounce is a different sort of show. It’s more family-oriented, it’s on in an earlier times lot.

You took Sam Newman to task last year on The Footy Show for being gratuitously mean …

You’ve gotta remember there’s a fair bit of theatre involved with The Footy Show. I think Sam plays a character pretty well.

Carlton’s “booze cruise” was one of the early footy storylines this year. How can you have an exemplary character like Chris Judd captaining a team with an admittedly poor culture?

I’m not going to comment on specific incidents at clubs, but I’ve been playing and involved for 18 years and I’ve seen the start of it and I’ve seen how players behave now and they’re a lot better behaved than 18 years ago. The problem is there’s so much scrutiny on guys now that any single thing that happens gets into the media. Players have never been better behaved. Players do more work in the community and with charity than they’ve ever done. People probably don’t want to write about that because it doesn’t sell newspapers.

My general point is, with these great champions and role models like yourself, a Judd, a Brad Johnson, a Brett Kirk, do footballers only look up to them for their football and not look at how they conduct themselves off the field?

Oh no, they do. But when you’ve got young men, between the ages of 18 to 25 and they’re out, they’re going to make mistakes. And that’s not just in football, that’s in everything. Doesn’t matter how great a leader you’ve got, there’ll always be one or two who’ll make mistakes. It’s never going to be perfect.

Was it more fun playing and watching 10 or 12 years ago?

Well, it was more enjoyable 10 or 12 years ago because you could actually go out after a game and relax a bit. There’s very little time for guys now to forget about footy for a few hours because there’s so much scrutiny on them. And that’s understandable – there’s huge interest in the game and a lot of money involved. It’s a huge industry. I don’t think it was enjoyable to play at the end – it was unrelenting. I’d play well but I didn’t get to enjoy it because I started to think about next week and the pressure that was going to be on to perform again.

Does the AFL chop and change its rules too much – the hands in the back versus the push in the back, the hard hit versus the illegal bump?

At times when they make changes you can be a little frustrated. But time usually proves that they make the right decisions; the game is in as good a shape as it’s ever been. Last year was a great season. There were more great games last season than any year I can remember. History proves they make the right decisions most of the time.

What are you looking forward to this football season?

I just think the timing’s right for the Bulldogs. They’ve only won one premiership (back in 1954) and I’ve had mates who’ve played there, good mates (including team-mate Nathan Brown). Knowing a few of the guys, I think the timing’s right. I think it might be their year.

– Suzi Petkovski