Initially I was flattered that another club was interested enough in me to set up a mid-season meeting.

But my stomach began to churn as I prepared to enter a back door at Collingwood’s Olympic Park headquarters under the cover of darkness.

My gut was telling me: ‘This doesn’t feel right’.

The midweek meeting with the Magpies was just days before I was set to pull on a Western Bulldogs jumper for a round 15 game against Sydney in 2016.

I had just turned 22 years old and I was beginning to show some promise with my AFL career, after landing at Whitten Oval in the 2011 rookie draft.

The Bulldogs had a two-year contract extension on the table and I loved the place, but my manager Nick Gieshen suggested the meeting with Collingwood as we weighed up my future.

After all, the Pies had told me that they were going to pick me in that 2011 rookie draft – before the Bulldogs got in first.

‘Giesh’ and I met with Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley, list manager Derek Hine and football boss Geoff Walsh that night.

The conversation was pretty casual.

Star players of the competition are often told in such meetings, ‘This is where we see you fitting into our best-22’.

But I wasn’t a star — I was still just a kid establishing myself.

The five of us chatted for about 45 minutes, before I was asked if I wanted to take a quick tour of the club’s impressive facilities.

I’d already seen the facilities before I got drafted five years earlier, but I didn’t want to be rude and decline the offer.

That moment kicked off a whirlwind few days which I wasn’t quite prepared for.

BUSTED BULLDOG

You could see why Collingwood wanted to show off its facilities.

They were chalk and cheese to what we had at Whitten Oval at the time.

At the Dogs, we had to drive 10 minutes to Victoria University just to use a pool.

I had relaxed after our casual sit-down meeting, but as we walked through Collingwood’s weights room my heartrate spiked again.

Four people — who I can only assume were VFL players — were in there for a night-time workout.

I tried to tell myself, ‘Maybe they don’t know who I am’, because I wasn’t exactly a big player.

I only had 29 AFL games under my belt at that stage.

I remember Giesh saying to me that night something along the lines of, ‘It’s not ideal there was some guys there but hopefully nothing comes of it’.

But one of those players in the gym must have recognised me, because a week later my mid-season tour at Collingwood suddenly became big news.

BEVO’S BITE

I was at Whitten Oval the following week when Giesh called through.

I was a bit bemused that anyone would care, but as that news sunk in I began to be filled with anxiety.

I hadn’t told anyone — outside of my partner at the time — about the meeting with Collingwood ahead of time.

After that call from Giesh, I confided in teammate Jack Macrae but otherwise kept this big secret to myself for the rest of the day.

That night, I was out at dinner with a few other teammates — including Fletcher Roberts and Joel Hamling — when my phone lit up.

My coach, Luke Beveridge, was calling.

I answered the call but didn’t do much talking myself.

Bevo was clearly quite emotional, having just read the Herald Sun story which had broken online that evening about my meeting with the Magpies.

His message was around trust:

We’d built some momentum in the season at that point and Bevo’s view was that this could be a big distraction.

In my head, I’m immediately thinking, ‘I’ve screwed up, my career’s done and the Bulldogs will probably pull the contract offer off the table now’.

Thankfully, my fears were allayed moments later when I got a call from list boss Jason McCartney, who said the situation was ‘fine’ and the Bulldogs themselves meet with contracted players from other clubs in-season.

Jason spoke to Bevo and before long my coach had called me back to apologise for being a little harsh in his first phone call.

THE REACTION

The back page of the Herald Sun the next day had a big headline of ‘PIE NIGHT’ and my photo on it.

That was Wednesday, which was a day off.

Even though my coach had cooled down, I wasn’t sure how my teammates would react when I went back into the club on Thursday.

My family and some of my friends — who I’d all left in the dark about the Collingwood meeting — certainly hadn’t taken the news too well.

But luckily, I had a good captain in Bob Murphy, who immediately lightened the mood during our team meeting the next morning.

Bob had organised one of the staff in the office to Photoshop me with my arm sleeve tattoos, a Collingwood jumper and missing teeth.

It got a laugh from the boys, who got stuck into me with some banter but didn’t seem to hold any grudges.

When I lined up against Richmond a few days later, I copped it over the fence about my disloyalty during the warm-up.

I still get asked about the situation to this day, but after that first week everyone largely moved on.

LEARNING LESSONS

What most people don’t know is that I also had an in-person meeting with Gold Coast, just weeks after the Collingwood blow-up.

There was no way I was flying north to visit Suns headquarters this time, though.

Myself and Giesh met with then Suns coach Rodney Eade, list manager Scott Clayton and football boss Marcus Ashcroft at a private home in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.

I wasn’t scared off by the experience with Collingwood, but this meeting was kept very discreet.

The Suns ended up offering me a three-year deal with better money and I genuinely weighed it up in the months that followed.

I loved the Bulldogs, but you have to think about your future and make hay while the sun shines, as they say.

However, the Bulldogs ended up bumping up the financial component of their two-year offer a little and I chose to stay, signing on post-season after playing in Footscray’s VFL premiership.

WHAT’S CHANGED?

Nine years on, it seems the footy landscape hasn’t changed much since my saga.

I can’t compare myself to West Coast captain Oscar Allen, but our situations share some similarities after he was busted meeting with Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell earlier this year as he explored his free agency options.

His situation was probably mine on steroids, given the scrutiny on players in a two-team Perth and the fact he is skipper at the Eagles.

The AFL is a special game, partly because of the loyalty shown by fans and many players.

It still means something to be a one-club player, which isn’t the case in many overseas sports where it is normal for players to be meeting with other clubs in-season and moving around.

I do like the culture of loyalty that is embedded in our sport, but there needs to be some balance.

I haven’t played AFL since 2021 — at which point my football career had spanned more than a third of my life and felt like everything.

Being removed from the game has given me perspective: AFL careers are short, and players ultimately need to look after themselves without being judged or criticised for it.

The reality is, clubs don’t always show the same level of loyalty to players in return.