AFL 2021: Keep up to date with the latest off-season news across the competition

Retiring Bulldog Easton Wood reveals his advice for players starting their AFL careers including how to deal with social media plus the injury that almost ended his flag dream.

Bulldogs Bailey Smith, Easton Wood and Bulldog Laitham Vandermeer. Picture: Michael Klein

Easton Wood did it in the hard way across 14 AFL seasons, rising from dour defender to intercepting star and then one of only two Western Bulldogs premiership captains after Bob Murphy’s ACL tear in 2016.

The retiring Dogs champ is happy to pass on his advice for an 18-year-old Easton Wood – or any player entering the competition – on how to tackle the myriad challenges of playing AFL.

THE BEST BIT OF COACHING ADVICE

“The thing that really changed was when Bevo (Luke Beveridge) came in then said, ‘Why defend an opponent who can’t get the ball?’. So it became about defending where the ball was likely to go. If an opponent is running to a shit spot, don’t follow them there.

“I was obsessed with taking my opponent out of the game completely, but that changed my career. I went from being a dour, solid player to doing things I had never dreamed about and doing stuff I couldn’t believe.”

FINDING WORK-LIFE BALANCE AS AN AFL STAR

“I always thought it was about having something outside of football. But what it boils down to is building the foundation of who you are. Footy can define you and as a young person you fall into the trap of making it who you are.

“Everyone knows what you do and people love and respect it, but it’s not going to be there forever and it comes down to having great relationships with family and friends, but also being content to spend time with yourself. Once I was comfortable in my own company, it became so much easier.”

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Bob Murphy and Easton Wood after the Bulldogs’ 2016 premiership. Picture: Michel Klein

TACKLING SOCIAL MEDIA

“You are in control with social media. There is an element with addiction that you want to check everything. Everyone is human. But don’t go searching for the comments sections where you know you will get that bad stuff. The internet is a world of extremes. It’s not what life is. Life operates on a frequency that is never close to those peaks and troughs.

“The premiership in 2016 was the absolute peak of my playing career and was a flood of jubilation and emotion and elation. But it was one day across 14 years. Social media wants you to live at those levels. But you need more perspective. If you are comfortable with yourself you can realise the good and bad stuff on social media isn’t representative of reality.”

DEALING WITH SEX, DRUGS AND ROCK AND ROLL

“Understand what your motivations are. If you are doing that stuff (drugs) to escape, it’s not a good motivating factor. If you need to have fun, it’s not a good motivating factor. You can have plenty of fun and enjoy yourself without drugs.

“But rock and roll is f---ing great. So make sure you do it in the right way. The company you keep is important. You need people in your corner with the best interests at heart. So make mistakes, but try not to make ones you can’t come back from.”

DEALING WITH FORM SLUMPS

“Invest in the long game. The work you do today might not make you a better player tomorrow or next week. But the cumulative effect will help you down the track. Knowing you have gone out and ticked every box, trained as hard as you can, worked on your extras, it’s going to come. The flip side is if you cut corners it might not affect your next day or your next week but it’s going to catch up with you down the track. So play the long game.’’

FAME

“Enjoy it, but don’t live off it. It’s an outcome but it’s not something that lasts forever. The stuff of going to a family day or having a kid running around at school with your number on his back is just incredibly special and makes you proud. But don’t live off it and make sure you keep on top of it.”

Easton Wood battled hamstring injuries throughout his career.

INJURIES

“If anyone out there solves the hamstring mystery, let me know. I have tried everything, with some success and some real failures. I did 20 in the end and that was the straw that broke the camel’s back. If I did another one I would have been done. So own your rehab. You need to be the driver of that. I did that as best as I could.

“In 2013 I did a pre-season hamstring then came into the AFL team in Round 3 and my hamstring blew apart in five minutes. It was horrible. That led to 12 weeks of recovery and in my seventh year I was forced to play two games coming back through the Williamstown twos. I was thinking, ‘I am absolutely cooked here’.

“My body had failed and at the end of the year the coaches sat me down and said I needed to improve or it could be over, but I had a year on my contract. It was a point where I believed it could nearly be over.”

PLAYING WELL IN FINALS

“In our 2016 finals campaign Bevo gave us permission to enjoy it all in the week of the grand final. It helped me relax. You don’t need to have control of it all. Don’t force it, don’t escape it. And it was great. When the game starts and the ball bounces, live in the moment and play the ball on its merits. It’s your sole focus. You don’t have time to think about anything else. And that was a great realisation.”

ENJOYING THE SMALL MOMENTS OF AFL

“You can’t beat the elation of the grand final. The sheer joy of knowing once the siren went, we were premiers and premiers forever. But the most special times are after a game, being back at a hotel room and the old boys sitting around telling stories about the old way. It transitioned into me telling stories about the old days. Just having a laugh over funny memories. I never once regretted staying up late or sitting around a table doing that. And we had characters like Bob Murphy, who is one of footy’s greatest ever storytellers.”

PLAYING FOR REASONS OTHER THAN MONEY

“It wasn’t a hard decision in the end to give up a (guaranteed) contract. Money wasn’t ever a motivating factor for me. I had financial control. From the start I wanted to be financially literate. I never wanted to make decisions because I needed the money or because cash flow was a problem.

“For young players out there, get financially literate as quickly as you can and take control because you can let a manager do it and you are wasting an opportunity to learn and set yourself up. I was fortunate to have a financial mentor early. Gary Kent, who was our CEO, I went to school with his son and he and his wife sponsored me when I arrived at the club, and he helped me take control and buy a house and the goal was always financial freedom.

BAILEY SMITH’S ‘INSANE’ FAME REVEALED

Retiring Bulldogs captain Easton Wood says Bailey Smith will have challenges dealing with an “insane” and ”absurd” level of fame after witnessing it first-hand, but believes he is equipped to deal with his new celebrity status.

Smith has now been elevated to rock star status after a brilliant finals series that only turbocharged the league’s most popular Instagram account with over 350,000 followers.

Wood said he had never seen anything like the level of celebrity adulation that Smith faced when the Dogs players partied after their Perth grand final loss to Melbourne.

But while Smith is on the same level of fame as Lance Franklin and Dustin Martin, Wood says the 20-year-old’s work on his own mental health and sense of identity will hold him in good stead.

“He has been incredible. The reaction to him is just insane. Seeing him first-hand when we were out after GF was just absurd. I have never seen anything like that,” Wood told the Herald Sun.

“There were just rings of people waiting to get a photo and then rings outside of that talking about the photo with him.

“I thought the Bont (Marcus Bontempelli) was pretty famous, but it was nothing like it.

“He is great. He works his arse off, and that’s what has held him in good stead.

Easton Wood (centre) with young superstar Bailey Smith after the preliminary final. Picture: Michael Klein

“His appetite for work is incredible. He is a young guy who is exploring this incredible rise to fame. But what makes me really proud is he is really working hard on himself, who he is and what motivates him to do things, and he is well aware of the mental health side of things.

He works hard at it, so the fact he has that growth mindset will hold him in good stead.”

Smith said last week on a podcast he was aware of the triggers for his anxiety and panic attacks, and had worked hard on his mental health but did realise fame was a double-edged sword.

“I acknowledge it, I know it’s there, it is the elephant in my brain, but I ignore it as much as I can. There are so many people around you and wanting this and that from you, it’s so easy to feel empty inside, as dark as that sounds,” he said.

“The things that ground me each day, I go get my coffee, going to the beach from 10 till 2, my best friends, getting dinner. I focus on what I want to do each day and what I want to get out of myself.”

Wood said Smith wasn’t driven by fame or adulation, so could easily pull back from the public appearances and shirtless Instagram shots if he was overwhelmed.

“I have no doubt he will have challenges, I don’t know how I would deal with that level of fame. It’s insane. I was uncomfortable being around it for 15 minutes, let alone live through it,” he said.

“He will have his challenges with it, but I am confident he will be fine. I am sure if that changes, if he finds that it’s not working with him he will have no problem changing. He doesn’t need it, so I have got the confidence he will make the best call for him.”

Originally published as AFL 2021: Keep up to date with the latest off-season news across the competition