Somewhere in the middle of his final turbulent season at West Coast, Tom Barrass realised he was profoundly unhappy.

He had a lucrative contract to 2027, a recent premiership on his resume, two beautiful young children and an upcoming wedding to fiance Nadia.

He still wasn’t satisfied.

He was sleepwalking through the second half of his AFL career.

And he was waiting for someone like Sam Mitchell to walk into his living room and uproot him from his comfortable and familiar surroundings.

As he told this masthead on the boundary of Waverley Park on Monday, having transplanted his family across the country: “I wasn’t particularly happy in my life.”

On Friday night, the brilliant interceptor will play his second final under Mitchell having assumed command of this diverse and miserly Hawks backline.

If he can take down Adelaide full forward Riley Thilthorpe, Hawthorn will be halfway to a preliminary final.

And yet for the deep-thinking philosophy student Barrass, this was never just about football.

He believes life is about exploration and having your mind blown - or even just expanded - with new experiences.

As his favourite philosopher Allan Watts would say, it is to be lived like a song.

Not something to get to the end of but to be enjoyed in all of its parts.

So while others will judge his move on finals fortunes he will do so based on its smallest moments.

Like finding the joys of the Hedgeley Dene Gardens near his new house in East Malvern.

“Life generally is about trying to have new experiences and trying to learn and grow as much as you can,” Barrass said.

“I realised that probably halfway through last year. I wasn’t doing that where I was. Once I realised that, I didn’t have an excuse other than to change it.

“I don’t remember any particular moment other than it being retrospective knowledge. It’s one where you take the plunge. And in your gut, in your intuition, you know you are treading water a little bit.

“You could give more energy to a new cause. And ultimately you are not very happy living your life.

“So it was around that time I said, ‘Right, I have got to try something new’.

“Coming to this footy club, being in a new environment, working with new professions under a new coach in a new suburb, it’s just been such great evidence that I have made the right decision. It was a really great career move for me at that time.”

Making up his mind to leave was easy.

Executing it was another thing altogether.

Barrass knew it was time to leave a decade-long Eagles career behind by about July last year as Hawthorn coach Sam Mitchell flew across the country to meet him.

Sydney had come hard the previous season for Barrass, with speculation that West Coast had delayed restructuring his contract to provide him fair value given the recent CBA-linked pay deal.

Hawthorn had whiffed on key defensive trade targets Esava Ratugolea and Ben McKay the previous October and didn’t want to take no for an answer.

Barrass gives Mitchell the extraordinary compliment of comparing him to one of footy’s greatest figures when he describes his powerful pitch.

“I think it was his general vibration and energy really. I wasn’t particularly happy in my life. I wasn’t feeling like I was growing, changing or developing.

“And I think it was pretty quickly after that meeting, I started to realise that there was a bit of a hole in what I was trying to do with my career. And I was a bit dissatisfied. So it was his leadership, his presence, his humour almost, that helped me to make the decision.

“It was an extremely hard decision and it’s the hardest thing I have ever had to do to farewell my best mates and a club I love and grew up supporting but ultimately I reviewed my values enough to know who I was loyal to and that’s my young family and wife and myself.

“It became really obvious pretty quickly that I’d be leaving a very, very good opportunity on the table out of the interests of some people that aren’t my immediate family. And I thought, ‘I’m not going to make that sacrifice any more’.”

And yet on June 24 last year - eight weeks before his trade request - Barrass declared he wanted to be an Eagle for life even as conjecture raged about his future.

He makes no apologies for his white lie given the negotiations taking place behind closed doors.

As Leigh Matthews would say: “Never complain, never explain.”

“It’s a very interesting and sometimes difficult scenario, because the media is quite intrusive, and they want to know everything. And sometimes you don’t know everything,” Barrass said.

“And there’s lots of things that go into negotiating contracts, and you learn in business that sometimes handshake agreements aren’t real agreements.

“And if it was not what you said previously, you just have to put your hand up and cop it for however long it is, from whoever it is that in reality, in your life, you don’t see, I don’t see too many people coming up to me screaming hate at me.

“You can look for it (on social media) if you want to find it. But at the end of the day you have to have some conviction with your decisions and not take life too seriously.”

Only Barrass knows if his reference to handshake agreements gone awry is about the delay in restructuring his contract.

It now seems irrelevant given his joy at finding the grass greener elsewhere.

A year on from Mitchell’s pitch to him in his own home, the Hawks coach was again on the warpath.

He chased Oscar Allen (then withdrew from the race over his price tag) and was seen chatting to Harley Reid at Barrass’ wedding in the pre-season.

Right now he is attempting to lure Essendon captain Zach Merrett after a Tuesday night catch-up this week.

That photo of Mitchell and Reid together quickly went viral even if the young Eagle ended up staying at West Coast.

“Oh, look, I don’t read into it too much. I knew that it would be controversial if anyone did take a photo of him with any of the boys,” says Barrass.

“I think Oscar Allen wasn’t seated too far away. I think when you’re actually in the industry, and when your friends are in the industry and your support networks are in the industry, you can understand what is important and what’s just a story or some click-bait, and so I don’t think anyone would be taking that too seriously, even though it was quite the story.

Was Mitchell actually given a seat next to Reid?

“I don’t even know if they were sitting next to each other. I might have to fact check that with Harley.”

The wedding itself was spectacular and everything Tom and Nadia hoped.

“It was the best day of my life, and I didn’t know why that would be, but just the sentiment of having your best friends and all your family around you to wish you well in the next part of your life that you embark on with your wife and your two beautiful children, and to celebrate that by having them all for dinner and having a few drinks and a dance was just the most sentimental, beautiful thing ever. It was the greatest day.”

Billy was born in October 2021 with his middle name a tribute to Tom’s father, journalist Tony Barrass , who passed away earlier that year.

Benson was born in March 2023, with Tom having recently found the wonders of Glen Huntly’s Booran Reserve with its array of swings and climbing equipment.

Summer will bring a new chapter as the family explores Melbourne and its surrounds, having only fully relocated in January last year.

Barrass will also explore Melbourne’s music scene more fully, having dipped his toe into it while recording weekly podcast Pass the Aux with friend Mat Dzodzos.

Mother Danielle Bender is a 30-year veteran of journalism and broadcasting who co-founded podcast venture Backchat Studios (which produces his podcast) with ex-Eagle Will Schofield.

Father Tony was a WA journalistic legend who was the first Australian journalist jailed for refusing to disclose a source in 1989 and remembered on his death as an “archetypal, old-school, gumshoe reporter”.

The podcast is a creative release and full of musings on philosophy, art and life.

Former coach Adam Simpson joked recently in an SEN post-match interview with Jack Ginnivan that in his locker room conversations Barrass “can take you to dark spaces”.

Ginnivan laughed and replied: “Me and him have some great conversations. Conspiracy theories …. Bermuda triangle. Moon landing….”

In so many ways Barrass is a free thinker removed from the normal prototypical AFL footballer.

“Pass the Aux is a radio show you can find on Spotify, and it’s good music, good laughs, good stories. Follow along,” Barrass spruiks.

“I’ve always been interested in trying new things. And my parents were very liberal-type operators. They wanted to expose me to things, and they would always encourage me to have a crack at things, no matter what it was, and even if I was no good at it, so that was something they instilled in me.”

Barrass isn’t off social media altogether - “I still have the odd doom scroll every now and then” - but he is judicious with how much of the outside world he lets in.

“We have overtrained intellectual thought and it’s running every single day, all day. Some of our behaviour with things like social media don’t help that.

“So you try to turn your attention to things in your life that you love, that you are passionate about and keep you present like music or golf or good conversation and try to spend as much time in those areas as you can. Because that’s it is in the end, trying to get out of your head and the real world.

“When you do, there are so many beautiful things in the real world that can be accessed at any moment.”