WITH A groin injury ruling me out of the clash against the Bulldogs last Sunday, it gave me an opportunity to do something a bit different on match day. I sat in the coaches' box at Manuka Oval.

It was an eye-opening experience. I took on a temporary role helping with some of the stoppage work. Not having seen the Swans play live very often it certainly gave me a different perspective on the game.

And it was funny that the two coaches on Sunday -- Paul Roos and Rodney Eade -- have been the only two coaches in my senior career. Roosy has coached me since taking over from Rodney six years ago at the Swans.

Roosy has a teacher-like approach to his coaching. He empowers the playing group. The players are in control, but he is there just to help us reach our goals every day and make sure that we live up to our potential.

Roosy often gets back to how we want to be perceived and how we go about our performance. He's very much a teacher in the middle of us telling us how we're doing at quarter time, half-time and post games. He doesn't rant and rave too much.

Rodney Eade was different -- he did like to rant! He was very vocal about everything going on in the game and for a young player it instilled a lot of discipline in me.

And you were really told about your weaknesses. You really knew what your weaknesses were and you had to work on them. For me, it took some time to get used to, but it seemed to work.

The interesting thing about these days is that there are many different types of people playing AFL. As such, people learn differently.

As a coach, you want to make sure you get the players all learning the same thing. You might have one player really good on theory and another might learn better by having things visually explained.

I guess it's about tailoring messages to different types of characters and personalities and I definitely think Roosy has these qualities as a coach.

Of course, these days it's not just about one coach. At the Swans, for instance, Peter Berbakov looks after the defenders, John Longmire has the midfielders and Mark Stone is our stoppages coach. So in effect, I have three coaches.

I'm very lucky that my coaching is spread over three people who have a vested interest in my game, performance and lifestyle.

In a sense it's not a lot different to when I was a kid playing footy. I was quite new to the game of AFL as I played soccer beforehand so I was lucky that the junior coaches I had were always helpful and instructive.

I was just running around having fun but I was very much hand-fed a lot of information and a lot of positive reinforcement because I was new to the game. And I did need that reinforcement to help me progress.

So, would you find me in the coaching box once my playing days are over? Well, on the weekend I felt pretty comfortable in there. I never thought I'd be a coach but I definitely enjoyed being in that environment.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily of the clubs or the AFL.