How do you see it all unfolding for the Bulldogs this year after the pre-season you've had?

We've been a little bit up and down with the pre-season form, we won two and lost two. There's going to be a few stand-out teams in Geelong and St Kilda, and Sydney and West Coast are going to be good again, but we're not dissimilar to a lot of clubs in that we need a bit of luck. It's never been so evident that you need to keep a lot of your list injury-free to be competitive for the whole year. Geelong was no more evident than that last year; they had no injuries and Sydney the year they won the flag had very few.

Like a lot of teams, it's going to become a bit of a war of attrition where you're just going to have to keep your best players on the park. If we can do that, we're going to be very competitive, because we've certainly got a very good list of players.

That sort of luck hasn't exactly run with you guys in recent years, has it?

A couple of years ago, we had a couple of knee injuries but last year was a different situation again because we had a lot more injuries to a lot more players. They were five-to-six week injuries, three-to-four week injuries … Daniel Cross, Ryan Griffen, Tom Williams, so it was spread across the board and didn't help us. You've just got to get your best side on the field.

Away from football, how important is it to have family support and to maintain a life that doesn't involve the club?

I think it's been a real leveller for me. When you say something like I'm going to say, people are going to think that football isn't as important as it is to me, but my family gives me an idea of what is the most important thing in life. That's family and having the kids, and bringing them up, and that's to take nothing away from how I think and how prepare for footy, but it just gives you a real eye-opener. After a bad loss, your kids come in and they don't know. They don't know that you've had a bad loss or played bad; they just give you a cuddle and treat you like you're their dad. It's been a great leveller, and it changes your life.

I look at the playing group now and the younger guys have all day to fill in and probably go home and play PlayStation or whatever they do, and I just see how different my life is now compared to how it was at their age. Even then, I was probably working and doing an apprenticeship, but now I've got the responsibilities of taking the kids to swimming and picking them up from school, or taking them to kinder, and we've got another one on the way now, number four, so that should make life very interesting in August.

How are your boys going? Are they interested in footy yet?

It's funny, I think because they're around it and they see me go to football every day, and they come to training with me and the guys come around for dinner, they don't think of us as footballers – they're "dad's workmates". I guess I'm like a guy who goes to work as a carpenter and brings his mates home; it's the same sort of thing for us. But Rhylee loves the footy and he loves getting out there, they all do, but they see it all a bit differently to other kids.

Rhyls is seven now and the twins are four, so they haven't done Auskick, although we go to the park a lot and just have a kick. But he loves to have a kick, and I hear from people at school that he gets out there and kicks at lunchtime.

By the way the Bulldogs are coming up with sons, there's going to be another team ready to go in around 18 years' time.

They're going to have some hard decisions to make with the father-son rule. Rohan Smith has a boy, Chris Grant just had a boy, Luke Darcy has got a boy, I've got three … it's going to be very interesting.

Does happiness off the field contribute to good form on it?

It does.You can see some guys, as in the younger players who move from interstate or are having troubles off field, their training isn't as good and they lose their form. I think this is a real area that the clubs need to look at. Because we're full-time footballers now, a lot of guys don't get to study and they don't get that other distraction away from football.

I can only talk from experience, but when I was 18 I did a landscape gardening apprenticeship and I worked from 7am until 3.30pm, and then I went to footy training. I know times have changed, but it was a great distraction for me and I didn't have to think about football, when I got to footy training I was really enthusiastic because I'd done something else during the day and my mind had been somewhere else.

These days, it's all football. The guys hang around their football mates, talking about football. They go to football, they're involved in football, they do clinics for kids. I know the AFLPA do a great job in offering courses and all that, but it's just the time involved that's the problem. It's one thing to offer, but the clubs need to give the players time to do it.

Have you thought about what you're going to do after footy?

I'm out of the landscape gardening, but I've actually got a transport business, which I've had for about 18 months. There's a few of us involved, and it's something I was introduced to a few years ago and I did a little bit of research, and we've now got a new business called Team Logistics and Transport up and running. It's going all right, so that's something I'm eyeing off for the future.

Having something ready makes the transition a little easier. You hear about a lot of players who step out of footy, and because it's such a big part of your life, it's hard to step away. But, I think if you've got something you can step into to keep your mind and your time occupied, it makes it easier.