A look behind the grand final week of Geelong Cats star Bailey Smith

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Mention the name Bailey Smith and a reaction is sure to follow. Most have nothing to do with his football.

He provokes with his words, his fashion, his photoshoots, his demeanour, his rudeness, his gentleness, his openness, his defensiveness, and confounds with his contradictions.

Opinions about him vary and fluctuate as his career and life plays out in public.

Smith is football’s brumby; wild with a long, bouncing white mane and stamina to burn.

His new teammates were shocked when he screamed an expletive every time he missed a kick while training in November.

Now they are beyond being shocked, giggling awkwardly as he donned speed dealer sunglasses while sitting at their table on Brownlow night waiting for the television cameras to pan to him. Smith appeared on the screen straight-faced as though he had just been nominated for “best new artist” at the ARIA awards.

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Sitting next to him at the Brownlow was his one-two punch partner Max Holmes, an intelligent running machine with a little less chutzpah than Smith.

“I wasn’t sure how I would get along with a guy like that. He is very in your face in the media and what not, whereas I am not so much, but we get along really well,” Holmes said.

Smith finished third in the Brownlow with 29 votes and will complete the greatest comeback we have seen after a knee reconstruction if the Cats beat the Lions (only the Saints’ Lenny Hayes’ 2012 and the Lions’ Will Ashcroft’s 2024 come close) to claim the premiership.

A photo taken of him enjoying relaxed Saturday-night beers at the Jan Juc pub with friends (he posed for the image) started circulating on Sunday as his grand final week hit overdrive with an interview on the Kyle and Jackie O Show before most had woken up on Monday morning.

He cackled in disbelief at some of the shock jocks’ questions but played along as they took him to places more suited to reality TV stars than someone inhabiting the sometimes buttoned-up world of AFL.

“I believe you do whatever works for you,” he said when the topic drifted into commercial breakfast radio areas.

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He then headed out to Geelong’s open training session and spent more than an hour signing autographs after training for appreciative Cat fans who have become more protective of Smith as his colourful year has progressed.

The Brownlow was his time to shine, but he remained detached in a brown suit on the red carpet, any passing quips to media falling on deaf ears. Taking a mate date, jiu-jitsu coach Max De Been, he chatted with those he knew before shooting out as soon as the formalities were done.

From there, Smith settled into the job at hand – preparing for his second grand final in the manner of a professional athlete.

His routine has sometimes been punctuated with fanatical training throughout his career, but this week he has stayed steady, taking his individualised, optional program on Tuesday before being back on track for the club’s main session on Wednesday.

Shaun Mannagh said his teammates have often been left awestruck at Smith’s training efforts.

“You go and do your running, two sets of whatever it is and then get into skills, he is just like a bull at a gate,” Mannagh said. “He’s incredible. At training [we play] 18 on 18, and you’re on his team, and he is running past you and getting the ball in the back 50, and then he’s delivering it back inside 50, and you are standing in the middle of the ground.”

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In games, Smith takes opponents to places they don’t want to go with his serious appetite for high-speed, endurance running.

Not only does he run the conventional north-south pattern out of defence at the MCG, but east-west too, often sprinting across a defensive formation after receiving the ball. No one on the opposition is sure whether to follow him or hand the responsibility over to a teammate. He has confidence and is strong enough to break and make tackles.

His running style is not pure; short steps and wobbly hips that always make him appear hard ridden. And he is, but the one riding him hardest is himself.

On the door of his locker at GMHBA Stadium a note says: “I embrace pain, pressure and hardship”. It’s a contrast to the Snoop Dogg top placed on a coat hanger in the Instagram post which revealed his reminders, Snoop being the artist famous for the brilliant rap hook, “rolling down the street, smokin’ indo, sippin’ on gin and juice, laid back.”

Smith’s had his challenges, most acutely with his mental health, making the audience attending the All-Australian awards in August sit up and listen when he said: “It was about a year ago, I got out of a psych ward I was in Epworth Camberwell for like four weeks, and I got out a couple of hours a day, and I spent that training. I went through a really dark time.”

Smith had spoken of the importance of seeking help when needed but the detail he provided showed a rare capacity to cut through the clichés and the motherhood statements into real talk. It’s no wonder every word he utters in public is packaged and sent into orbit.

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Holmes thinks Smith has found a balance that works; teammates don’t try to impose their methods on him.

“He is one of those guys who can relax off the field because he knows he has given it all on the field,” Holmes said. “I don’t think he went as well as he would have hoped in the first final and he put his head down and trained like a madman and the results showed.”

Mannagh, who was drafted to the AFL as a relatively anonymous 26-year-old, is a down-to-earth communicator who remains amazed that Smith can handle all the glitz which surrounds him and still perform.

“It is actually pretty incredible, the amount of media he gets, but he is able to get out there and train really well and then play the game amazingly well,” Mannagh said of Smith.

That’s because Smith’s priorities are clearer to him most of the time than those observing him. “I chose the career of footy because I love it even though it gets a bit misconstrued now. Everyone thinks I love this off-field side, the modelling side of things, everything but the game but the game itself of football [has been] my main driver,” Smith told the Real Stuff podcast in May.

Thursday was time for Smith to chill, the half a dozen acre property he bought in the coastal hideaway Bellbrae the perfect setting for that. He is building a new tennis court, joking during the grand final parade it’s as much for Mad Monday celebrations as to fine-tune his forehand.

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It was there he hosted AFL CEO Andrew Dillon and senior Cats’ officials including the coach Chris Scott for a fireside chat in June soon after Smith forgot where he was when joked via a social media post about “nose beers” if the Cats won the premiership. Smith’s message was in response to a taunt, but it did not fit the image the league likes to present.

Particularly from a star player who was suspended for two matches in 2022 after admitting to illicit drug use.

Scott says he is learning as much from Smith as Smith can learn from him, a sentiment similar to the one Damien Hardwick often shared in relation to Dustin Martin when he emerged as a superstar.

“We, to an extent, knew he was going to change us in a lot of ways,” Scott said. “I have never subscribed to the idea 23-year-olds want to be best mates with 50-year-olds but he has lightened things up a bit, and hopefully we’re having an impression on him, but he is certainly having an impression on us and, in particular, me as well.

On Friday morning during the calvacade he sat next to Patrick Dangerfield, who has provided him with a guiding hand throughout the season, in the motorcade with the Cats’ skipper’s daughter Winnie on his lap.

“I’m ready just to get to 2.30 tomorrow,” he told Fox Footy. “This stuff I take in, but I won’t do much reflecting until hopefully we are holding a premiership cup and I have a medal around my neck. [The week] has been good but it’s been long. I am just ready to go, just ready for all this sort of stuff to be over and that first bounce at 2.30. I am trying to soak it in, but it’s hard when you just got your eyes on the prize.”

If the Cats win, who knows what next week will look like.

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