Before the 2014 season was even half complete, Wellingham, in the second leg of a handsome three-year deal, had not delivered on his billing and he knew it. Dropped from the seniors by a new coach before May, no one needed to tell Wellingham this wasn't what the Eagles had in mind when they spent a first-round draft pick (and the rest) to move him from Collingwood. The truth was that after leaving the AFL's biggest club Wellingham was feeling pressure in a way he had never felt it before. At the Magpies he felt like the fifth Beatle, playing support to Scott Pendlebury, Dane Swan and co, and rather liked it. Arriving at West Coast, he stepped into a spotlight he found uncomfortably sharper. With permission from concerned Eagles coach, Adam Simpson, Wellingham, accompanied by girlfriend Tory, escaped Perth for Indonesian island life in last year's second bye round. The extent to which things have changed since that fork in the road can be measured in the two-year contract extension the now-137-game player has signed in recent weeks. It can also be gauged by the smile on Wellingham's face, the heartiness in his laugh and a sense of lightness that deserted him for much of last year.

Just weeks ago, a couple of Wellingham's teammates quizzed him during a spa session about what had caused him to come good. Asked similar questions by Fairfax Media before returning to finals for the first time since 2012, Wellingham tables several lesser-known events that conspired to put him off his game. His mother's divorce from a man he had known and loved like a father for one. A younger sister (Wellingham has five) falling unexpectedly pregnant while in her teens for another. Conscious, while these things were unfolding behind the scenes, that his usual zest for football was deserting him, the questions started coming from West Coast teammates. They openly questioned Wellingham's application last year. Then he got injured. Several times. He also got dropped. Twice. It led to a raw, out-of-hours outpouring on the telephone with his coach. Wellingham recalls it vividly. He was at his wit's end. "I'd driven to my mum's house for dinner," he remembers. "I sat in the car outside for about 40 or 50 minutes talking to Simmo, pretty emotional, and not really knowing what the hell was going on. "I wasn't enjoying footy. I wasn't working hard enough on the field or off the field. I wasn't enjoying my time at the footy club. I was definitely feeling suffocated and like I was just drowning under the weight.

"I remember asking Simmo that night: 'Why aren't I enjoying footy'? " From that trough came rebirth. Or, as Wellingham puts it, an "awakening". If his eighth AFL season has not been the best of his career, it has been his most consistent and important. Out of necessity, initially, Simpson – a mentor who Wellingham describes variously as "calm", "cool" and "awesome" – has this year recast the erstwhile Pie midfielder to a member of West Coast's revelatory defence. Wellingham is shining in the role. "I love it," he says. "Simmo's got enormous belief in what I can deliver. "He's got a great idea of people's talents, and huge belief in what everyone can do."

This happy place comes three years after Wellingham requested release from Collingwood to be closer to his Perth-based family. An ex-member of the Magpies' dubbed brat pack (a cohort of characters and friends, according to Wellingham, that has long been overhyped), his reputation preceded him. He arrived at West Coast with a small catalogue of off-field misdemeanours, the standout being a drink-driving offence in 2008 that cost Collingwood a major sponsor and made Wellingham a humbled Pie before he'd even made his senior debut. Rightly or wrongly, being a one-time housemate of Lance Franklin contributed to the perception picture. It was far from ideal, then, that in his first summer with the Eagles, Wellingham made headlines for an out-of-hours accident involving a trampoline. It resulted in an ankle injury that sidelined him for the first quarter of the 2013 season. While not sinister, the episode went down like a lead balloon with his new teammates who, as recently as mid-last year, felt compelled to give Wellingham what he describes as a "pretty solid talking to" about his commitment.

"It doesn't help when an injury is self-inflicted," Wellingham says. "I jumped off a trampoline and landed with my ankle around the wrong way. I wasn't out on the drink. I was at a friend's house. It was just unlucky." The 10 senior games Wellingham eventually played in that interrupted season were some of his best, statistically. "But after the ankle injury I actually went too footy, footy, footy," he explains, remembering how intent he was on redemption. "It got to May, June in 2013 and I was thinking: bloody hell, this is too much, I'm exhausted."

Things deteriorated last year when, after a lacklustre start, Wellingham came to feel overwhelmed on several fronts. Including the sound of too many coaching voices. By the club's second bye, with Simpson desperate to unlock the obvious talent Wellingham possessed but was not producing, a disoriented footballer was permitted to take a short stint out of the country. "I didn't want to come back at one stage," Wellingham recalls of his deeply introspective hiatus. "I think footy's changed a lot since I started playing. I really enjoy the fun side and sometimes, when you're not playing well and the team's not going well, the fun side can get taken out of it. You start thinking 'What's the point of putting your body and mind through all of this'? " These feelings are not uncommon among AFL footballers, but they are seldom expressed publicly while players are still contracted.

Wellingham's candour suggests he has genuinely overcome the destabilising experience. He returned from Indonesia with a clear sense that if he was committed to playing elite footy, there was only one way to do it: "You have to really dive in. You can't be half in, you've got to be completely in." An old high school mate who happened to be in Bali during the sabbatical also helped. "When you're talking about real life you realise how lucky we are," Wellingham says. This was all just as well, because while Wellingham's mind was realigned for the better post-Bali, his body was shortly rendered useless after his knee was wrenched in a WAFL game in July. But while a medial injury was the full stop on Wellingham's second season with the Eagles, once physically able, he thrust himself into a rehabilitation program that provided an invaluable head start for 2015. "Thankfully, by then, the disappointment about the knee wasn't actually my first focus," he says.

"I was more thinking that I was back enjoying footy again." Wellingham is the first to say he has given teammates the impression, over the years, that he's too casual about his job and even aloof. West Coast's leadership group put this to him squarely after he was dropped for the first time last year, at round seven. The burning words and eyes Wellingham remembers most vividly came from last year's eventual Brownlow medallist, Matt Priddis. "They were like 'What the hell are you doing? You're a good player, we need you and you're not pulling your weight.' It was more to do with them saying they knew what I could provide." Wellingham feels he only genuinely proved himself to his teammates in the most recent off-season. He makes a concerted effort to express how much he cares about football and chuckles at himself when relaying how he has become a more diligent consumer of AFL news; something that has made him an instantly more engaged football citizen.

Wellingham has also worked one day a week this year at property management outfit the Hawaiian Group, and is completing a diploma in business management. Has there been other change in his off-field life? In preparation, standard setting, socialising, sleeping? "No," Wellingham says, "not at all." "Some people are able to show they're doing the right thing all the time but for me, I suppose, it was about making those things a little bit more obvious." In his upcoming break, Wellingham is returning to Indonesia to surf.