Mitch Morton says he has finally found his football home at Sydney. Credit:Tamara Dean What was seen during the Sydney-Hawthorn classic were Morton's two late goals in the second quarter which helped the Swans go into half-time with a 16-point lead. More significant for the man who said he could not multi-task on the football field came the moment late in the game when he took on two Hawk defenders and beat them, setting up Kieren Jack's vital goal. What was not seen were Morton's frenzied pre-game nerves. Or the equally fluctuating relationship with his new club. He was almost dropped from the reserves in late July, only to be promoted to his first full game with the Swans in the first week of September. One key member of Sydney's leadership group told Morton he could not trust him. Weeks later the same senior player was - in the words of the coach John Longmire - one of several ''banging down my door telling me that we need this guy in the side because he can help us win it.'' What happened in between was a transformation. ''I'd kicked more than 70 goals in the reserves,'' recalled Morton, ''and I believed I was really close to selection. And then a member of the leadership group told me there was another player in the group who didn't want me in the team because he didn't trust me. I went from thinking I was going to play to the prospect of being dropped completely.''

Summoning the courage to confront the senior teammate he would not name was, for Morton, his worst nightmare. ''At the start of last year, I wouldn't sleep for four nights before a Leading Teams session for fear I'd have to stand up the front and be challenged. But I worked up the nerve after a week or so to confront this player about why he didn't want to play alongside me. ''That conversation turned around my year. It was one turning point, which will hopefully be the catalyst that turned around my career. Before that, I don't think I had done a single thing to make this football club a better place. ''At some point after I got drafted it was always all about me and I just took things to heart so badly. I've always been a worrier but I forgot why I played football and just got lost in it all. I got lost in the system. And I'd always look for an out.'' Morton does not describe his condition as depression although he has sought varying forms of treatment and medication to achieve some form of equilibrium. ''What I have couldn't be further from depression,'' he said. ''My anxiety means I don't sleep and I jump out of bed every morning and want so desperately to be as good as Chris Judd or Dane Swan or Adam Goodes. ''But I can't find a way to get there. At Richmond, it got to the point where I wanted it so much and it wasn't happening and I'd drive to training and I'd almost be regurgitating my food before every session. I'll always be a worrier because that's how I am, but it was out of control.''

By mutual consent during Morton's final season with the Tigers, he was given time away from the club. ''I spent two or three weeks away and I hired a personal trainer, but I didn't really deal with any of my personal issues. Looking back over everything, I'm surprised I've played almost 80 games.'' Morton's first memory of his demon took place back in his West Australian home town of Lake Grace 23 years ago. He overheard his grandmother telling his mother, who had arrived to collect her three-year-old and his brothers, that she needed to keep an eye on young Mitch. The boy, she said, had spent the entire day worrying - fretting about her, his brothers getting hurt and about anything that could have gone wrong. Whatever the diagnosis, it is a telling indication on how far football clubs have come that the Swans have just entered into a partnership with beyondblue and, instead of a sport psychologist, the club now employs a full-time clinical psychologist. Morton is not the only player at the club dealing with such issues and late last year club chairman Richard Colless spoke publicly for the first time about his battle with depression. Whatever Morton's condition, it manifested itself in a brand of selfishness and self-pity. ''A year ago, I would have summed it up by saying I had two good years at Richmond and then Damien Hardwick came along and he just didn't like me. Now I can see I wasn't in the right condition to play AFL football. ''The difference between my attitude then to my attitude now is just so different. I don't want this to come out wrong because John Worsfold [Morton's first senior coach during his two years at West Coast], Terry Wallace and Damien Hardwick I'd still consider good people and almost friends.

''Now I feel like I'm part of a team. I'm playing football because I love it and I just want to win. Whether I play five or 10 or 20 games this season I just want us to have success.'' Prone to exaggeration, Morton said he would be happy, having nursed a back injury during February, if he made it back to the senior team by round five. In fact, he plagued Longmire repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) last week to give him a hitout in the seniors against Port Adelaide on Saturday. Longmire, who pushed his club's partnership with beyondblue, seems to have perfectly read his re-incarnated player - who made his debut as a sub in round 21 and has still played only five games for Sydney - during September. Morton's ''four or five tackles'' in the preliminary final - three of which converted to goals against Collingwood - were partly negated in his own troubled mind by a couple of miskicks. He did not sleep, he says, for the entire weekend and was something of a wreck by the time he arrived at the club on the Monday of grand final week. ''I never get much sleep anyway but I didn't sleep at all that weekend,'' Morton said. ''I was away from the club Saturday and Sunday and just felt so isolated worrying about the kicks I'd missed. ''I still probably haven't met anyone who cares as much about whether they're going to make it or not and yet doesn't know what to do to achieve success.''

Longmire did not take long to assess the situation. Morton cannot quite remember the coach's words but said he was taken aside and given the following message: ''Fantastic tackles mate. You did enough.'' Longmire says now that Morton was the only player verbally assured of a game that Monday. The coach drew on his own North Melbourne experience, recalling the Sunday before the 1999 grand final when coach Denis Pagan took him aside. ''I'd missed 1996 and 1998 and I actually felt that because we were playing Carlton and not Essendon it might hurt my chances because Carlton had less talls. But Denis came to me on the Sunday and said: 'How does it feel to be playing in a grand final son?' It was a great relief and meant I could focus correctly on the week ahead. Mitch was the only player I did that to. I took a calculated risk given that we still didn't know whether Benny McGlynn would come up, but I knew it would help Mitch stop agonising.'' And if McGlynn had proved his fitness? ''I don't know what would have happened,'' admitted Longmire. Morton's end-of-season trip took him to Coffs Harbour and a short golfing holiday with teammate Nick Malceski. ''I didn't book anything in advance,'' he said, ''because when everyone else was booking trips I thought I'd be looking for a job.'' Instead his final month at Sydney was rewarded with another one-year contract with the Swans - ''I'm getting a bit sick of one-year deals,'' Morton said, smiling - and the feeling that he was a part of the playing group, a sense he did not have as recently as early August. Tellingly, teammate Ryan O'Keefe, his key mentor whom Morton said had helped re-program his eating habits and his attitude, told him before this interview not to give all the credit to the Swans culture for his premiership success but to take some credit himself.

He still cannot say where he will finish up calling home but the Swans will always be his football home. More practically Morton and his long-term girlfriend Jess share a house in Sydney with another couple - Swan Jesse White and his partner. ''She [Jess] has had a time of it with me,'' he confessed. ''So have my brothers. There's never a dull moment with me. I'll always be a worrier but I'm getting better. ''I love this group and it has been the culture at the Swans that has helped me turn this around. I don't want to be seen to be putting down Richmond or West Coast but the leadership group here helped me be honest with myself. ''I'm not a great athlete and I don't have great skills, I really don't. I can just kick snaps OK. But fully fit I believe I am close to Sydney's best 22. I think I've found a way to have a good career. I'm disappointed it's taken me this long. But that's OK and now we're here.''