Marcus Bontempelli took his mother to the Brownlow. When he moved out of home he moved in with one of his sisters. He decided to become an anti-violence ambassador because he could, because the crime statistics he heard about worried him so much. He never got into trouble for talking in the school library and he looked after his Year 7 "buddy". He's polite, he's well-mannered and one of the very big reasons the Western Bulldogs have made it all the way to grand final day.

Is he perfect? Yes, says one teammate. "You know what, he literally is the perfect human," said Jake Stringer. "He's so nice. He's too nice. It's almost sad, how nice he is. It's like, be in a bad mood for once." Tom Liberatore agrees, in his own affectionate way. "He's not that good at footy," he said. "He's got a horrible hair cut. He's pretty ugly; big schnoz. He is pretty shy with the girls, he needs to find a good woman. But he's a good Italian boy, like me."

The Bulldogs spoke to a long list of people, while trying to work out whether Bontempelli was the player they most wanted to pick at No.4 in the draft three years ago. His parents. His coaches. His home room teacher at Marcellin, and even the librarian. Their answers were all the same: he was friendly, respectful, well spoken. A listener; an optimist. "They were glowing," said Simon Dalrymple, the Bulldogs' recruiting manager. "All of them. And we did a fair bit of work."

There was something else they needed to know, though: whether all that pleasantness was matched by the desire, drive and determination he would need to become the player he looked like he could be. Dalrymple suspected he did; he had watched him play, after all. He had also played cricket against two of his uncles on his mother's side, and knew them to be tough, unrelenting competitors. Those were some of the things he came back to, after interviewing Bontempelli himself.