West Coast’s 2018 premiership hero Tom Barrass has revealed he lost his passion for the game in 2019 and has had to re-jig his life away from the club to rediscover it.

Barrass, who has also changed his footwear and training schedule after a string of back and lower-leg injuries, said he changed the university course he was doing and took up gardening in a bid to create a better balance between football and his life outside of it.

“I got injured (a stress-related foot problem), had to have surgery, and throughout that process I probably lost my enjoyment for the game,” he said.

Barrass has changed his boots and now wears what he calls “the career savers”, which are boots that are more like joggers but have stops on the bottom.

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And he has changed the way he approaches his life around the game to make sure on-field performance doesn’t consume him.

“The pressure and expectation of performing to a premiership level, of winning another flag, of wanting to be a good player... I probably let that consume me a bit too much,” he said.

“I didn’t just play carefree footy and have fun out there. Once that starts to snowball you lose control a bit.

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“My routine was probably propped up by the fact that I was playing pretty good footy until the last couple of games of the year.

“Once your confidence goes, and combine that with not really feeling passionate about playing footy, your performance goes too.

“It took a long off-season for me. I was trying to figure out how to do it and I think I arrived on having a better balance, pursuing creative interests off-field and personal interests off-field to create an identity for yourself that is not just attached to the footy club and how your on-field performance is going.

‘I have been working hard at that and I am enjoying my footy again. I am enjoying being around the boys and having a leadership role.

‘I am enjoying just being at the footy club which is great.”

Barrass, a straight-A student at high school, said he had switched from studying science to an Arts degree and had also discovered the joy of gardening.

“It is about finding things that you are passionate about and that you can give your time to create an identity for yourself that doesn’t depend on how many kicks and how many handballs you get on the field,” he said.