Redpath, with his mother Sam. Credit:Simon Schluter Reflecting on how he came to be in a very different job and having more fun than ever, Redpath starts and ends with his mother, Sam. He's in awe of her, the example she set, all that she's done for her kids. Sam Redpath's first three children were born in an on-again off-again relationship that was over by the time baby Jack, No.4, arrived. The Redpaths were on their own for a few years, then she married, had two more daughters and they moved from Leongatha to Kyneton. "It didn't turn out well," Sam says with a laugh of resignation. "I've been on my own ever since." Redpath remembers his mum working at the fee-paying school she somehow managed to send them to, then going back to college and emerging as a supervisor at a juvenile justice centre. "She just busts her arse six days a week, always has," he says. "We've always had everything."

This quality runs through the family, and clearly starts at the top. "Nobody changes anything unless they've got a work ethic," Sam says. "I've always said to the kids, 'There's no such word as can't. You can have whatever you want in this life if you work hard'." The oldest of the clan, Beau, is 32 and using his cabinet-making skills to do form work in the mines in Western Australia. Hayley is 28 and a police force detective, 26-year-old Jesse has a bricklaying business. Ruby and Lily are 19 and 18 and both did well at school. Ruby is doing nursing, Lily's having a gap year. "She's a bit of a wild one, got the dyed purple hair," Redpath says of his youngest sibling, with obvious affection. He adds that she's working in a local cafe "and every time I'm home she seems to have more money than me". His own earnings started early. At 12 he was working out the back of a butcher shop, getting called "CK" for "Clean-up Kid", pocketing $120 a week. He'd always wanted to do whatever Jesse did, so had a crack at bricklaying but found his size (he's now 194 centimetres and 99 kilograms) an impediment. "I know you're not enjoying school, I'm happy for you to go and work," his mum told him. Within three days of finishing year 9 a nail bag hung from his waist. "I was never going to be one for uni," he says. "The best way of learning for me is by hand."

He was playing senior footy for Kyneton at 16 but a few weeks' training with Bendigo Pioneers betrayed that the TAC Cup wasn't the right fit for a boy already living in a man's world. "I loved it, but it just didn't click for me. I didn't know anyone, so I just decided to focus on finishing my apprenticeship." His boss was Neville Massina, a country footy legend with abundant connections. He steered Redpath to Bendigo's VFL team, structured his work around training, took him for extra sessions running the Woodend golf course hill on Saturday mornings. "He loved his footy and he'd obviously seen something in me." He'd played a dozen VFL games in 2009 and was standing James Podsiadly in his first outing as a backman when someone landed on his left leg. He'd never been injured, let alone felt such pain. Shannon Grant was coaching Bendigo when he was ready to resume the next season and told Redpath to have a game at Kyneton and he'd be straight back in. In the second quarter he was tackled on the wing and heard a massive "pop". "I was absolutely shattered." The questions and condolences soon wore thin; football was teasing him, and he was of a mind to give it a miss.

Through both "recos" Massina was amazing, paying a carpenter who initially couldn't work, encouraging him that all wasn't lost. He'd shown enough before the first injury to be invited to pre-draft screening, which planted a seed that maybe, with a change of luck, he could make it. With Kyneton getting belted on a weekly basis, he made a mid-season comeback and kicked 5.8 against Sandhurst. "Maybe I can still play ... " More eye-catching performances followed and with former Hawk and Kangaroo Nathan Thompson, who was playing for Kyneton, a plan was crafted to be back in the VFL the following year. In December 2011, as he drove home from a Bendigo pre-season session, the Bulldogs called. "My 21st party was that weekend. I trained with the Dogs on the Friday, Saturday didn't have a beer, just watched the boys drink them all. They were back at my brother's till all hours and I was in bed at Mum's." Mother and son were having coffee on the morning of his birthday, watching the rookie draft online, when his name bobbed up at pick 62. "Mum screamed a bit."

He'd arrived at an unlikely destination, but the road ahead remained pot-holed. "It didn't go to plan straight away," Redpath says of an AFL career that initially stagnated in the Williamstown reserves, where in round 14 of his first season he landed from a marking contest and snapped his forearm. "Oh no, how's this even happened?" was his first thought. Those that followed were dark. "I looked at it, bent over backwards, and thought, 'I'm never coming back. I'm gunna lose my arm!'" In the rooms, Rohan Smith played the veteran pragmatist. "It's just an arm," he told Redpath. "It's not over." The following year Brendan McCartney told him he was on the cusp of senior selection, then the next week at training he twisted his knee. After clean-up surgery, the "Clean-up Kid" hasn't missed a game in more than a season-and-a-half since. The unconventional background has never fuelled apprehension. Redpath reckons he felt like an 18-year-old when he arrived at Whitten Oval, and with a strong body and willing mind that's "getting the hang" of the game at its peak, he still feels younger than 24.

He remembers list manager Jason McCartney asking in that first interview with the Dogs what his father did, and he gave the answer he tells anyone without qualm or regret. "I never met my old man, and I've never really asked. I had everything I could wish for. It doesn't bother me one bit." Mixing with adults fostered an ease in any company. Redpath is one of the most popular figures at his club, and hit it off with teammates young and old from day one. "I get to know people pretty quick and can make friends." On the bye weekend he went home and did some work with a "chippy" mate who's gone out on his own doing renovations. His tool bag is still in the back of his car, his tools ready to go in a lock-up box at home. He still loves the sense of achievement he felt as an apprentice, when the first big, architect-designed house he worked on rose out of the ground. "When you're building a house it doesn't look like much, then the plaster's done, you do the doors, all the door furniture ... then you see it finished, you think, 'We did that'." It could be a metaphor for his unlikely football career, except Redpath knows he's still in the framework stage, and there's plenty of work to be done. He had a great pre-season, but was dropped after round one and only returned against Carlton three months later.

"The weekend [against Gold Coast] is probably the best game I've played, up in the heat, I can take a lot of confidence out of that." Coach Luke Beveridge loves his spirit; the speed over 20 metres and power forward's hands make him a tantalising work in progress. Sam Redpath remembers that when her "big, sensitive giant" started secondary school, a teacher had her students write down what they wanted to do with their lives. The time capsule was revisited after year 12, and found its way to one of his sisters a couple of years after Redpath had left school. "Jack's ambition was to be a carpenter and play AFL football," Sam says. "It's funny how sometimes things just work out."