McAlister was invited to the draft camp and did well; he could high jump two metres at 16 and could always run — fast and a long way. Then the letters started filling the postbox, almost daily, and from all but a couple of AFL clubs.

Geelong was very keen and coach Gary Ayres paid a visit. Then Kevin Sheedy came to Smithton, had a cup of tea and a chat, called in on his little sister at school. The town buzzed with the news.

"I was thinking, 'How the hell am I going to do a dairy farming apprenticeship in Melbourne?' I didn't like being away from home, the travel, I didn't like it at all. It made me feel uncomfortable."

On draft day, McAlister was in the cow shed. "We were full-on in calving season, had just calved about 500 and were milking them flat out. My boss came in about one o'clock and said: 'Congratulations, you've been drafted.' "

Essendon had taken him with pick five. He'd just turned 18 and had been playing football for less than four years. He had a few beers that night, but his head was already spinning.

M cAlister is today what he was then: likeable, softly spoken and dedicated. In the portable site-manager's office at an $11 million shopping centre development on the outskirts of Wodonga, the first name on the sign-on sheet just inside the door is that of the foreman — D. McAlister, 5.50am.

The deadline is fast approaching and the working week is running to six days, 12 hours a day. Eighty-five workers buzz around outside. Stuff-ups no longer cost merely a goal, more like $30,000. "They're amazing jobs to work on."

Rewind 12 years and McAlister's new job began a week after draft day. He was nervous, didn't know a soul and grateful the slog of pre-season training kept him occupied. He set himself to last the six weeks until Christmas and ended up staying six years.

Settling in wasn't easy. The club billeted him with a single mother and her young children; come the holidays he packed his things, paid the excess baggage charge for the bike and everything else he'd bought, and flew south without telling a soul. "When I got home I rang the club and said, 'You've got to get me out of here.'

"They put me in with another lady and I stayed with her for four years. She was brilliant, came to my wedding, was just great."

Year one at Essendon was his fifth in the game, yet by the end of 1997 he was pushing for senior selection. In Brisbane one afternoon, named as an emergency, he asked roommate Mark Mercuri if he should take his gear to the ground. "He said, 'Yeah, you better.' Sure as shit, I was in."

He remembers his debut as not being great, but not dreadful. "I tackled and chased and did all those things you're supposed to do. I was rapt." He always did and always was.

The following week, he was in the team that beat Adelaide, the eventual premier, in the last round. It was three-time premiership player Mark Harvey's last game and the day Princess Diana died. He felt like a footballer.

"I thought, 'Yeah, I can handle this.' I knew these opportunities aren't just presented to you, you work hard for them and appreciate them for what they are. I certainly did that. At the end of the day, I just couldn't quite get it right."

The scornful remember McAlister as another "Sheedy project". He knows the coach took a punt — "and I'll always thank him for that" — but it did him no favours. He didn't play a senior game for the next two years, couldn't understand why, was being ridden hard and down on confidence. "He was saying, 'Why aren't you doing this, why aren't you doing that?' That's just how he spoke to everybody." He knows there were times he didn't take it well.

Injuries plagued him — two arthroscopes, a stress fracture, a spur on his big toe. Towards the end, another knee and another spur. The setbacks always seemed to come when he was within a hair of a senior recall. He was on the fringe of one of the game's great teams and spent a lot of time watching it from the stands, wearing club suit and tie.

The tease was amplified by playing in the 2000 Ansett Cup premiership, in front of 80,000 at the MCG, beating North Melbourne. Most reckoned this should have been the previous September's grand final; its intensity shamed today's limp pre-season hit-outs.

McAlister resumed his role as semi-permanent emergency, stepping up for just one game of the Bombers' stunning winning streak. "I sat on the bench in the rain for three quarters, then came on in the last." It was hard to take.

With Maori blood from his father's side, he had gravitated to Dean Rioli and Michael Long. The Johnsons and Dean Solomon were close mates, too. Rioli's busted collarbone made him ache, watching the others win the flag hurt even more.

"To see your mates doing so well, doing something you'd worked so hard for yourself, it was a very bitter pill to swallow. But you've just got to front up. I learnt a lot from that. I didn't want to be there to celebrate because I wasn't part of it, but I was there, I celebrated."

At the end of 2001, feeling stale, McAlister pursued a trade to Geelong. He'd loved Mark Thompson when the Cats coach was a Sheedy assistant and remains grateful that Essendon supported his quest for a new beginning, and agreed to draft him back when a deal couldn't be done.

He used to go fishing down the coast, envied the Geelong lifestyle and thought it might freshen him up. When it didn't happen, he knew the end was nigh, but remembers 2002 as his best year. "I was starting to grasp what was needed, thinking, 'If you do this, it works.' "

He'd been great friends with Joanna, who worked at Windy Hill, and then all of a sudden they were together. They moved to her home town of Albury and had four kids in five years. When the youngest, Amelia, was born, he was a third-year carpentry apprentice, she was at university. The money saved from his past life came in handy.

Now, they have "a little house and a little backyard that I've got chooks in".

He still nags Jo to move 10 minutes out of town onto a few acres; the dairy farmer lurks within.

He did his knee late in the season, playing for Albury, and missed a month's work after the reconstruction. But the Tigers have recruited well — Paul Spargo is coach and Chris Hyde, fresh out of Richmond, will play next year. McAlister is 30, "getting a bit old", but wants one more season. "You can imagine a premiership in this region, the whole town would go off."

He loves watching the Bombers play now, even if nearly all of his old teammates are gone. He welcomes the pursuit of athletes from other countries and other sporting backgrounds, too, and thinks they could change the game forever. "They could find some Fijian kid who runs from the back pocket to 50 metres out, kicking goals all year …" He can't wait to see Nicholas Naitanui play.

Australian football, the stranger that abducted a quiet teenager from a Tasmanian dairy farm, has been good to him. "I've got absolutely no regrets. It was tough, but it probably made me. It's given me life qualities I wouldn't have had.

"If anyone ever gets the opportunity, take it with both hands. Just remember you deserve it and just have your best go at it."