I'VE been branded cocky, brash, big-headed, arrogant, selfish and much worse. Although I don't identify with most of these uncomplimentary descriptions, I openly admit to being cocky and brash early in my AFL career, before I'd matured as a footballer and a man.

But even my greatest detractors might be surprised to hear that I wasn't always so sure of myself.

My teenage years were punctuated by intense bouts of self-doubt, half-heartedness, ineptitude and soul-searching.

People automatically assume that I dominated junior football ranks, but nothing could be further from the truth.

In my final year of schooling, when most prospective AFL players are attracting the attention of talent scouts, I was battling to get a game in my school side at Salesian College in Sunbury.

I was a little tacker; a runt in every sense of the word.

I'd been of average height at 13 but I'd hardly grown since then. In the meantime, everyone around me kept growing and most of them towered over me. I was five-foot nothin' — the smallest kid in my year level in my last two years of boarding school. In year 12, I was taller than only one year 11 boy.

My lack of height was a major disadvantage on the football field, but the reality was I just wasn't good enough. Because of my puny body, the only position I could play with any effectiveness was forward pocket.

But I rarely started there — the coach often preferred me to sit on the bench. When I finally got my chance, I'd scrounge the odd opportunistic goal, including the occasional clever snapshot, but that was about all I was capable of at the time.

I certainly didn't display any real courage or fierceness at the contest. I mightn't have had the body for such heroics, but I didn't have the desire, either. I was genuinely worried about being snapped in two by one of the many bigger kids whose presence scared the hell out of me on the field.

It was 1989, I'd just turned 17, and there was no evidence to suggest that I had a future in football.

One of my Salesian teammates, David Schwarz, who later played for Melbourne, was already playing in the Demons' under-19s side, but I was miles off that level. I was so weak in body and mind that I let trivial things distract me on the field.

One day in a school match, I was sledged for the first time as I ran in for a set shot at goal.

An opponent delivered a typically unprintable and unimaginative insult about my mother. I was so shocked that I sent the ball sailing out of bounds on the full. It rattled me for a good five minutes.

I didn't know it then, but in years to come, I'd have to deal with all manner of external pressures on and off the field. Learning to perform in spite of those pressures required a resilience I just didn't have in my make-up as a young man.

The lowest point of my school days was when I was selected for a game we played in the Sun Shield at Waverley Park, a curtain-raiser to a Melbourne-Sydney pre-season match in 1989. It would be the first time I'd set foot on a VFL ground, the biggest occasion of my life to that point, and I couldn't contain my excitement.

At night, it kept me awake, fantasising about kicking a couple of goals on the day. Mum and Dad couldn't be there — they were living in Alice Springs — but I had many aunties and uncles living in Victoria and I bragged to each of them about my upcoming football adventure. Most of them came to support me, from various parts of the state.

I was rapt when I discovered I'd be starting the game on the field and in the centre square as the rover. By the first bounce, I'd played the game in my mind a dozen times — but none of my dream sequences reflected the harsh reality I was to experience that day.

For two-and-a-half quarters, I ran around like a headless chook and didn't get a touch. Not one.

My family had made the effort to get there and I gave them, and the team, nothing. Not even a little knock-on or a tackle. I didn't even get to hand the ball back to the umpire!

I was dragged and spent the last quarter-and-a-half cursing myself on the bench. I had failed — badly — in front of loved ones. Reality began to bite. I was absolutely gutted. I thought: "I'm hopeless; this is just too hard."

VFL footy was a million miles away and it almost seemed pointless to continue plugging away at a game I wasn't cut out for. It was tempting to simply walk away from footy then and go back to tennis, which seemed easier to me. The question was: did I have the guts to hang in there? Of course, I'm eternally grateful I did.

Football provided me with the necessary life skills to grow as a person. I learnt the value of hard work, trust and honesty, the importance of discipline, and that truly great things can be accomplished when people work together.

I'll be forever indebted to the game, just as I'm indebted to each of the people with whom I've shared my experiences on and off the field.

And in another way, I was just lucky to be playing football at all.

A year or so earlier, the decision could've been taken right out of my hands.

It was Easter 1988, and I was home in Darwin for the school holidays. I was going out and had told my parents I would be staying with my mate Matthew Roy.

It was the old what-your-parents-don't-know-won't-hurt-them scenario — we had no intention of staying at Matthew's house, and we didn't plan on sleeping, either.

At 1am on Easter Sunday, along with another mate, we went fishing at Dinah Beach.

A few hours passed and we hadn't had a nibble. To break the monotony and capitalise on a rare night of freedom from our "olds", we sought other forms of entertainment.

We started harmlessly enough, marking out a makeshift track and racing each other on our pushbikes.

About 5am, we turned our attention to the beachball-sized bluestone boulders on the edge of the wharf. We got this hare-brained idea to push them down the embankment and into the water.

They were so big and heavy, it took all our combined strength just to push one down.

It was fun … to begin with.

But like so many boyish larks, it ended in tears.

We were "working" on a rock when the one I was sitting on dislodged and I tumbled down the slope. A massive boulder hurtled straight at me. In a frantic split-second, I swayed out of its destructive path. As I lay there, conscious and alive, I sighed with relief because I thought I'd escaped unscathed — it would have made a pancake out of anything in its way. But within seconds, relief turned to horror. The boulder had rolled straight over my right leg and must have sandwiched it between other rocks on its way down.

A softball-sized chunk was missing from the inside of my knee. Worse still, two meaty flaps of skin had peeled back to expose the inside of my knee — bones, muscles, the lot. One of the muscles around the knee had been cut in half and was literally hanging out, and blood was gushing from the wound.

Somehow, I managed to drag myself up the bank and when the boys saw my injury they turned white. By this stage, my right shoe was full of blood. I'd lost so much of the red stuff that I was a bit delirious and no doubt in shock. I sat there thinking: "What the hell's going on? What just happened?"

It seemed to take an eternity for an ambulance to arrive. I was loaded in the back and immediately given a mask that I was told was pure oxygen, which was a godsend. Our route to hospital took us past the Darwin Tennis Centre.

At the time, tennis was my sport. I loved it more than football. I started sobbing uncontrollably and my mind was racing, unable to accept what was happening. I thought: "Take anything away from me, but don't take away my sport. That's what I live for."

When Dad got to the hospital and saw my leg, he was visibly upset. This from a man who showed very little emotion for anything. Dad had continued to live his own sporting career vicariously through me, and now it appeared that I, too, might be forced to live mine through someone else. All Mum wanted to know was whether I would be all right.

I underwent an operation in which doctors stitched the muscle back together, and also knitted up the other layers of soft tissue and sinew.

In all, I received 66 stitches — about 40 of them internal — and spent two weeks laid up in hospital.

Although it was about six months before I even contemplated hitting a tennis ball or kicking a footy again, it was the luckiest break of my life. The boulder could easily have crushed my head; instead of muscles hanging out, it could've been brains. If it had mangled my ankle, I mightn't have been able to walk properly, let alone run.

This was one of several instances where luck, fate, or whatever you want to call it, intervened when things could easily have taken a turn for the worse. It illustrates to me that even with powerful traits like self-belief, discipline, work ethic and a general commitment to excellence, you also need a little bit of luck along the way. Very rarely have I ever lost sight of that. I've learnt to appreciate every opportunity I've had, to keep an open mind and never to take anything for granted.

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Edited extract from the book All I Can Be by Nathan Buckley, rrp $49.95 Michael Joseph 2008.''