DEAN'S day started early. His head had not long been on the pillow when, just after 1am, the phone rang. He was quick to wake.

For anyone, calls around midnight rarely offer good news. For an AFL coach on the eve of a game, the loathing has an added imperative: is it about a player? Was he in an accident? In jail?

In the event, it had nothing to do with being a coach, and everything to do with being a husband.

It was the Kangaroos coach's brother-in-law on the line and the news was not good. His wife's grandmother, Dot, was gravely ill in Perth and appeared to have just hours to live.

Dean and Joanne Laidley had lived with her grandmother when they first married as teenagers and soon after had their first daughter, Brooke. Dot's home was theirs, Dot's time was their daughter's. They remained amazingly tight.

Dean hung up the phone and wondered what to do. Jo and the couple's youngest child, Molly, were away in Echuca for the long weekend. He was troubled by the thought of the two of them driving back to Melbourne through the night alone and emotional. Eventually, after a second call with his brother-in-law an hour or so later, he rang Jo and broke the news to her.

The family needed to be with Dot, which meant getting to Perth. Laidley hung up the phone and got on the internet to try to find the earliest flights he could for Jo and the kids.

That meant flying from Avalon late morning, so he began packing bags for the family, and arranging someone to collect the eldest kids, Brooke and Cain, to take them to the airport. And he had to get to Telstra Dome to coach a game of football.

"I don't think I got back to sleep again. I got all the bags packed and had to wait for someone to collect the kids and take them to Avalon to meet Jo and Molly," Laidley said.

"I didn't get to Telstra Dome until after midday and I always get to the ground for a game about 20 past 11. Everything was fine with the other coaches there but I was a bit under the pump."

With the game about to start, Jo and the kids took off and Laidley, after one last quick call to Perth to check on Dot, crossed his fingers that she would hold on until his family got there.

He went upstairs to the coach's box. The Kangaroos started strongly and countered the Saints, resisting the flood. The coach said later he was pleased they were not "seduced into St Kilda's game".

"I left the coach's box with a minute and a half or so to go in the game and went down to the rooms and quickly called Perth and found out she had died. Jo and the kids were still in the air so they didn't know yet," he said.

"It was pretty tough, finding out and then having the meetings and going into a press conference. I just got out of the ground as quick as I could."

With the split round and the next match being a "home" game on the Gold Coast, the week was already slightly varied. Meetings were condensed into the first few days, assistant coaches leant on a little more. Wednesday morning the players met. A news conference was held. Daniel Wells would play. Some rare good news.

That afternoon, Laidley was on a flight to Perth. Thursday was the funeral. Thursday afternoon he was back on a plane again, this time to Brisbane and into a car for a late drive down to the Gold Coast.

Yesterday was the first step back to normality and routine: footy training and team meetings. Immersed in the game once more.

A coach's life is ever an unusual one, but with a young family and at a dislocated and poor club it is a more complicating one.

It has been a season of disruption and distraction at Arden Street. Before the first game had been played, the wheel nuts had seemingly been removed from the Kangaroos' season.

Their best player, Nathan Thompson, injured his knee in a practice game and was ruled out for the year. This punted the side into outright favouritism for the wooden spoon.

The club was riven by the debate over the proverbial toe being placed in the Gold Coast's warm salty water and whether this should be the precursor to permanent relocation. This remains unresolved, although it appears an inevitability.

Then there was the final end to the embarrassment of the Jonathan Hay experience. His retirement, whether he was pushed or not, was at least an end to that sorry saga.

But the most troubling moments came pre-season when the club's finest and most decorated player, Wayne Carey, who had largely been exiled for his misdeeds, said through his new role in the media that Laidley was not the right man to coach the club.

He worried for his former teammate's ability to be the public face selling the club in a difficult market. John Longmire was the man to coach the club at season's end, Carey said. The comments prompted Laidley to call a meeting with the club's football director and chief executive that night at his house. Aware of Carey's connections to some on the board, he wondered if the former player was being prodded in his comments. He was not, Laidley was reassured.

Regardless, the club and its coach entered the season besieged.

To the halfway point of 2007 they have arrived, after Ben Cousins, as the year's most extraordinary surprise.

Many remain unconvinced. Laidley lamented as much ahead of last week's game, noting the tipsters and the punters, again, fancied the other team. The Kangaroos have made a season of being unfancied and unexpected.

The bookies were offering $251 for them to win the flag after round three, and while now sixth on the ladder they have firmed to $35.

Laidley was content to talk of the wretched week he has endured but scotched talk of the broader season and the promising situation the club is now in, and the setbacks that have been overcome.

"We can't start to think about that stuff," he said. "You blokes in the media can talk about that, that is not for us to talk about."

Life is ever thus at the Kangaroos, where expectations are merely the misguided indulgence of others.