IN 1997, Max Hudghton turned 21. His 17th game for St Kilda was a grand final, and he can remember sitting slumped in the rooms afterwards behind a completely shattered Nicky Winmar, who had lost his father just before the game. His teammate's grief was extreme, and obvious.

He describes the weeks that followed the loss to Adelaide as a long, dark lull, but the rest is a little bit fuzzy. That year was Hudghton's first in the AFL; he understood that grand finals were not easy to make, but he had no real context in which to place the season.

He didn't remember to remember the tiny details, if that makes sense. He didn't take all the small things in, and he hasn't been back for a second look. "You just don't tell yourself to remember what you're doing," Hudghton told The Sunday Age this week, in a rare interview.

"I can remember all the wives and girlfriends coming into the old changerooms and looking at Nicky just in front of me, and that was pretty full on. I can't remember much else though. It's just the big, long, dark lull that stays with you, the fact that you didn't achieve what you wanted to.

"I was obviously pretty young, so I was thinking, 'How good is all this?' and I don't think I realised at the time what it was that we were doing. I thought I did, and my intentions were true at the time, but when I think back and compare my mindset then to now, I don't think I ever appreciated what was happening.

"You think you do, but in time it dawns on you that you didn't fully understand how hard it was to get to that place and that day. You wish you could turn back time and play it all over again, but obviously you can't. All you can do is keep going. You push on; you keep trying."

Last Tuesday, Hudghton turned 32. Today, he will play for the 225th time in red, black and white and when Robert Harvey wanders away at the end of the Saints' season, he will lose his partner in "old-man training" - laps of the Moorabbin Oval slow enough to give them time to chat about their children, lives and the team - and be the oldest player at the club, the player who has survived and seen the most of its varied, recent phases.

Three years after their grand final day, by 2000, the Saints were lodged at the bottom of the ladder. That involved a whole lot of losing. More recently, they have inched to within a week of the grand final, winning more games but letting slip the ones that most mattered. Opportunities have seemed both impossible, and heartbreakingly close. In his time, Hudghton said, St Kilda has probably been a "half-successful" team. "We've almost done a lot of good things," he said. "We've been bad, and we've almost been really good."

Hudghton may play on next year, but he might not - that decision is not one he feels either he or his club needs to make right now.

"To be honest, all I'm thinking about at the moment is training. Training, the first quarter of the game and then my first contest of the game," Hudghton said. "Of course, I've thought about it (retirement), but I haven't sat there and tried to decide what to do, because I don't need to do that yet.

"I'm really comfortable with where my life's at, and if football was to end this year, I'm really comfortable with going into the next phase of my life.

"Let's just worry about it at the end of the season, when we know everything we need to know. That's what the club's said to me and that's what I've said to the club. That's a good relationship to have."

Life outside football is, for Hudghton, spent in two places - with his family and at his building business. For him, though, those things are intertwined; he is married to Anya, has two boys and a six-month-old daughter and when his first son, five-year-old Josh, was born, he realised he didn't want to become a person who would one day leave football feeling like he had little fresh ambition or direction.

He studied building for five years, got his licence and started his company, Maxton Constructions, about three years ago. He no longer has a supple-enough back to do much hands-on work, but has enjoyed focusing on something other than a football for parts of most days. He is, in his own words, intense when it comes to the game he plays; each week, Hudghton relaxes only in the moment that the ball is bounced, when he can finally do something.

"A lot of people ask me what motivates me and I say, 'well, fear motivates me', and they say that's the wrong motivation. But I say it's not, it's the same as wanting to succeed because I'm fearful that I might fail, I'm fearful that my opponent might give me a bath or whatever," he explained.

"Fear is my motivation but fear is just a different way of describing wanting to succeed. I don't think it's about being worried, it's just a lot of nervous energy, wanting to play well and wanting to succeed as a team, and I think that feeling gets more intense the older you get.

"I still have the same feelings I had 10 years ago, they don't go away, but I probably just know how to subdue it a bit more in my mind. You get used to it and run with it, rather than try to fight it. You go with it, but you find ways to control it."

His second job has helped with that, as a simple outlet. As have his kids. Josh hasn't completely worked out what his dad does for a living yet, but knows enough to have asked Hudghton to track down a copy of his footy card. "I wouldn't know where to get hold of one, but he's starting to get into it," he said.

"I bring him and (three-year-old) Aaron down to the club as much as I can. I think it's great for them to spend time around the place, but they don't really understand what it is. Josh will watch the game and say, 'Daddy, I saw you fall over'. He'll say, 'I saw that man squash you', and I'll be, 'Yep ... yep ...'

"I really enjoy it. It would be nice to still be playing when your kids are 10 so they could understand it a bit better, but I don't think that will happen and they just give me that outlet from footy, something else to think about and someone else to focus on.

"Work's a bit the same. I just love not having to think about footy all day long, and I feel good about the fact that I know what I'm going to do when it's over. I look forward to coming down here to train, and that's really helped me, because footy can consume you and it has consumed me a lot at certain times.

"You can sit around thinking about it and not stop. In your own mind, you can come up with a million different reasons why it might not be working rather than just doing what you know is best."

What's best has changed over time, too. As a defender, Hudghton is desperate. He lunges, dives and hurls himself - he holds nothing back and looks like he would be disgusted with himself if he ever thought he did. He has had to adapt to various rule changes and interpretations, and teams moving the ball in quicker, different and more precise ways each season.

He has played an intense and demanding position for a very long time, but that's not something he would change. "I think what has changed more than anything is how much thinking you have to do. You rarely have just one opponent for the day, even as a full-back, and teams move the ball in so many more ways," he said. "You have to understand your own strengths so much better, and if you're getting beaten, you have to work out how to change what you're doing.

"I reckon it's probably one of the most stressful positions on the ground. Or maybe not stressful, but you have to be willing to have goals kicked on you, and you have to be willing to take advice from people, be open to people having things for you to try.

"It's a funny thing, every week, because before the game I don't feel like I'm looking forward to it, and then when I run out on the ground I am. It's like this love-hate relationship, but only on game day, because you get nervous. You've built yourself up for it and done your research and prepared, and suddenly you have to do it.

"It's a hard position to play at times, but I must admit I think I'll always look back and think I relished the chance to play on the best forwards of my era. I'd like to think I've held my own and done OK. That's the way I look at it. Hopefully I have."