A COUPLE of days before tonight's preliminary final, Max Rooke nominated Point Lonsdale as the place of choice to sit down and chat. With $10 sunglasses in his hand and no-name canvas shoes on his feet, he said football felt irrelevant in the quiet coastal village he visits once every three weeks or so, and that he kind of liked that.

Rooke is one of two AFL players who have made noteworthy international voyages in the name of wellbeing this season. But unlike Ben Cousins, the most controversial thing that has been reported about the understated Geelong defender is his ditching of the first name given to him at birth and his adoption of his middle one.

On all the obvious scores, the footballer formerly known as Jarad Rooke is a contrasting character to his peer in Western Australia. But there's a saying about surprise and the quiet ones.

"He could be doing a million things that no one would know about," teammate Cameron Mooney said this week.

Taking ballroom dancing lessons and entering an inter-dance studio competition in Melbourne last year was one such off-field activity Rooke was prepared to verify. It was only when he injured a shoulder by playing football that he reluctantly gave up that pastime.

Earlier this year, Rooke — a scooter driver and lounge room guitarist who names folksy Irishman Damian Rice as his favourite singer-songwriter — enrolled in a German course at Geelong's Gordon TAFE. Coincidentally, the week the classes began, which was also the week the Cats most recently played Collingwood, he was flown to Munich to have calves' blood injected into the hamstring he'd injured in round 13.

He'd arrived to Geelong in 2001 from Casterton, a town with a population of about 2000, as a cleancut-looking type with a wide-eyed naivety and was on the rookie list until 2002. Five years later, the Cats were suddenly shelling out a sum in the order of $20,000 to send Rooke, now a 25-year-old with 90 games' experience, to Germany for world-class medical treatment.

It shows how highly Geelong rates him. Last summer, Rooke received a similar endorsement from his teammates, who voted him into their new leadership group headed by Tom Harley.

"Two or three years ago, you would never, ever consider him," Mooney said. "You get him on the field and he's absolutely the most ruthless person you'll ever see and the boys just love him for it.

"I hope he doesn't mind me saying, but he was very naive about the world, Rookey. He was just a country boy. He's come a long way in his football and as a person. I think he's realised the world's a bit bigger than a country town."

In July, Rooke was sent to see acclaimed German soft-tissue specialist Dr Hans-Wilhelm Muller-Wohlfarth. For Rooke, the Munich experience felt just as high-paced and surreal from the moment he arrived, alone, on a Friday night and made his way to his hotel.

"The driver was doing about 210 kilometres on the autobahn!" he said. "And he was driving so close to a rail, I was thinking. 'What the hell's going on?' I didn't want to talk to him in case I distracted him."

Rooke spent the weekend wandering, while at home eight games of AFL football were played and he couldn't even access the scores. His first appointment with Muller-Wohlfarth was on the Monday. By this stage, he was accompanied by a London-based former colleague of Geelong doctor Chris Bradshaw who once worked at English Premier League club Fulham, who had suggested that Rooke travel abroad to try to solve his chronic leg problem. He was sent to have an ultrasound of his hamstring and X-rays of his back and pelvis.

Then the doctor, renowned worldwide for his use of animal body fluids to help the repair of human muscles, appeared in his all-white uniform. The hamstring tear that looked to have ended Rooke's season five games after it begun was a seven centimetres long and the prognosis wasn't good. "He said my back was really bad, that it was a really bad hamstring and that he couldn't promise me anything."

The injection process began. In the first sitting, Rooke had about 15 put into his left hamstring and back.

"It was like he'd inject something, and then he'd come back to it … I think the first part was an anti-inflammatory type thing and the second part was the extract of calves' blood. It's like a protein that helps the muscle redevelop," Rooke said.

"The bit where you could feel the fluid going in and spreading was the bit where it hurt the most. Then it felt like a cross between a dead leg and a cramp. The actual injection bit doesn't take very long — about 10 or 15 minutes. After the first batch, it was sore for about two days, but after my last treatment, it took about 20 minutes to wear off."

Throughout his 10 days away, Rooke had more ultrasound and several consultations with a chiropractor, a podiatrist and a physiotherapist.

"The podiatrist that I saw had treated a few Australians but they were all superstars like Harry Kewell, Adam Scott and Craig Mottram. Then there was me. It was cool but a bit embarrassing." But the work was effective.

Rooke was prohibited from doing any leg weights when he got home, but after playing two games in the VFL in late August, he replaced the injured Matthew Egan a fortnight ago when Geelong smashed the Kangaroos in the first week of the finals. Should Geelong win the premiership with Rooke in its back line, he will have played eight matches for the season.

Naturally, Rooke's sense of confidence — in a quiet way — about his place in his football club is at an all-time high. The same goes for his enjoyment of the game and the life he needs to lead because he plays it, which hasn't always been a happy marriage.

"I'm sort of fitting footy into my life rather than the other way round," he said.

Rooke had shared houses with teammates Corey Enright, Steven King and Harley and lived alone in Ocean Grove for a period. Since then, he has set up in Geelong with an old mate from Casterton. He's not a footballer and it has made a difference. "It's been 18 months now and it's been awesome. I just love life so much more.

"Before then, footy was my No. 1 focus, and I don't know if it ever should be. In the past, I thought, 'I can't do that, I'm playing footy', and I missed out on so many things I probably shouldn't have."

In Rooke's case, the revelation has revealed itself in rather striking ways. He turned up to pre-season training looking like a biblical character with a flowing mane of hair and long moustache.

It was around the same time that he informed the Cats that he would now identify himself as Max instead of his given first name of Jarad. "All of a sudden, he was growing his hair long and he grew a beard — just things you wouldn't pick from him," Mooney said. "It's amazing to think where he was to where he is now. It's a transformation, I think."

Rooke recently has deferred the commerce course he had been persisting with out of a sense of obligation more than desire.

"I thought commerce was a good idea, but I don't know if it's me. I used to just like being outside, nature and plants and animals and stuff like that.

"Mum and Dad are both school teachers and I had a dream a couple of weeks ago that I was a school teacher," he said.

"I was talking to Tom Harley the other day and he was saying that everyone starts their lives, wherever they are, growing up in their environment. Then we all sort of come together and we change just to adapt to our new environment. But then when you get to a certain age, you probably end up going back to what you grew up as."

He grew up as a Jarad, but he did it begrudgingly. The fact that Maxwell was his middle name and the one that both his grandfathers go by made Max the obvious choice.

"I always thought about it, but I never had the courage to do anything about it. I never really liked Jarad and I got pretty frustrated, but that wasn't really the sole reason," Rooke said leadingly.

"It's sort of an experiment, in a way. I haven't really told anyone the real reason why."

Big pause.

"I don't know if I really want to do that."

For the time being at least, the only name that really matters in his world is Geelong.