Sometimes public impressions can be deceiving. Widely regarded as one of football's more rational coaches, Alan Richardson took stock of his performance towards the end of season 2016 and realised that too often he had lost emotional control.
Fearing that his temper was not only hurting his decision-making ability but also stunting the information flow in the coaches' box, Richardson embarked upon a solitary quest of self-improvement and self-awareness at the end of the season.
It was a journey that took him to India for the first time. In October, Richardson checked into an ashram in the foothills of the Himalayas, a retreat largely attended by students of yoga instruction, where the St Kilda coach lived on raw vegetables and vegan curries and studied meditation.
It was the most stark contrast imaginable from the Harvard leadership course he had undergone the previous year and a world away from the intriguing AFL trade period that was unfolding as he rose before dawn each day in a tiny and spartan room for classes that ran from 5.20am through until 7.30 at night.
Rishikesh, a city best known for its ashrams, yoga and meditation retreats, sits on the banks of the Ganges, a river considered to be holy. Richardson sought advice from the AFL's coaching guru Michael Poulton, who encouraged his quest, assuring him that the world's greatest coaches always sought to better understand themselves before they could truly understand others.
Richardson was a little disappointed in himself and the manner at times during the season in which he had reacted in the coaches' box to tight match-day situations and to suggestions from his assistant coaches.
"I've listened back and thought I could have performed better," he admitted. "You're not going to get good information if you're emotional and irrational and therefore your team around you is walking on eggshells.
"As a leader during the week, prior to the season and during game day you need to make important decisions and I didn't want emotions to cloud that.
"Last year at Harvard was a more structured leadership program. This was about me being more aware of my emotions and the impact I have on other people and I need them also to be at their best."
Richardson, a massive fan of the positive, innovative style of Kevin Sheedy, has worked in coaches' boxes under head coaches ranging from Mick Malthouse to Peter Rohde to Rodney Eade, Matthew Knights, Brett Ratten and Ken Hinkley. He says carefully: "There were some who created a really good environment in the box where you knew your opinion was valued."
Richardson's assistants were only too aware of his harsh self-assessment. And they probably agreed with him, even though he was not a wall-puncher. He laughs now at the time he ordered Aaron Hamill out of the box with a whiteboard, angrily telling him to reinforce a certain set play to Josh Bruce. And at the end-of-season coaches' version of Mad Monday, he was presented with a rap version of a memorable match-day performance put together by the daughters of his defence coach Rohan Welsh, Shayla and Tiahn.
Meditation had been something he had dabbled with, but never truly committed to. "I was a reactive meditator not a proactive meditator," Richardson said. "I've touched on meditation and found it helpful but I want to get better at it and when I have the discipline to put the time aside it's very beneficial."
Am I sensing it? Yes I am. If we play our best footy I believe we play finals.
Having asked his personal assistant Julie Rackstraw to seek out a retreat renowned for its meditative practices as part of a wider two-week trip to India, neither could believe the all-inclusive cost of $400 – until the Saints coach moved into his room and tasted the food.
There were occasions Richardson admitted that he would jump on a motorbike and skip a philosophy class and instead head up into the mountains and behave like a regular tourist. And he did stay in touch with the big news though, most memorably sitting alongside a large and placid cow as he fervently sold the Saints to the departing Collingwood defender Nathan Brown.
And Richardson recalls departing acutely from his meditative state in a series of disbelieving conversations with his recruiting boss Tony Elshaug, looking to find a hidden nasty within Hawthorn's too-good-to-be-true offer of picks 23, 36 and its first pick in the 2017 national draft for the Saints' pick 10 and 68.
He returned from India inspired and with high hopes for 2017 and has headed to New Zealand with his players and fellow coaches for a specifically designed training camp, starting at an All-Blacks facility two hours east of Auckland, which will be run by a military contact.
"We're doing a lot of things right," he said, "and we're going to be a really good team, I've got no doubt about that ... when you miss out on finals by percentage, logically if you improve you give yourself every chance to play finals.
"Am I sensing it? Yes I am. If we play our best footy I believe we play finals."
St Kilda for the final three years of the Grant Thomas era and then under Ross Lyon's five won more games than any other club and Richardson likens his position now to that of Thomas during his time at the Saints. When asked why the club still never invites Thomas back, the current coach points out that he did invite him back to speak at Nick Riewoldt's milestone game this year.
"He [Thomas] was incredibly impressive when he spoke about Rooey – those two have an incredibly strong bond. I enjoy talking to Thommo and I'd like to think the team plays with the same spirit and energy they did under him.
"He took over when Rooey was a kid and when some good young kids were coming into the club and our paths here are not dissimilar."
Richardson says he enjoys his conversations with other coaches, although he avoids current AFL rivals with the exception of Port Adelaide's Ken Hinkley with whom he bached for his season there as coaching director in 2013 and remains close.
He marvels at the various differences between his brethren. He compares his post-match press conferences to Nathan Buckley's, pointing out that he uses those occasions to speak to St Kilda's members whereas, "I gather Bucks and I disagree on this – he apparently talks to his players".
Richardson prides himself on not being the sort of coach who places frustrated calls through to the AFL or its umpiring department. Saying that he can't help himself making a joke about a lost tape measure following the Saints' devastating loss to Hawthorn in Launceston in round four – "and they did admit the umpire got that one wrong!"
"I never worry about umpires and I never worry about skill errors," he adds. "What's the point of worrying about what you can't control." What does worry him? "People who go outside the plan," he says quickly. "And I can't stand selfishness, in life as in footy."
Although a lot went right for St Kilda in 2016 the club's record on the road remained an Achilles heel – an affliction most memorably portrayed when the cameras turned to Richardson and his assistants in the Adelaide Oval coaches' box after a thrashing from the Crows in early June.
"That was me questioning myself. Me challenging me. We got smashed and I was looking at me and asking myself the same questions our supporters were often asking ... 'who was on Eddie Betts?' "
Still, the Saints only lost three of their last 11 games after that shocker and Richardson has looked at tinkering with his coaching methods when the team travels outside Victoria next year. The first occasion comes in round two against West Coast.
"I've probably got to back off a little bit," he said. "Pretty much everything was heading the right way over the year but the interstate stuff was the wrong way. So we'll look at our preparation and I might have worried too much about them having no structure when they probably should be able to do the kind of things they do a night before a game in Melbourne.
"I was probably in their faces a bit much. Organising casual group things that we may not have needed. And as a group we need to get more resilient."
Life is changing for Richardson, now 51, as it is for St Kilda, which will head into 2017 without Riewoldt as captain – a mutual decision made by coach and player – for the first time in more than a decade.
Riewoldt is an expectant father again any day now and therefore unable to attend the New Zealand camp while Richardson's own two boys, Ben and Lachie, are heading to the end of their teenage years and have left school. Lachie had reported in with a positive progress report from schoolies on the Gold Coast on the day of this interview with Ben looking at overseas opportunities.
Nothing has surprised Richardson about senior coaching except for the demands upon his time and the plethora of meetings not all related to game day.
St Kilda has made giant cultural leaps since Matt Finnis and then Richardson came to the club. The team's ethos is unrecognisable from the time it attended a disastrous training camp in New Zealand in early 2011 when a group of players broke curfew in an incident involving alcohol and prescription medication. The team's star player and captaincy contender Jack Steven – one of the above – symbolises that transformation better than anyone.
Despite his meditative crusade and him proudly showing snaps of his prolific egg-laying chickens at his large home block in Melbourne's outer north-east; the coach is still not quite the new-age man.
But he is working on it, just as he is his meditation. Recently when Richardson and his coaches held a long meeting at the Linen House he asked Rackstraw, his assistant, not to bring him his customary cup of tea in front of his coaching team – rather he stepped out to get it so as not to be seen to be waited upon by his PA. Appearances can be deceptive.
"I have no illusions about the industry we are in and if we were to drop below expectations I would expect to carry that," Richardson said. "But I'm incredibly well supported by my coaches and the staff and this administration and I know they're backing me."