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“I spent a lot of time off the paddock and football careers are relatively short. I needed to make sure I had everything in place to make sure I could have the opportunity to have the impact I wanted and that was part of the decision to me coming here.

“I am very grateful and appreciative of my family’s history in football both at Essendon Football Club and the Melbourne Football Club,with the time that Neale spent there,and with South Melbourne and the Sydney Football Club that my uncles and father had a part in. Obviously I’m very realistic about the impact that they have had there but also there are things that I need to achieve in the game.”

Daniher said it was the years of the same groin injury that first planted the seed in him that he needed a change.

“Going off my history I hadn’t had the opportunity to get out on the paddock and was often breaking down in a similar fashion. That was beginning to take a toll,the fact that I couldn’t achieve what I wanted to achieve on the field. Then over time the same things kept arising and kept happening and that all ultimately led to the idea that a new environment might be part of the solution,” he said.

“It’s been really important to me to be able to get out on the track. I have really enjoyed training and trying to work on my game,which is something I haven’t done much of in the past. It’s not the most enjoyable process going to work and doing a job you are not really meant to be doing[injury rehabilitation].

Joe Daniher during his final match at Essendon.Credit:Getty Images

“It was the back end of last year,or just after the season ended,that I started to feel really good and got some good work in,which is really important to me. So I look back and thank those people[at Essendon],who put in a lot of hard work,and the people I am still working with today.”

Daniher largely remained silent about his motivations for the Sydney trade and thenthe move to Brisbane, saying it was a multi-layered issue but that escaping football-obsessed Melbourne had been overstated as a contributing factor.

“I think there has been an element of a narrative written for me,as opposed to being the truth or closer to the truth anyway. There were certainly elements of the decision where I needed to be testing myself,and getting out of my comfort zone,and that was certainly going to be part of my growth in getting me where I wanted to get to,” Daniher said.

“It was not a huge sway for me to get out of[Melbourne].”

Daniher admitted he felt a degree of indebtedness to Essendon,to repay the people and the club who invested time in getting his body right,but also felt that for his growth as a player,he needed to leave the Bombers.

“Obviously you don’t take a decision that will impact your career as big as this lightly,you have to put all the facts and thoughts in one place and slowly decipher through them and add up what is personally in my best interest and work forward from that. There are a lot of factors that come into that decision,” he said.

“Some are part of the game,some are outside of the game,some are to do with training,some are to do with games,some are to do with the way you want your life to look in years to come. All of those factors added up and led me to Brisbane being the place.

“The first point of call for me now is to have a real impact at the Brisbane Lions,and my new teammates here. The first real challenge for me is to really help the guys around me and help them improve and that will help the football club.”

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