The AFL Players Association induction program ensures young players are prepared for the fish-bowl world they now inhabit. Emma Quayle sat in on this week's program.

THE right path starts here.

It's Tuesday morning, just after 9 o'clock. Inside an Albert Park meeting room a group of about 30 first-year footballers are watching former Essendon ruckman Steve Alessio call up a graph on a projector screen. It's the second day of the AFLPA's two-day induction camp for the league's newest players, and one of seven sessions they will have sat through by the end of it.

Alessio, the AFLPA's player development manager, is talking to the boys about alcohol, and he starts by asking a question: do AFL players drink more or less than the average 18-25-year old? There is silence for a few moments, and then the boys start talking among themselves. Probably a bit less, they agree. They're professional athletes in heavy training, after all.

Alessio calls up the graph and it shows that not only do AFL players drink a lot more than their general public peers during the spring and summer months, when they are on holiday and doing pre-season training, they drink more than them during winter too, while their season is in full swing.

''Does that surprise you?'' Alessio asks, and heads start to nod.

To see the competition's 123 new faces gathered in the same room last week, sitting in club-coloured clusters, emphasised how huge the turnover of players is, in any given year. Some will become champions and some will be gone sooner rather than later. In fact, the AFL's Jill Lindsay told the players in the opening address of the camp, about 15 per cent of them would be delisted nine months from now. Most will not do a thing wrong off the field, others will, and some have already found out what it's like to be in the newspapers for not-so-positive reasons. What also became clear during the camp was that becoming a drafted player does not just mean getting to play football for an AFL team. There is a lot of information to take in, a lot of things to remember and a lot the boys need to remember - starting right now.

In a session on cultural diversity, AFL consultant Frank Bassini talked the group through the league's vilification policy. If you say anything to any player about their sexual orientation, he said, you're in trouble, whether you're joking or not.

''Make no mistake,'' he said, ''you are entering a workplace, and no workplace has stood for that in more than 20 years.'' You can't slur someone because of an illness or disease, real or imputed, and nothing, he explained, was at the umpire's discretion: if one of them hears you jokingly slur your brother, you'll be referred to the AFL for counselling.

''All I want is for you to think,'' Bassini said. ''Not think like I do, but I want you to use that part of your brain.''

In the second half of the session, Bachar Houli explained his Muslim beliefs and told the group about when, as a 15-year-old in the under-16 Victorian team, he asked his roommates if they could turn down their music so that he could pray. He had stressed himself out about it in the lead-up, wondering how they would react, and instead they only asked him questions. ''That was a big turning point in my life,'' he told the players.

Telling his story, Harry O'Brien explained that he was born in Rio de Janiero, then paused. ''From there, the best way to sum me up is that I'm a human being,'' said the Collingwood player, urging the boys to wonder about every person they came across from here. ''If you're asked to do a clinic, don't just do the clinic,'' he said. ''Find out why you're doing it. Find out who the people you're helping are and how you're helping them.''

''Think'' was a word that kept coming up. So was ''proactive''. Both Jack Ziebell and Tyrone Vickery, in the same position as the draftees this time last year, told them to ask questions of their coaches and senior teammates. After breaking his leg midway through last year, after making the round-one North Melbourne side and staying there for 10 straight games, Ziebell felt convinced he could be doing more, that he could be getting back quicker, but learnt to listen to the conditioning staff. Vickery felt little pressure arriving at Richmond as a top-10 draft pick, but he did have some anxious moments. ''You have to be patient,'' said the young ruckman.

In a session on professionalism, the players brainstormed lists of what it meant to be professional - having a balanced lifestyle, being punctual, right down to wearing their club polo shirt at public events - and spoke about who at the 16 clubs seemed to them the most professional players. Those they spoke about they mentioned for their off-field deeds more than anything. ''There are a lot more things you can control off the field than on it,'' said Richmond rookie Dylan Grimes, explaining his group's choices.

In the session on drugs, the message was simple: before you put anything in your mouth, ask your club doctor about it, even if it's a cold-and-flu tablet. The players were talked through all the drugs that they will be tested for, and even how a drug test is done, right down to who is standing where in the room. Only five or six players raised their hands when asked if they had ever been tested before.

In the gambling session, the message was even more stark: bet on anything to do with any AFL game, ever, and you're in trouble. There was silence as David Schwarz told the group how a gambling addiction had seen him fritter away hundreds of thousands of dollars, lose friends and devastate his mother. There were questions - what's your relationship with your mum like now? Can you go past a TAB now and not want to go in? Do you have many mates left from footy? ''I have three,'' said the former Melbourne forward, ''and that's rubbish.''

The respect and responsibility session - a thorough 90-minute forum that is a starting point for a more extensive, league-wide program in which every player participates - was interactive, positive and frank. It began with Sue Clark and Luke Brennan, who run the program for the AFL, asking the boys how they think footballers are perceived by women and the general community. Rich, well-known, sleazebags, bulletproof, good bodies and uneducated, are among the suggestions.

''What's the truth? How do you see yourselves?'' asks Clark. ''Hard working,'' said one player. ''A normal bloke,'' said another, the session largely about perception, and understanding that the choices the players make will have direct consequences on how they are perceived.

They were shown statistics detailing violence perpetuated against women, and they discussed what the impact of that violence might be. They spoke of a step-by-step scenario of a night out, discussing what the word ''consent'' means.

In Alessio's session on alcohol, the boys talk about what binge drinking is, about identifying how many drinks it takes them to slide from tipsy to drunk, about looking after their mates when one of them has had too much to drink and about the sorts of things they can do before they go out - drinking water, having a good meal, planning how they'll get home - to make sure it is a sensible night. When an AFL player gets into trouble, Alessio reminds them, alcohol is usually a factor. There was plenty more to take in, and the camp was simply a start.

''It shows that you can't be ignorant, that you have to think about every little thing that you do,'' said Adelaide ruckman James Craig, and Andrew Hooper, a Western Bulldogs rookie, agreed.

''It's not good enough to say, 'I didn't know', because now we do,'' he said. ''We've been told how it is and we're the ones who have to put it in place and make the most of the chance we have.''