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Remove items from your saved list<\/a> to add more.<\/p>\n AAA<\/p>\n Since bowing five years ago to hamstrings he swears are made of paper, Easton Wood hasn\u2019t deliberately distanced himself from football. Yet in metaphorically passing the baton to wife Tiff he\u2019s carried on being a good teammate, and felt the lifting of a guilt known to many professional sportspeople.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be successful as an athlete you have to be inherently selfish, and there\u2019s a cost to that,\u201d the 36-year-old says. \u201cTiff was always gracious knowing that football had to come first \u2026 so many times she went to weddings on her own. I was always really grateful for the support she gave me, but I always felt there was a debt too.\u201d<\/p>\n They were at school together but didn\u2019t get together until their early 20s, by which time Tiff was already a seasoned traveller. While her future husband was tackling the first of his 14 seasons at Whitten Oval, she spent a gap year in Asia and living in London. A book in the works draws on a traumatic experience in Africa, exploring stress, anxiety and early motherhood.<\/p>\n When they teamed up a commitment was made to spend a month at the end of every season travelling somewhere neither had been. \u201cI\u2019d been to Bali and America \u2013 which was big for a Camperdown boy! \u2013 but Tiff had been everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n Lonely Planet guide in hand, they explored Madagascar one year, Turkey and Jordon another, Cuba and Mexico, Chile and Brazil, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland.<\/p>\n Wood thinks his wife has a shark-like trait \u2013 \u201cshe has to keep moving forward\u201d. Living in an AFL COVID-19 hub, with daughter Tilly not yet one and pregnant with Freddy, Tiff Wood leaned on her consulting and marketing background and started her own business. She taught herself to code, created a mother and baby\u2019s matching swimwear brand, sold out the first run, then packaged it up and sold the business. \u201cIt was like her own best uni course.\u201d<\/p>\n At the end of 2021 they made a family decision to retire from football with a year still to run<\/a> on his contract. He\u2019d endured three hamstring injuries that season, taking his career tally into the 20s.<\/p>\n Working with Bulldogs psychologist Lisa Stevens on the delicate dance between commitment and cost, Wood realised he was done. \u201cSo we made a call to end it, and went and lived in Bali for five months.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Article They rented a villa in Canggu, and while Tiff worked on transforming her consulting business into 10-person-strong content creation agency Loft Social, Easton shifted down a few gears. \u201cThe kids alternated in daycare so I\u2019d be one-on-one with either of them. Otherwise I\u2019d go gym, cruise, cafe, decompress.\u201d<\/p>\n When, after a few months, he found himself getting bored, it was a relief. \u201cI was like, \u2018Oh, I\u2019ve got space again!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n He played a game of Monday night basketball with people he\u2019d never met, and was asked back for a drink at \u201cThe Bench\u201d afterwards. \u201cI thought it must have been a gastropub \u2013 it was a bench on the road outside a mart!\u201d There were eight of them; eight of the coldest, best beers of his life later he\u2019d made eight new mates and his Monday nights were filled.<\/p>\n Freddy won\u2019t remember the sabbatical, but his father will forever cherish plonking him on a scooter and heading off into the rice fields, his little boy yelling, \u201cTuck! Tuck! Tuck!\u201d each time a truck rumbled past.<\/p>\n He laughs now at the rose-coloured glasses the experience imbued, leading to the Woods buying a block with visions of splitting their time between their lifelong and new homes. \u201cI don\u2019t know what we were thinking!\u201d<\/p>\n Back in Australia, the next phase gathered pace. Home dad during the week, he fulfilled a promise to his oldest mate to play a game of cricket with Pomborneit, and stayed for two seasons. He thought he\u2019d put shoulder, ankle and wrist reconstructions behind him, but the latter rendered him a shadow of the teenager who earned a cricket and football scholarship and bowled so often and fast he suffered back stress fractures in Year 12. In comeback mode, a bowler\u2019s all-important wrist abandoned him.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n \u201cI thought it would be just time and rhythm, but I got worse \u2013 and worse, and worse! I bowled a 10-ball over, got the yips completely \u2013 the wides were going everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n After a second waist-high full toss, which should mean disqualification from bowling for the rest of the innings, he copped the worst sledge of his sporting life.<\/p>\n \u201cThe batsman reminded the umpire I should be off, and he said, \u2018It\u2019s OK \u2013 it wasn\u2019t dangerous!\u2019 I was so offended. I didn\u2019t use any of my learnings from my entire career, I just completely crumbled and said, \u2018Ah, $%@! it, I\u2019m never playing again!\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Wood knew he wasn\u2019t going to work in football, but what to do? He enjoys building relationships and is a good communicator. Tiff suggested he spend some time at Loft to get an idea how an office works. His trophy haul now includes an All-Australian jacket, Charles Sutton and AFL premiership medals, and a sparkly blue duck awarded to Loft\u2019s 2022 Social Intern of the Year (he may have been the only contender).<\/p>\n He landed at boutique recruitment firm Hassett Group, working across accounting and finance and learning plenty. He likes their ethos of going \u201ca mile wide but three inches deep\u201d, a broad lens that can see him bounce from clients in childcare to chemical manufacturing to agriculture to financial services.<\/p>\n He likes that it shares football\u2019s bipolar rhythm, where one day can be champagne and celebration and the next doom and gloom. \u201cYou can\u2019t control outcome, which is the same as footy \u2013 you can only control process. So invest in the process and then give yourself over to whatever the outcome is.\u201d<\/p>\n Editor’s pick The Woods have followed family and close mates to Geelong, and are revelling in a new, tight-knit community of young parents within walking distance of their local primary school. Behind a high fence on a busy road, they live with a trio of chooks named Chickeny, Aimme and Pearl who\u2019ve taken over the front garden, and a border collie named Murphy \u2013 after Bob of course, alongside whom he famously hoisted the 2016 premiership cup<\/a>.<\/p>\n He doesn\u2019t miss having the platform football afforded him, but is happy he took a late-career stance against the AFL\u2019s hypocrisy around gambling<\/a> after yet another compulsory player education session proved one box-ticking exercise too many.<\/p>\n \u201cI was just sitting there fuming \u2013 you\u2019re telling us how dangerous this is, and you\u2019re also promoting the proliferation and growth of this industry? But hey, it\u2019s no good, don\u2019t do it!\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s proud, too, of Tiff speaking about the body dysmorphia she struggled with while being objectified as a footballer\u2019s partner. Seeing how she naturally disarms people, owns every room she enters, and especially how young girls idolise her, his pride swells.<\/p>\n Editor’s pick \u201cThrough the football period it was always difficult for her \u2013 she\u2019s very strong-willed and driven, but in that football environment she was treated as a subsidiary of me and my success. So this change in her level of confidence and of her being where she\u2019s always viewed herself, that\u2019s very cool. She\u2019s a weapon.\u201d<\/p>\n In Tilly and Freddy\u2019s generation he hopes for a disconnect from the \u201cbrain soup\u201d of social media and is already sensing a subtle shift back to analogue.<\/p>\n He understands the football media\u2019s cycle, its need to be bipolar to hold attention, but views the Bulldogs\u2019 first half of 2026 as further proof of the grim place we\u2019re at.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter four weeks it was, \u2018We\u2019re gunna win the flag!\u2019 Four weeks later it was, \u2018We\u2019re done.\u2019 Neither were true. I think we\u2019re getting dumber.\u201d<\/p>\n The 10-year premiership reunion was a joyous love-in, and he was touched at the effort people made \u2013 Josh Dunkley, Dale Morris and 2016 property steward Jayden Shea flew down from Brisbane, Jake Stringer<\/a> came from Sydney, Melbourne coach Steven King<\/a> was there, and others like Caleb Daniel and Jack Macrae who no longer wear red, white and blue.<\/p>\n \u201cWithin 30 seconds it was 2016 again. It\u2019s really special to have a stamp in time to come back to.\u201d<\/p>\n He idolises older brother McLeod, an Australian Army lieutenant colonel whose star is rising, and ignored another hammy tweak in June to fulfil duties as playing-coach of McLeod\u2019s Norforce football team at the annual Barunga Festival, east of Katherine. \u201cI jogged around.\u201d<\/p>\n He watches the Dogs with great interest, and with the empathy that marked his rise to the captaincy when Murphy went down early in 2016. Watching Adelaide pile on goal after goal in round 14 he felt for the players, wondering how they would feel and respond in the ensuing days. \u201cI go more to the people than the outcomes.\u201d<\/p>\n Related Article He likes that he can put football down now and come back to it later. \u201cOr not.\u201d<\/p>\n He went straight from school into a professional sporting environment and misses the relationships and the purpose. \u201cThat razor-sharp, moment-to-moment, decision-to-decision world where you wake up and know exactly what you\u2019re doing and why. That was invigorating.\u201d<\/p>\n He misses the butterflies and the message they carried \u2013 that this could be the best game of your life, or the worst, but most often somewhere in between.<\/p>\n \u201cI miss that alive feeling of playing your hand, and just being all in. You don\u2019t know what you\u2019re going to get, and you say, \u2019All right, what are you made of? Let\u2019s go!\u201d<\/p>\n The Woods are tackling life after football the same way. Come future Bulldogs\u2019 premiership reunions, where might they be? \u201cHopefully travelling.\u201d<\/p>\n Keep up to date with the best AFL coverage in the country. Sign up for the Real Footy newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n Save<\/p>\n You have reached your maximum number of saved items.<\/p>\n![\"Former](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/447515ace6d21dbe20d8b1ec853bbfe8f9a26637.jpeg\")
Former Western Bulldogs captain Easton Wood, 10 years on from the Dogs\u2019 flag and five years since he hung up the boots. With his wife Tiff, kids Tilly and Freddy, dog Murphy (named after Bob), and their three chickens (Chickeny, Aimme and Pearl. Jason South<\/p>\n![\"Bulldogs](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/3990553eac6f75062b70533118efcb07d79d2168.jpeg\")
Bulldogs premiership captain Easton Wood celebrating the 2016 premiership.Scott Barbour<\/p>\n![\"Zak](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/1781690179_344_f8b0f74dcb9ccff87299870b89088256d47d1a8e.jpeg\")
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Easton Wood (right) lifts the 2016 premiership cup with injured teammate Bob Murphy.Joe Armao<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/5d56163d8c4782db33a173b4c980dd2c5c8320be.jpeg\")
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