Fair to say the boys had a laugh when I told them I’d be spending our four-day break with the coach.

For a lot of the guys, it’s their last chance to get away from footy before the season starts, but for me it was time to make good on a five-year promise.

Ever since Richo came to the footy club, we’ve talked about a trip to my home state of Tasmania to see what all the hype’s about.

We flew down together on Saturday morning and met my dad Squizzy at the airport – everyone calls him Squizzy, but no-one really knows why.

I guess it’s like me with Jimmy – no-one really knows my actual name’s Jamie because everyone just calls me Jimmy.

READ: Jimmy Webster: Larrikinism, laughter & loyalty

From there, we swung past my family home to grab some gear and headed straight for the bush.

My mate Fergie reckons he owns half of Tassie, which probably isn’t too far off.

His family has owned a massive farm north of Hobart for seven generations, and they’ve got about 20,000 acres now. It’s been a working farm for about 200 years and there are shearing sheds built in the 1830s.

But the best thing about Fergie’s is it’s the perfect place to escape.

I’m really lucky, I get to go there for about three weeks after every footy season to help out around the farm, but also just to get away from footy and forget about it all for a bit.

And that was pretty much the idea with Richo as well, just to get into the outdoors and away from all the pressure of an AFL footy club.

The scenery down on the farm is pretty amazing, and it’s not hard to forget about the business of Melbourne.

Richo lives on a little bit of property and enjoys his fishing and camping, but I think he was even taken back by the place.

Day one we got straight into it and did some clay bird shooting.

I’ve seen some pretty shithouse shooting in my time, but Richo took it to another level when we got the clay birds out.

He was way off. We were all in stitches, he was just absolutely putrid! But it was good to see him let his hair down.

It was just good to get away and not have footy to think about – there actually wasn’t even that much footy talk at all.

He was way more interested to see what I do away from the game, how we live and how the farm operates.

A lot of people don’t realise how much work farmers have to put in just to keep things going, and it was a massive eye-opener for Richo to hear about how it all works.

The next test for Richo was in the shearing sheds, and that was probably one of the funniest things I’ve ever seen.

The shear-piece you shear with is bloody sharp, so it’s actually pretty easy to nick the sheep if you don’t know what you’re doing.

And like the shooting, Richo had close to zero idea.

He got the sweats after about three seconds he was that nervous.

I took one look at his sheep and the little fella was sweating even harder than Richo, so I had to get in there and help him out.

Honestly, he was a long way off with the shooting and the shearing, but the weekend reminded me how much the coach cares about us as blokes.

It’s probably his biggest quality in that he genuinely cares about his players.

He’s been a massive support for me in my time at the club and helped get the best out of me.

Richo’s been at so many footy clubs and been coaching for so long, I used to think he’d seen just about everything and wouldn’t ever get too flustered.

Put a pair of shears in his hands though, different story.