Stringer should now be playing like Robbie Gray. He should be equally damaging and explosive on the ball as forward of it. But he isn’t.

The frustration at the Bulldogs was that despite what he said, the club felt they were keener than he was on making him a better player. He always had an excuse, just dog-ate-my-homework type fibs, but they were transparent.

Stringer left school as soon as he could, when he was about 15, halfway through high school. It was not for him. He knew football was ahead of him and that was where he would go. His dad’s successful dairy industry business was a plan beyond football.

Life moved along quickly. He was drafted, he got married, he had two kids. He was All Australian. He was playing for Australia. He split from his wife. He developed a gambling problem. He won a premiership. His ex-wife wrote of their personal life in the press. He moved to a new club. He is 23.

Most of us were finishing uni and backpacking in Europe by that age. We were allowed to fall and fail and be cringingly immature because we were immature and we were anonymous.

In a simplistic sense, Stringer’s trade to Essendon was seen as making him a scapegoat for ‘the hangover’. The idea was he was sacrificed to save the group, to redress a culture. The Bulldogs vehemently reject this suggestion but do not reject that he was sacrificed to improve a culture that doesn’t tolerate a lack of commitment and preparation.

Talent is as attractive as it is rare in football. The Bombers were not put off by what they heard because, as a club, especially one with their recent history, they knew to separate what people said from what they knew.

They did their own research and were not dissuaded. Stringer was an elite talent and they felt his failings were overstated. They believed they could manage him better. They spoke to their leaders about him before the talks about a trade went anywhere. Should they take him? What did they know? They met with him, each of them and on their own, and reported back to the club. They wanted him.

Hayden Skipworth coached Stringer when he was still a 17-year-old at the Bendigo Pioneers, and played a few games for Skipworth’s Bendigo Bombers, before he was drafted to the Bulldogs.

Skipworth is the Bombers midfield coach. He is Stringer's mentor at the club, working with him to straighten him out on the field and away from it. Thus far, Essendon have not seen evidence of the type of things that frustrated the Bulldogs.

He has been doing everything asked of him. He is living with his mum and dad but regularly sees his kids. He would doubtless rather not read about his life in the Herald Sun columns that his ex-wife is inexplicably hired to write, but he can do nothing about that. He has hired a counsellor to help him get on top of his gambling troubles.

He turned out in his first JLT game for Essendon with a bleached-blond man bun. It was an unwise styling choice, not just because blond man buns look daft but because, for a player at a new club trying to change a reputation and work hard, it looked frivolous. A few senior players cut him a look about the new do. He cut his hair the next day.

“Jake had arrived before I got here but, from what I have seen and what we have seen since he has been at Essendon, there have been no cut corners at training or when he is around the club,” said Essendon football manager Dan Richardson, who was hired from Richmond late last year.

“From what I see and what I am told, he is in a good place. He is open and honest with us and we have been given no reason to doubt anything. He is doing everything we have asked of him and could ask of him.

“Is there room for improvement on and off the field? Of course there is. But that is true of most players.”

Richardson had been at Richmond for a long time. He saw Dustin Martin as a young player too and understands how players mature and evolve at different rates.

“He is a likeable character Jake," he said. "He is didn’t come in here with a strut, he has come in and gone about his business. He knew he had to work to build relationships in a new club and earn respect in a new club and he has been doing that.”