Nat Fyfe’s insatiable curiosity and scepticism used to drive his teachers up the wall but it was a bad attitude that threatened to cruel his AFL dream before it even began.

Fyfe on Monday night won the Brownlow Medal, for the second time, to become just the 15th player in VFL/AFL history to win the prestigious award on multiple occasions.

So how was it possible that a player of such immense talent was stuck in the Aquinas College thirds in year 11?

Fyfe’s smaller and skinnier stature convinced the coaches to put him in the Aquinas seconds team.

But he was eventually relegated to the thirds after making his displeasure at missing the first team obvious.

Fyfe was frustrated in the seconds and felt hard done by.

His mum Christine used to make the four-hour drive from Lake Grace every week to watch her son play.

But Fyfe’s attitude deteriorated to the point where Christine threatened not to come anymore.

“He just tried to see how many one-handed marks he could take,” Christine told Docker Mag in 2014.

“He wasn’t there to be serious because, in his mind, no one else was. It was inferior footy to him.”

His mum’s threat was just the tonic Fyfe needed.

“That was pretty tough to hear,” Fyfe said.

“When she said that to me, it was a tough pill to swallow.

“I was still in that stage when I thought I deserved to be playing in the first team and I was getting hard done by, so to hear that on top of everything it was a lot to handle.

“Once I really wrapped my head around it, that’s when I decided I needed an attitude change.”

At the start of year 12 in 2008, Fyfe missed selection for an Aquinas football tour to Melbourne.

Fyfe swallowed his pride, walked into the office of first-team coach Jamie Lockyer and asked what he needed to change.

In that moment Lockyer sensed Fyfe’s attitude had finally changed and he gave the youngster a spot on the trip.

Fyfe credits that football tour as the kick-start of his glittering career.

“He (Lockyer) told me about my attitude and how I needed to raise my intent to work hard and develop and really fit in as part of the team,” Fyfe told Docker Mag.

“It took me a while to change my mindset from, ‘These guys have got it wrong’ to ‘I actually have to change a few things to get back to where I was’.

“Once I made that attitude shift, that I didn’t deserve to be in the team, that I had to earn my way back into the team, it set the path out clearly for me.”

Fyfe shone for the Aquinas firsts from that point and was snared by Fremantle with pick No.20 in the 2009 national draft.

The 28-year-old won his first Brownlow in 2015 and was appointed captain in 2017.

Fyfe is one of the deepest thinkers in the AFL, with his spirituality and quest for happiness a breath of fresh air.

But his search for answers didn’t always go down well in high school.

“When I was younger going through school, I had a lot of behavioural issues because I was constantly curious and healthily sceptical about everything that was happening,” Fyfe told the AFLPA Captain’s Call podcast last year.

“What are you teaching me that’s relevant? What are we doing in football that’s worthwhile? And how can we get better?

“As a misunderstood kid I wasn’t perfect but it was often seen as being cocky, or as being probing or disrespectful.

“But really I was just in the business of improving myself and improve what I was doing and make sure we were dong something for a worthwhile reason.”

Fyfe credits his parents for teaching him to have that sense of curiosity.

And he was able to find others within the Dockers to nurture those sort of traits.

“Once I got into the AFL system, I started to latch onto people who were doing things slightly different,” Fyfe said.

“Luke McPharlin was a player who was forging his own path intellectually.

“Brett Kirk is someone who bounced into the club on a rainbow and seemed to have a different take on the world to everyone else, so I was always going to gravitate towards that, and started to celebrate the uniqueness I had in myself.”

Fyfe has already enjoyed remarkable individual success but it’s team glory that he craves the most.

The 173-game veteran is doing everything possible to help Fremantle win their maiden premiership.

But he hasn’t lost sight of the need for balance.

Fyfe is a qualified helicopter pilot, a keen surfer, and has completed a Masters in business management.

The star midfielder also makes the most of his holidays by travelling overseas – with South America the next on his list.

It’s through travel that Fyfe refuels his mind.

“I found you can get to stages here in the middle of the footy season where the scrutiny and the bubble just encapsulates you,” he said.

“You can walk down the street and think the whole world has their eyeballs on you.

“What getting overseas does for me is relieve that built-up mental pressure.

“I can head out into the world like every regular human and live a normal life and get a real balance, mixing with other cultures and just fuel the system right back up to the top.

“I’m always training but towards the back end when my fuel tank starts to get full, the motivation and excitement to get back and continue the work here is fiercely hot.”

The Dockers are still without a coach and chief executive.

But, in Fyfe, they have a leader they can rely on.