AFL’s walking headline Bailey Smith has opened up on his emotional departure from the Western Bulldogs and how he spiralled after rupturing his ACL.

Smith is currently at the centre of a media storm following his controversial (and now deleted) social media post about “nose beers”.

The 24-year-old has been cautioned by the AFL for the post and the league has told Geelong that their superstar recruit - in 7NEWS chief AFL reporter Mitch Cleary’s words - “is on his last warning”.

It’s the latest in a series of indiscretions by Smith, and several media figures have been highly critical of his behaviour due to the fact he is a role model for many and that he was referencing cocaine use.

Smith is a complex character, however. He seems to crave the spotlight but has also shunned it wile battling mental heal issues.

He said when he was recovering from injury and the trade rumours swirled, mentally he became “f***** up”.

“My (Bulldogs) teammates ended up sort of ... resenting me, I suppose, with all the talk of me moving (clubs),” Smith told the Real Stuff podcast.

“I really fell into a bad spiral (after my ACL injury in 2023) ... I didn’t have the mask of footy and all that sort of stuff to really distract me about what was going on internally ... I went through a breakup.

“That’s when you look inwards and realise, ‘Sh**, I’m pretty f***** up, I need to sort my sh** out’.

“I got into some bad ways going out flat out after my knee, and getting on the piss and being an idiot, which we all do, but that’s my coping mechanism.

“I really had to look inward and that’s when I found out that f***, there’s nothing much to look inward here, other than a bit of a s*** storm. I’ve worked on myself a lot.”

Smith said it was a tough and “scary” period.

“Especially when you’ve got the media sort of burning some of your relationships, even though they shouldn’t be burned, and continue to be burnt,” he said.

He said he believed the media should wait for the trade period before discussing players who could be heading to a rival club (to help protect the player).

“I lost a lot relationships over something that I literally didn’t have much control over,” he said.

“I wasn’t really at the club too much, I sort of trained on my own for about 10 or 12 weeks and got my own physio.

“We thought it was better for both parties, which was also kind of weird again, to just go ... and do that sort of stuff.

“But I got it done and I’m glad ... there were lots of times there where I didn’t think I was probably going to get through it because it was f***ing scary.

“Like, I’ve already had this bloody knee and I’ve got to get back to playing footy. It’s like, is this ever going to happen? I’ve just got this f***ing mountain to climb to get there. But then you learn to sort of broaden your support network ... and develop the tools to put one foot in front of the other.”

He said “it was a lonely, sh**ty period” and he suffered from panic attacks and needed “intensive” professional help.

“I was there for like six weeks, like f***ing working on my sh** every day, meditating and seeing psychs. And I think it gets demonised. You’re going to seek professional help and it’s either weak or you’re a fruit loop or something,” he said.

“But it really helped me, finding help and understanding that it’s not ... you’re not doing it alone, there’s actually people there to help you. My family, or professional help.

“I used to think, I’m not going to a psychologist and talking about my f***ing feelings. It’s not like that. Actually I found a really good one where I was more proactive.”

The famous fitness fanatic — who has more the 370,000 followers on Instagram, also discussed body image.

“It’s about not attaching self-worth with how I look. It’s hard, because I get this recognition for how you look and Instagram following for how I look, not football initially per se,” he said.

“It’s hard not to attach your identity to that and self-worth and worry about how many abs you’ve got and all that sort of bullsh**.

“It got a bit poisoned by feeling like I was doing it to live up to the expectations of others and not because I loved fitness and exercise.”