Far from the roar of the SCG, former AFL player Brandon Jack has found peace leaving selfies with young footy fans behind.

Instead, the son of rugby league great Garry Jack and brother of ex-Sydney Swans star Kieren has been visiting bookstores around Australia, signing copies of his debut novel Pissants.

“I’ve had moments where I’ve felt like, ‘yeah, this is more enjoyable to me than football ever was,’” Jack tells AAP.

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Looking back, his five-year, 28-game AFL career was not so much the realisation of a childhood dream as a period of intense anxiety.

“I had five years kind of being on the fringe; of being in the team, out of the team, of resenting the team for not being in it,” he says.

“Post-footy and seeing a psychologist for a long time, I realised there’s this fear of, ‘am I good enough?’

“I was continually just told, ‘no, no, no.’ That did something to me that I don’t think I reconciled or realised until years later.”

Those feelings of rejection are at the heart of Pissants, which details the misadventures of a crew of rowdy AFL players who can’t find what it takes to win the approval of coaches, teammates and fans.

With stardom painfully close but never within reach, the group self-medicate with drugs, alcohol and a shared twisted sense of humour.

While Pissants is a work of fiction, the inspiration is obvious.

“The book is almost like different versions of me at different points in my life communicating with each other,” Jack says.

Those voices will be familiar to those who read Jack’s memoir 28, in which he detailed his attempts to numb the pain of an unsuccessful and unsatisfying footy career with alcohol.

But the adage ‘comedy equals tragedy plus time’ rings true in the case of Pissants, where the absurdity of life in the AFL system is a source of humour above all else.

In a series of uncomfortable interactions, players find themselves telling journalists, coaches and club psychologists what they want to hear, while thinking and feeling something completely different.

The authenticity will appeal to footy fans sick of hearing about players ‘taking things one week at a time’.

“I hate the whole media training thing that happened in footy - I really do,” Jack says.

“I think it deprived us of so many opportunities to have interesting characters.”

Jack admits there was nothing interesting about the front he presented during his playing days.

“The way we were at the Swans was club-first: you are not to stand out. So I didn’t really have a personality externally.

“I did a lot of writing but I would never share it. I was always very secretive with my stuff.”

There were fears of standing out and concerns he’d be seen as uncommitted.

“As a football player, your primary purpose is to play football and to win games for your team.

“In my third year, when I was worried about my contract, I stopped going to uni part-time because I didn’t want anything to be a distraction, or for people to think I was distracted.”

Like the characters in Pissants, Jack floundered in footy purgatory, unable to win respect in the game but feeling forbidden from finding an identity outside it.

Much has changed for him since leaving the Swans in 2017 and the 31-year-old is pleased to see footy is moving forward too.

The likes of Bailey Smith and Jack Ginnivan lead a new breed of AFL players praised by fans, media pundits and sponsors for showing their personalities.

But one thing remains the same.

“It’s a lot easier to be who you are if you’re a successful player,” Jack says.

Those not performing well rarely speak publicly - and if they do, it’s typically to play the clown.

“One of my least favourite things is when a footy player who didn’t have a very successful career comes out and just takes the absolute piss out of himself and that becomes their kind of schtick,” Jack says.

“I’ve been there and it’s f***ing tough. It hurts you deeply.”

He suspects some players still face the struggles depicted in Pissants.

“At every club, there are five or six guys who are in this spot and I can just so clearly picture them in someone’s garage drinking beers while the senior game is on because they just don’t want to watch it.”

Having explored the complexity of his feelings about football across two books, Jack is ready to move on.

He is working on a series of short stories that have nothing to do with sport and is excited to see where writing takes him.

“It’ll be interesting to see when the switch sort of flicks from ‘football player turned writer’ to just ‘writer’. That would be nice,” Jack says.

“But I’m not going to crucify myself waiting for it to happen. It’ll happen eventually.”