Beloved AFL great Callan Ward has shared the grim details of his final days at the Western Bulldogs before his shock move to the GWS Giants.

Ward, 35, left the Bulldogs at the end of 2011 to join the GWS Giants in their inaugural season in the AFL.

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Callan Ward on his final day at the Bulldogs.

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Ward — who retired this year after suffering a shattering ACL injury in Round 12 — recalled his last game with the Bulldogs on Channel 7’s Unfiltered.

“It’s an unbelievably emotional game. The fans are absolutely with you until they’re not. Fremantle, last game as a Dog, the boos ... OK, not a Dog anymore,” said gun interviewer Hamish McLachlan.

”I’ve never been booed in my life to start with, and I felt like I had a good rapport with a lot of the Dogs members and fans, and I’d always got on well with them,” Ward said on Unfiltered.

“I hadn’t announced by then that I was leaving, but I think everybody knew that I was leaving, especially the Dogs people.

“It wasn’t an enjoyable experience. I feel sorry for the guys that actually get booed every week. My mum hated it. I didn’t play that well that day, but I think the umpires noticed Because I got two Brownlow votes that game.”

Then a meeting was called a couple of days later which blindsided Ward and his teammates.

“So we obviously played, didn’t play in the finals (that year), so we had a big Saturday and a big Sunday, and everyone got a text message on the Monday morning, mad Monday, morning at 7am or something,” Ward revealed.

“They said everybody is expected at the club at 8am. So nobody knew what it was. Everyone’s just like, we have to get there, because it’s obviously serious.

“We all got there, you know, rolling into the meeting room, and James Fantasia (the club’s former football who resigned in 2013) is like, ‘Wardy, up. Explain to the boys what’s going on.’ And the whole club was there, like, all the playing group, the whole club, and I’m panicking. I’m like, can hardly breathe.

“And I get up there and I have to tell them that I’m going to the Giants for five years. So I did not even know where to start ... I stumbled my way through, like a minute chat or whatever it was, and said, ‘I’m leaving ... I’m going for five years. I’ve taken the Giants offer. I’ve loved playing here. Thanks, boys,’ whatever it was.

“Then, when I sat down in my seat, because everyone had had their own seats, I sat down in the second row in my seat, and James Fantasia goes, ‘What are you doing? Get out of here.’

“So I had to get up .... That was my last time in a Bulldogs meeting. I met the boys at the pub at 10am.”

McLachlan said it was a “very final’ departure.

“Looking back, it was actually more funny than anything else. Like, even when James said ‘get out’, I heard a lot of laughs from the playing group. So it’s more like humorous than anything else.”

Ward said he made the decision to join the Giants after they offered him a “life-changing” offer.

“You didn’t even know there was a new team coming into the competition,” McLachlan said.

Head here to watch Unfiltered free and on-demand on 7plus

“Yeah, speaking about being naive ... (My manager) just turned up to my house, and he had a sheet of paper with all these names on it, and there were three names circled, and it was myself, Dale Thomas and Dayne Beams, I’m pretty sure, was the third one.

“He said there’s a new team coming into the competition ... they didn’t have a name back then. And he said, these are the players they’re interested in and I was like, ‘Why would they be interested in me?’.

“Like, I was a fourth year. I wasn’t. I was playing OK, but I wasn’t a gun. I was still learning how to play AFL football and how to be a professional footballer. And I was so young, so I was so surprised by that and, as you said, I didn’t even know there was a new team coming into the competition.”

The Giants offer was incredible and Ward informed the Dogs about it, but they didn’t change their offer.

The Giants also wanted Ward to be captain, but Ward’s initial response to that was “no way”.

“I think they saw leadership qualities in me for some reason ....,” he said.

“Anytime I was invited into the leadership group with the Dogs, which was only once or twice with some of the young boys, I’d just not go. I just like avoid it all completely because I just didn’t want to speak in front of the group. I didn’t want to be seen or try and do any leadership stuff. I dunno, I just didn’t want to do it.”

Ward also revealed he had a stutter when he was a child and had a fear of public speaking.

He said the Giants offer was “five or six times” what he was on at the Bulldogs, but he was determined to stay in Melbourne because he was “so comfortable”.

“I’ve got all my family in Melbourne. Yeah, my friends here. I love Melbourne. I love the Western Bulldogs anyway ... as the months progressed I was kind of speaking to a few people about it, like my family and friends, and I was thinking about it a little bit but at the same time, like, not really.

Head here to watch Unfiltered free and on-demand on 7plus

“And then they upped the offer a little bit, I think, by 100 grand a few months later. And then I think it was maybe 700 (thousand) a year and I’m thinking maybe I should ...

“Like, 700 compared to what the Dogs offered me, which was less than half that. And I was kind of like, it’s a good opportunity. I can come out of my shell a bit in a new in a new state ... sounds like the club’s awesome, they’ve got some really good draft picks.

“So at 700 a year, I was like, money is a big factor here. That is life changing for me. Would never dream of being on that much as an AFL footballer or doing anything in my life. And then, so in my head, I think at that stage, I was like, I’m gonna go.

“And then I got a text message a week later saying they’ve upped offer by 100 grand a year. So I was like, I was going (anyway). I didn’t tell them I was going, but I was gonna go for 700 so they upped it. So now I’m definitely going ....”