• Enjoy the footy, scream your head off. That release costs you nothing and it's not the problem.

• Notice the gap between loud and quiet you. Fine at full volume around a crowd but silent one-on-one is a warning sign, not proof you're coping.

• Say the smaller true things before you need to say the big one. Tell someone you had a rough day before you're the bloke who's had a rough eighteen months.

• Stop reading a quiet mate as a fine mate. The one who's gone quiet, stopped calling back, started saying "just tired," is the one who needs checking on.

• Recover fast, don't just stay consistent. Feeling the wheels wobble and saying something before Thursday beats white-knuckling it for six months.

• Pick one person and say the real sentence. Not the version you laugh off straight after, the one you let sit there uncomfortably.

• Screaming at a screen doesn't invite anyone in. Saying "I'm not okay" opens a door someone can actually walk through.

• Build the habit before you're in a hole. Letting people see you early is maintenance, not an emergency measure.

• If it's more than a rough patch, call someone properly. Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, both running around the clock.

AFL Finals and Men's Mental Health: The Outlet Gap

On the socially acceptable outlet blokes get every finals series, and the one sentence most of us never learn to say.

The siren goes, the ball is thrown up, and ninety thousand people lose their minds in the same half second. I'm on my feet. I'm yelling at an umpire who will never hear me, calling him something I'd never say in front of my kids, and for 120 minutes I am pure, uncomplicated fury. Nobody at the pub blinks. Nobody asks if I'm alright. That's just footy. That's just Saturday, or in September, Friday night, Saturday arvo and Saturday night, and if we’re lucky Sunday too, back to back, four different grounds, four different roars.

Here's the messy truth. I do that every single finals series, fully in it, screaming at blokes who will never know my name over a game that changes nothing about my actual life. And I've also sat across from someone I trust and said the four words, I'm not okay, which cost me about a thousand times more than anything I've ever yelled at a television. One of those costs me nothing. The other one has cost me everything at different points, and saved me more than once.

I've thought about that gap a lot this week, watching the finals build up the way it does every year, the scarves in cars, the group chats coming alive again after twenty four rounds of half interest. There's a version of me that's fully switched on for six weeks straight, and there's a version of me that goes quiet for months at a time and hopes nobody notices. Both versions are real. Neither one cancels the other out.

The Noise That Costs Nothing

Finals season hands people something genuinely rare, a fully sanctioned, socially applauded outlet for enormous feeling. Roar at the siren, throw your scarfe on the ground, hug a stranger in the same colours, cry actual tears when your team goes through. None of that gets questioned. It reads as passion, not as a problem, and passion is allowed in a way almost nothing else a guy feels out loud is allowed. I've done all of it. I'll do it again this September, probably more than once, probably with my voice gone by half time.

The trouble isn't the roaring. The trouble is what happens when that's the only channel a bloke's ever built for big feeling. If screaming at a screen is the sole outlet, then the emotion has to wait for a game to show up before it gets anywhere to go. Most weeks don't have a final. Most Tuesdays don't have a siren. So the feeling either finds nowhere to land, or it comes out sideways, at your kids, at your partner, at yourself, at three in the morning when the house is quiet and there's no crowd to absorb it.

Why Is It Easier to Scream at a Football Match Than to Say You're Struggling?

Because one of them has an audience built in and the other one doesn't. When you lose it at the footy, you're surrounded by thousands of people doing the exact same thing, and the shared noise makes it safe. Nobody's watching you specifically, so nobody can judge you specifically, and that anonymity is doing more work than people realise. Saying I'm not okay usually happens alone, to one person, in a quiet room, with no crowd to disappear into. There's no siren to hide the sound of your own voice cracking. It's just you, and them, and the sentence sitting there once you've said it and can't take it back.

There's a physical difference too, not just a social one. Screaming at a screen is a release valve, all pressure going out, nothing coming back in. Your body gets to dump adrenaline, your voice gets to go loud, and then the siren stops and you sit back down, eat a pie, drink a beer like nothing happened. Saying the real sentence doesn't work like that. It doesn't discharge anything on its own. It opens a conversation that then has to go somewhere, which is exactly why it's harder, and exactly why it actually changes something the yelling never could.

This has been a heavy few week for the game, on and off the field, and I want to be straight about one thing before I go further. Yelling at a screen and causing harm to another person are not remotely the same category of thing, and nothing in this piece is trying to blur that line. What I'm talking about here is the gap between safe, sanctioned release and the much harder, much more useful work of actually saying what's true. That gap exists whether the season's going well or the headlines are ugly, and it's been sitting in my own life for longer than I've been coaching.

What Happens When Venting Becomes the Only Outlet Men Have?

I spent close to fifteen years working with animals who had no language at all for what they were carrying, wedge-tailed eagles, an Asian bull elephant, birds with histories that would break your heart if you knew them. You learn fast in that job that the absence of a big visible reaction doesn't mean nothing's happening underneath. An animal that's shut down, gone still, stopped engaging, is often carrying more than the one thrashing against the enclosure. The loud one gets noticed, gets checked on, gets the vet called. The quiet one gets left alone, because quiet looks like calm from the outside, and calm looks like fine, unless you know what to look for.

Blokes do the same thing, just with better vocabulary and worse follow through. The loud, expressive version of us, the one losing it at the football, gets read as fine, because he's clearly feeling something and feeling something looks healthy. The version that's gone quiet, stopped calling his mates back, started saying he's just tired when he isn't, started skipping the group chat he used to be the loudest voice in, that's the one nobody checks on, because there's no siren to signal something's wrong. I've been both versions of that bloke, sometimes in the same fortnight. The second one is the dangerous one, and it's the one that never happens at the footy, because the footy only ever asks you to show up loud.

The Four Words That Actually Cost Something

I've said I'm not okay more times than I'm entirely comfortable admitting in a blog post with my name on it. Every single time, it cost more than screaming ever has, and every single time, it did something screaming never could. It let another human being actually help. Yelling at a siren doesn't invite anyone in. It's a closed loop, all output, no room for a response, no way for anyone to hand you anything back. Saying the real sentence is the opposite. It's an open door, and someone can actually walk through it toward you, sit with you, ring you the next day and ask how you're actually going.

There's also a kind of relief in it that nothing else gives you, even though it feels like the opposite in the moment. Screaming at the footy leaves you exactly where you started, just louder and hoarser. Saying the true sentence changes the shape of the week that follows, because now someone else knows, and you're not carrying the whole thing solo anymore. That's the trade nobody explains properly. You give up the illusion of coping fine, and in exchange you get an actual hand on the wheel that isn't just yours.

This is the part of my own coaching philosophy that took me the longest to earn, not learn, earn. The clients who do best in the long run aren't the ones who never have a bad week. They're the ones who recover fastest once they do, the ones who can feel the wheels wobbling and say something before the whole thing comes off the road. Recovery speed matters more than consistency, in training and in everything else. The bloke who can say I'm not okay on a Tuesday and get support before Thursday is in a stronger position than the bloke who white knuckles it for six months and finally cracks in a way nobody saw coming.

What Does Recovery Actually Look Like?

It doesn't look like a highlight reel. It looks like one honest sentence to one person you trust, said before things get as bad as they can get, not after. It looks like noticing that you've been fine at full volume around a crowd but silent one on one with the people who actually know you, and clocking that as the warning sign it is, rather than proof you're managing. For close to fourteen years I've run the same three words through my own head most mornings, calm, capable, confident, not because I always feel them, but because naming what I'm building keeps me honest about the gap between the loud version of me and the true one.

That gap doesn't close by accident. It closes because you practise saying the smaller true things before you're ever in a spot where you need to say the big one. Tell someone you had a rough day before you're the bloke who's had a rough eighteen months. Let a mate know you're flat before flat turns into something with a heavier name. The muscle you're building isn't confession for its own sake, it's the habit of letting people see you before you're in a hole deep enough that seeing you becomes an emergency.

So here's what I'd actually ask you to do this finals series, not as a coach, just as a bloke who's screamed at plenty of televisions himself. Enjoy the footy. Scream your head off if that's what the moment calls for, I certainly will. But somewhere in the next six weeks, find one person and say the harder sentence too, even if it's just I'm doing it tough at the moment. Not the version where you laugh it off straight after so it doesn't sit too heavy in the room. The real one, left sitting there, uncomfortable, for a second longer than feels natural. If you don't have that person yet, that's exactly what Rebuild with Tully exists for, a place built on the idea that saying the true thing out loud is the actual work, not the fallback plan.

If it's more than a rough patch and you need to talk to someone properly, Lifeline is on 13 11 14 and Beyond Blue is on 1300 22 4636, both running around the clock. Screaming at the footy will always be there waiting for you next weekend. The other conversation, the one that actually moves something, doesn't need a final to justify it. It just needs you to say it once, to one person, before you're ready.

FAQ's

Why do men find it easier to express big emotion at football matches than to talk about mental health?
Football finals give men a fully sanctioned, socially applauded outlet for enormous feeling. Screaming at a siren, throwing a cap on the ground, or crying when your team goes through reads as passion, not a problem, and it happens inside a crowd where nobody is watching any one person specifically. Saying "I'm not okay" usually happens alone, to one person, with no crowd to disappear into, which makes it feel far riskier even though it does more good.

What is "the outlet gap" that Tully Johns writes about?
The outlet gap is Tully Johns' term for the difference between safe, sanctioned emotional release, like screaming at a football game, and the harder, more useful work of saying something true to another person. Screaming at a screen is a closed loop that discharges pressure but invites no response. Saying "I'm not okay" opens a conversation that can actually change the week that follows.

How does Tully Johns' zookeeping background inform his views on men's mental health?
Tully Johns spent close to fifteen years working with animals including wedge-tailed eagles and an Asian bull elephant before becoming a health coach. He draws a direct parallel between animals that go quiet and stop engaging, who are often carrying more than the ones reacting visibly, and men who appear fine because they're loud and expressive while the quietly withdrawing ones go unchecked.

What does Tully Johns mean by "recovery speed matters more than consistency"?
This is a core principle in Tully Johns' coaching philosophy: clients who do best aren't the ones who never have a bad week, they're the ones who recover fastest once they do. Applied to mental health, someone who can say "I'm not okay" early and get support quickly is in a stronger position than someone who suppresses difficulty for months before it surfaces as a crisis.

What practical advice does Tully Johns give for building the habit of talking about struggle?
Tully Johns recommends practising smaller honest disclosures before a crisis forces a bigger one, such as telling someone about a rough day rather than waiting until it becomes a rough eighteen months. He frames this as building the habit of letting people see you before things reach emergency level, not as one-off confession.

Who is Tully Johns?
Tully Johns is a Melbourne-based health and wellness coach and founder of Tully Johns Online Coaching, and a former zookeeper of nearly fifteen years at Healesville Sanctuary and Melbourne Zoo. He runs the Body Mind Rebuild System and the Rebuild with Tully community, and draws on his own experience of having to say "I'm not okay" as part of his coaching approach.

Where can someone get help if they're struggling with more than a rough patch?
The article points to Lifeline on 13 11 14 and Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636, both available around the clock in Australia, for anyone needing to talk to someone beyond a friend or family member.