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“Everyone goes through ups and downs in life, and his life happens to be more public than most. I love seeing him at the club now with a smile on his face, you can see a weight has been lifted off his shoulders.
“I think he told us he couldn’t talk to us five or six weeks ago, and he wasn’t ready to talk about it. He couldn’t accept it himself, let alone try to talk in front of 44 people you see every day.”
Lever said there were no hard feelings from the players towards Petracca, who regularly posts cooking videos on social media, for holidaying in Noosa last month.
“The question at the time was, 'Where do you see me?'” Lever said.
“As we all know in the media world, once you ask that question it turns into ‘we are angry or mad because he is not at the football club’, but that couldn’t be further from the truth.
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“We understood that he must have been going through something. People close to him were constantly talking to him.
“We really like him, we know he’s a leader at our football club, so I sat there and thought, ‘I would love to see Christian Petracca at the football club every day and he brings his fun personality and energy at a time when we were really struggling. We weren’t playing good football, we were losing games by narrow margins.
“We sit there wondering, ‘How beneficial is it for Trak to join the football club?’
“That was his absence. As a football club, we have gone beyond making sure everyone is in the club all the time. We want to give people space and time if they need it. It definitely gave me a clearer understanding once he stood up in front of the group and explained it, and made me understand it more.”
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