Bailey Smith credits pursuing cognitive behavioural therapy for his career-best year in 2026 — on and off the field.
The superstar AFL midfielder already took his game to a new level in his first year at Geelong in 2025, leading the Cats to a grand final with a top-three finish in the Brownlow and a maiden AFL Coaches’ Association Champion Player Award.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Bailey Smith speaks exclusively to 7NEWS
Know the news with the 7NEWS app: Download today
And he did it off the back of 12 months out of the game after rupturing his ACL in his final year at the Western Bulldogs in 2024.
But it was a year littered with off-field and non-football controversies.
AFL chief executive Andrew Dillon visited Smith’s house on the surf coast in June last year to address his behaviour before the league later issued him a formal warning in October.
The warning followed a six-month period where Smith courted controversy for giving a double middle-finger gesture to a fan at Adelaide Oval, referring to “nose beers” in an Instagram post, verbally abusing a veteran photographer at Geelong training, and drawing accusations of homophobia for social media posts at the Cats’ end-of-season Mad Monday celebrations.
In 2026, Smith is again among the Brownlow Medal fancies, averaging 32.3 disposals per game in a Geelong team which remains in premiership contention — but this time he’s doing it with little fuss off the field.
Those close to Smith believe he has matured a lot in the past 12 months. The 25-year-old agrees.
“I’m a lot less emotional,” he told 7NEWS.
“I think last year, the whole year I had a chip on my shoulder; I wanted to return well and show that I still love the game and want to be one of the best.
“I think a lot of that came out of anger, weirdly, after the year I had, and resentment towards just people, the footy world, and I probably wasn’t in a good place the year before that.
“I’ve been working really hard on, it’s called metacognitive awareness — it’s the notion that you’re not your thoughts, you’re purely an observer of them, and understanding that how I think doesn’t need to be how I feel, and just learning to be more aware and curious of why I’m thinking or why I’m feeling some sort of way each day, rather than acting on it and making permanent decisions based on temporary emotions.
“That’s been a big thing. It’s called cognitive behavioural therapy, which I do with my psych.
“I’m trying to not be so reactive. Yes, still be emotional — I’m not emotionally numb — but just learning to be aware of the tricks your brain’s trying to play on you and triggers and being reintegrated into all the media again, because I kind of had a year off of it when I did my knee. Last year I didn’t handle it too well, and I don’t really want to let my emotions get the better of me again with a lot of the ways I acted at times.”
Despite his criticism of himself from last season, it remains without question that Smith became one of the game’s premier midfielders in 2025.
But the deep thinker now reflects that it’s not enough just to play good football.
“Yeah, but that shouldn’t come at the cost of (being a good person),” Smith said of his 2025 season.
“I think it’s (being a) good human first, and then the byproduct of that is you play good footy, and if you don’t, at least at the end of the day, you’re still a good person.
“Whereas last year, I was sort of at all costs wanted to play good football, and I think my ego got the better of me with a lot of things.
“Just learning to channel your ego when you need it very well, and not let it take a hold of you, and sort of tame that beast. Because it’s important, but not at the detriment of losing your character.”
Asked if he harbours any regrets from his myriad of antics throughout his AFL career, Smith said no. But he admits he hasn’t always done things as well as he might now.
“Not regrets, because I feel like everything we’ve been through leads us to where we want to be, currently, right now. And I’m a believer in ‘everything happens for a reason’, as corny as it sounds,” he said.
“But I think I could handle things better, obviously.”
“But without the bad, or without the handling situations poorly, you don’t learn to handle them well, so you can’t really have one without the other.”
