Ben Brown has revealed the interesting habits of his teammates in a column for the Herald Sun.

While Nick Dal Santo is currently in the unfortunate position of recovering from a hamstring injury, it does mean he can temporarily avoid his teammates trying to interrupt his pre-match routine.

“The team was preparing to take on St Kilda in Round 17 last year when the Roos caught a glimpse of Dal Santo’s superstitious side,” Brown explained.

“Dal believes touching footballs on game day before the team’s first on-ground warm-up will result in him getting less of the footy during the match — essentially, he’s trying to ‘save up’ touches for when he needs them.

“Of course, once Cunners caught on, he and the Roos delighted in watching Dal try and avoid the onslaught of footballs tossed, rolled and bounced towards him in the Blundstone Arena change rooms.”

But as Brown found out, Dal Santo’s superstitions don’t end there.

“I have the same meal before every game, a Japanese chicken teriyaki with sushi,” Dal Santo said.

“I use the same towel, I wear the same bike shorts, or undergarments, for games. I have to run through the banner last and only touch it with my hand.

“And the last one is that when we do our run-throughs I have to be the first to get to the goal square.”

However what some may look at as outside the box has become just part of Dal Santo’s ritual.

“I was very superstitious when I started, (but) it has become my preparation,” he said.

“They are not necessarily weird to me. I know it doesn’t really make sense, but I just like to do it for my own consistency.”

From one veteran to another, Brent Harvey has had the chance to observe plenty of unusual things over his 20 years at Arden Street.

“Anthony Stevens never used to run through the banner,” Harvey explained.

“I idolised Stevo and thought he was fantastic, so when I played a couple of poor games in a row back in the early 2000s, I thought ‘stuff this, I’m changing something’.

“So I stopped running through the banner, and just ran around the side of it with Stevo. I happened to play well that week, so I stuck with it for ages.

“Then a couple of years later, the same thing happened. I wasn’t getting a kick, so I thought ‘I’m changing something else’, so I started running through the banner again.”

388 games into his career, it’s fair to say Harvey’s natural talent has carried him through just fine.