It was not hard in that moment to imagine the players' spouses, nursing a glass of chardonnay in front of the television, wondering how it was that their men would rather be bunking together in a YMCA than sharing with them in this nominal day of love.

Some of the boys appeared amused and relieved by this scenario, happy to get out of town and pat each other on the back through the suffering. But, despite it being banal to most people, Valentine's Day is still challenging to a man who can seldom be so sure of himself in these matters as to dismiss it entirely. And it proved too much for at least one of the players, who went home early to salvage his image.

This seems to be how local football is trending, upward towards the threshold of professionalism where everything comes after football. Thankfully it's not there yet, but the distance between professional and amateur ideas in the game is not so great as it appears. Professionalism is a fluid idea, separated first by money and then a leap of imagination. One of the distinctions is grounded in priorities.

In a fashion now obvious for professionals, but still peculiar among some amateurs, the team is coming first.

What we conjure now when we invoke the old terminology of "grassroots" football is nowhere near as earthy or rudimentary as it was.

The coach of the Waubra football club in the Central Highlands league, Grant Luscombe, said the drive towards professionalism was, in his experience, player-driven.

"The players have an expectation that things will look something like what they see in the AFL. There are a couple of teams in our league now using GPS systems, and this year we're going to try it. You do feel the pressure to change if you want success."

This is significant, a disaster at one level, because it means accountability.  You can no longer hide in the forward pocket near the netball courts and tell others how hard you ran out there. They can simply look on a screen and see.

"Accountability", this  funky little word that's so saturated by the corporate dream that it means nothing until it is broken down into a system of governed behaviours, is now pervading even the most lovely of old scenes.

This "value" was fashioned in the AFL by Leading Teams, which developed a program of player-driven behaviours and peer-assessments that, in various forms, became so effective that you essentially could not win a premiership  without the model. Think first of the Sydney "Bloods", then Geelong and Hawthorn.  When you roll out against these teams, you essentially face a movement of unified attitudes and values, a kind of brotherly scripture whose exponents come to fear failing more than anything.

At one level, this is a depressing idea, because it makes redundant the quaint conversation about talent ruling over system.

The head of fitness at Hawthorn, Andrew Russell, told me recently that he was now convinced organisation and efficiency had more influence on Hawthorn's success than its talent.  This is not without implications for young players better imbued with aspiration than talent, since it widens the scope of players that could be useful to league clubs.

The Anglesea camp had an outsourced motivator, who was unveiling the same themes I witnessed the introduction of at Hawthorn. This was extraordinary to see at one level. The boys at Waubra, who often play to a greater audience of wind turbines than human beings, were trying on programs that ten years ago Hawthorn could barely imagine.

Kraig Grimes, who facilitated the development of Hawthorn's maniacs in the mid 2000s, said even at that stage it was tough to get all the talent on board.

"People push back against it for two reasons," he said. "Either they don't want to change their behaviour, or they don't want to have to say what they are thinking about other people. It took Shane Crawford about three years to come around and accept that part of the program."

It took others even longer to feel comfortable sitting down before a teammate to tell him what's wrong with his game, or harder still, his attitude. But this manly threshold of silence, now crossed, has changed a lot of things in football.

The speaker at Anglesea produced a sheet of values, dozens of words to choose from in order to frame an idea about what we cherish most.

They are the same kind of words that might appear on an RSVP profile, or the  resume of a budding worker who, despite having no experience to advertise, can still make a list of his values. Likes teamwork. Is respectful. Is accountable. How to measure all this and mark its progress remains the dominion of professionals, but the amateurs are closing.

And so too, perhaps, is the idea of a casual kick with your friends.