Although he says he probably should, Bernie Vince has no regrets about his football life.

Not leaving Adelaide and his great friends at the Crows, not his arrested development before becoming a professional  AFL player and not the occasional misstep culminating in the boxer shorts incident in his local pub on the eve of the 2012 NAB Cup.

Even the hurtful memory of the letter in late 2013 from Adelaide football boss David Noble, which made it clear without really saying so, that an earlier draft pick was more important to the Crows at that stage than Vince, leaves him philosophical now. Football, he says, is a business after all.

And yet, to Vince, it actually isn't. He will still be "living the dream" on Monday when Melbourne steps back onto the big stage for their annual Queen's Birthday clash with Collingwood, just as he was when playing A-grade as a 19-year-old for the CMS Crows at Stansbury on the Yorke Peninsula.

Only months after his last game back home the Magpies were his first AFL opponent at Etihad Stadium in round-one 2006. A handful of reserves and then senior games with Woodville-West Torrens, culminating in the 2005 SANFL finals series, came in between before Vince was being courted around the country as a – to quote Paul Roos – "a recruiting smokey".

Roos, then the reigning premiership coach at Sydney, had a look at Vince and says the Swans would have taken him in the rookie draft had Adelaide not taken him earlier. The second time around, once he was appointed to Melbourne, added Roos, "as soon as we heard he was available we jumped on him".

"They did some testing," recalled Vince of that Sydney trip in 2005, back when he saw pre-season training as "a jog, a few kicks and a few beers", and who thought his mates were sending him up every time an AFL club called.

"I got a free trip to Sydney, I got to meet Roosy and have a shower with Barry Hall and I stayed with Heath Grundy for three days. I was pretty happy with that. The Crows drafted me and I thought well, at least I know what I'm doing for the next two years – I was selling farm chemicals at the time.

"I played I think 10 games in my first two years and I was pretty happy to be playing in the SANFL."

Vince had to be forced by his former manager Justin Reid to meet Roos the second time around eight year later. That day, as he walked into AAMI Park to meet his future coach and his lieutenant Todd Viney, Vince said he felt as though he was cheating on his wife. And just as Vince never dreamed back during that free trip to Sydney that Roos might one day be his coach at Melbourne, nor could he have envisaged that Simon Goodwin, the Adelaide elder statesman who turned around his career, would one day be his coach. (That's presuming Vince, as he plans, will still be playing in 2017 when Roos hands over to Goodwin.)

In his first year with the Demons, in which he finished third in the club best and fairest, Vince visited Goodwin frequently while the latter was still working at Essendon and began to notice as the season drew to a close how many questions his old teammate was asking about the Demons. "He never said anything, though, but it's funny how things turn out," Vince observed.

It is Adelaide folklore that Goodwin and Mark Ricciuto called him in for a meeting at the end of 2007 leaving Vince to backtrack over the previous four weeks and wonder: "S---! What have I done?" Demanded Goodwin: "Do you really want to make it? Do you think it's just going to happen?"

What followed was a pre-season before a pre-season that Vince hated at the time and found the most brutal training sessions he had ever endured. "He became my mentor," said the 29-year-old of Goodwin. "I thought I had been running hard but I hadn't been.

"I could have just cruised along like the other guys I knew had," added Vince, "and I know I'm never going to be one of the true elites but I just love playing footy. I think there are so many players who fall away who have plenty of talent but just aren't prepared or understand how hard you have to work."

Like many from the Crows' inner-sanctum, Vince was not surprised to learn his housemate of three years Taylor Walker had been appointed captain. But he still stirred him about it, just as Walker did Vince when Vince was appointed into the Melbourne leadership group. The biggest change, says Vince, is the time he spends on the telephone after games dissecting things with his senior teammates and notably Nathan Jones along with midfield coach Goodwin.

"Footy really doesn't stress me out the way it does some guys," he said. "Maybe a bit more now in this role and I'm not saying I don't hate losing, but even after the Hawthorn game I went home pretty upset but I was okay the next day."

Tammy Roos has likened Vince to Swans champion Michael O'Loughlin for his likeable larrikin qualities and her husband said that every team, and particularly the Demons in 2014, needs relaxed and extroverted team members like his senior big-bodied – by Melbourne's standards – midfielder.

"Guys like Bernie lift the players and lift the coaches even when things are pretty tough," said Roos. "We need those guys to pick up the rest of the bunch. I know sometimes he might be smiling on the outside and hurting on the inside, but he really does lift the place."

Roos, according to his charge, was more upset than he was by Philip Walsh's "carried off on a stretcher" barb after the Adelaide-Melbourne game in which Vince blanketed his former teammate Patrick Dangerfield. Roos, in fact, alerted Vince, who happily dined with Dangerfield that night, to the Walsh comments. "I'm fine with Walshy, but it was a strange thing to say," said Roos. "It wasn't warranted and it was based on an inaccuracy."

On Monday, Vince is likely to be handed a similar role on Scott Pendlebury, who he took last year or, said Roos, Dane Swan. Adelaide took the younger of the Crouch brothers, Matt, for the Vince draft pick as the club was still recovering and suffering from the Kurt Tippett sanctions. Wrote Graham Cornes sadly at the time of Vince's departure: "Give me his talent and his class, that elite leg and that megawatt smile any day, over any pick 23."

But as Vince insisted, he has no regrets. He loves living in Richmond, where he is sharing a house with his girlfriend, and loves the added attractions of bigger sporting events.

But he does have an ambition for his team which, if not fulfilled, could become a regret. "I'd just love Melbourne to play finals footy," he said. "Nathan Jones is too good a player and has worked too hard not to step onto the big stage.

"Same with Colin Garland and Lynden Dunn and Mark Jamar, who might have played one early in his time here. Until you play finals, you don't get recognised the way others do and these guys deserve that. I'd love it to happen in my time and I think we can."