So this is the man who plans to battle the AFL, come what may, to achieve an unprecedented result for players that will profoundly change the financial face of Australia's richest and most popular sport?

Fundamental planks of the game, like the draft and salary cap, are on the table as bargaining chips apparently. The AFL Players Association's members have an indisputable power and have told their new chief executive they are ready and willing to exercise it. No backing down like last time. This is tough talk indeed.

Paul Marsh, father, football fan, self-described "slogger" as a cricketer, despite being the son of Australian cricketing royalty Rod Marsh, has made his own career in sport advocating for athletes' rights.

He has chaired the Australian Athletes Alliance, the national umbrella body in the area. And, in one of many major negotiations in cricket, when he was CEO of the Australian Cricketers' Association, was prepared to push to within days of the Collective Bargaining Agreement expiring to win a strong result for his constituents.

If you're an AFL player, even one who was disillusioned by the ultimately unfulfilled promises of football's last CBA tussle - and there are many of those - this is appealing CV material.

Football has a fresh CBA to be negotiated. The current deal between league and its players expires in October next year.

Discussions are expected to commence in earnest, however, in coming months. And if Marsh and the AFLPA board members he ultimately takes direction from are to be believed, the life and lot of an AFL player has never been more demanding.

That's the backdrop to Marsh's conviction that players deserve – and will fight in approaching months, like never before – for a percentage share of the AFL's revenue.

They are also determined to improve what they are reporting - mostly privately for now –to be an alarmingly deteriorated quality of life in a game that, ironically, has never been richer.

Marsh's reputation as an effective and, when required, bold advocate precedes him. It's the reason why he was selected ahead of Ian Prendergast, who the AFLPA has retained, to date, as second in charge after Matt Finnis took up as CEO of St Kilda.

Marsh is not shy of a strong word, though in his first extended interview since he won the AFLPA's top post he is friendly, thoughtful and open, throughout. More fatherly than bolshie, certainly.

But behind the desk in the office he's assumed for the past nine months there is a hardhat. A signed NFL helmet to be exact. It is not Marsh's, and he admits he's still not sure why it's there, but he's left it in place.

Marsh is unlikely to don the headwear in upcoming meetings with AFL chiefs that will inevitably become tense, uncomfortable and probably bitter at points, if last CBA is any guide. But it becomes apparent very quickly when listening to him discuss the AFLPA's priorities that he'll be carrying a hardhat mentality.

In a recorded sitting that begins over mixed juice on a sunny Melbourne winter's morning and spans into the afternoon, it takes Marsh approximately three minutes to table his firm view that AFL footballers are underpaid compared to their cricket equivalents.

He says that's simply not fair. He has also be struck between the eyes by how unhappy elite footballers are: "I see a playing group that's quite jaded and that's a concern to me," he says.

Marsh is genuinely concerned about the mental health ramifications of this reality, and his dot joining is not gratuitous.

Player welfare is just one of several burning issues for Marsh, the sixth CEO of the AFLPA which, in recent years at least, has proved a breeding ground for ambitious footy chiefs. Exhibits A and B: Brendon Gale, now boss of Richmond, and his successor, Finnis, now CEO of St Kilda.

Then, of course, there was the one before the lot of them – Andrew Demetriou – who ascended to the very top of football's tree.

Marsh, 43, sounds sincere when he says he has no such grand designs. And as he traverses through the AFLPA's agenda, it's clear he's got more than enough in the way of challenges for now.

PHILOSOPHY ON AFLPA – WHAT IS IT, WHAT IT SHOULD BE

Some are uneasy at the mere mention of the word 'union', believing the connotations are inherently adversarial. Not Marsh.

He says it is part of his job description to be Mr Unpopular at times, with any party aside from the 800-odd current and 2500-odd past AFL players he represents. And that a preparedness to be at odds with a sport's prime stakeholders should be in the DNA of any worthwhile athletes' association.

That said, Marsh says he's a listener and hardwired collaborator: "The concept of partnership, to me, is critical in terms of what we're about. My philosophy has always been to try to work with the sport as best you can to grow the sport".

AFLPA FUNDING AND RELIANCE ON AFL

Every elite AFL player is an AFLPA member, making the association the largest – and also the best resourced - of its kind in Australia. Marsh is intent on taking the past player membership figure "a long way further" and wants the AFLPA to offer "significantly more" services.

The Association's top funding stream, by far, is the AFL funding it receives through the CBA - approximately $3.6m in its budgeted revenue of approximately $8.5m this year.

Past and present player, and agent, memberships generate around $700,000 annually by comparison. The AFLPA is budgeting to make around $1.3million this year through commercial activities but Marsh see this as an obvious area for growth.

Is the set-up not fundamentally fraught when push comes to shove in an AFL-AFLPA CBA negotiation?

"There's a perception that because they fund us we are beholden to them. I've never had that view," Marsh says.

AFLPA'S CONNECTION/DISCONNECT WITH PLAYERS

It is a documented and undisputed failing of the AFLPA that no Essendon player involved in the ill-fated injecting program that was run at that club in 2013 raised concerned with the association about the wisdom – or legality – of the regimen.

While clearly mindful of his predecessor, Marsh candidly describes the scenario as "almost your worst nightmare as a player association".

Essendon aside, it has been relayed to Fairfax that there is a sense of disconnect between some members of the AFL player corps and the PA. This appears to stem largely from what the Association delivered – or did not deliver – in the last CBA.

Four years ago, there was a rousing gathering of the playing fraternity at Melbourne's casino. In a remarkable display of unity, player groups based elsewhere in the country 'attended' via video link. The signal was that the players would not take 'no' for an answer when it came to their claim of a percentage share of the AFL's revenue.

Ultimately, though, it was the AFLPA that blinked and, in the aftermath, some players remain skeptical about the backbone of an AFLPA that talked a good game but didn't execute a key goal.

Though Marsh doesn't elaborate much here - he describes the current trust level between players and the AFLPA as "pretty high" - he conveys a sense that this is an area for his organisation to improve.

Marsh told Fairfax that his board, now led by president Matthew Pavlich (who replaced Luke Ball) and vice-president Will Minson, has given him a firm mandate to use players' agreement to the salary cap and draft as bargaining chips this time around.

He would be ill advised to show his cohort's entire hand at this relatively early stage, but it's a strong opening position.

"I cannot see how this will not lead to better outcomes for everyone," he says.

BEING UNPOPULAR DURING CBA NEGOTIATIONS

No qualms there, apparently: "In my view you're probably not going to achieve what you need to achieve by taking a softly, softly approach," Marsh says.

"Personal attacks don't bother me in the slightest.

He had a public taste of being at odds with a heavyweight when Eddie McGuire, in a recent radio interview declared: "I've been a president for 17 years Paul, you've been in there for 10 minutes."

Marsh says the pair hasn't spoken since but there's not a hint of concern in his voice when he states the fact.

WHEN PAUL MET GILLON…

The two new heads of their respective organisations met first on the AFL CEO's territory, late last year. This was followed, soon after, by Gill McLachlan presenting at a meeting of the AFLPA board.

"We've had a good, constructive working relationship to this point," Marsh says.

He does not resile from the position - which prompted McGuire to give him a public whack - that the AFLPA should have a seat at table in the AFL's upcoming broadcast rights deal.

At last negotiation this resulted in a $1.25billion, five-year goldmine for football and the richest deal of its kind. But this is one battle, evidently, that the AFLPA has resolved not to fight this time. Without laboring the point, Marsh suggests he'd be less inclined to take no for an answer next time around.

CONCUSSION IN THE AFL

It's a "critical" issue that Marsh, interestingly, says the AFLPA is still some years away from forming a "definitive position" upon.

Tellingly, his take is that the AFL industry broadly is only just "starting to come to terms with" the thorny terrain.

While it's more in the remit of Prendergast currently, Marsh says the ongoing research being conducted with AFL past players will be pivotal in determining whether the PA would support the kind of compensation claim that put shockwaves through the NFL in America.

"I'd say it's a possibility [the prospect of an NFL style group compensation claim over concussion]," he says.

The unspoken message is to watch this space.

WADA APPEALING ESSENDON PLAYERS' VERDICT

Marsh has met several times with the player protagonists and says the picture James Hird painted recently, when he connected the Bombers' floundering on-field form to the dark doping probe cloud that follows many of the club's players beyond the boundary, was accurate.

There is a way to go yet, but Marsh does not discount the prospect of affected players launching joint legal action or the AFLPA being involved in that.

"I think the likelihood is greater if there's a guilty verdict there," he says.

Marsh is more forthcoming on his long-held view that the WADA code is unsuitable in its current form. But he can't see the AFL, or any Australian sport for that matter, attempting to break away.

"I've had concerns about this since it first came out in my cricket days, and my concern is the one size fits all approach and the lack of flexibility… the WADA code consistently catches people who are not cheats," he says.

WHO HE IS

Marsh is about 20 kilograms lighter than he was five years ago, a byproduct of realising he was "burning the candle at both ends": working too hard, too much eating and drinking, not exercising regularly or looking after himself particularly well.

His motivation to shape up was a newfound value on longevity inspired by his family – he and his wife have two kids, aged four and 10 - which he says comes first.

Marsh is watching as many as seven AFL games a week presently and is a Port Adelaide supporter. He counts his predecessor at the Cricketers' Association, Tim May, as "an unbelievably good mentor".

Professionally, he says his searing ambition to succeed actually comes from a distinct phobia of the alternative: "I have a fear of failure, so once I embark on something I give it my all".

Marsh is more than strapped in now at the AFLPA, with the hardhat in his office emblematic of the spirit he was selected bring.