BEFORE his latest mind explosion — a term Barry Hall coined himself to describe the haymaker he threw at Brent Staker this year — the Sydney spearhead was familiar with Grant Brecht even if the football world was not.

Now, if we believe what we are told, the clinical psychologist — who is not based at the Swans' headquarters but whom the club uses as a consultant — has been charged with determining when one of the AFL's biggest name forwards will return to work.

After Hall met his coach following the potshot he took at Shane Wakelin last weekend, he said so categorically: "Roosy said, 'I'm not going to pick you to play at this stage … You're obviously going to sit out a week and it will be determined by Grant when you're right'."

Sports psychologist Jacqui Louder, who spent five years working at North Melbourne, was the head sports psychologist at the Melbourne Commonwealth Games and now consults at Olympic Park, said yesterday that — taken on face value — the situation in Sydney was highly unconventional. "It's a very unusual way of handling it, I would think, and I would think most of the people I went through study with, and most of the other psychologists I know, would not want to take responsibility purely for that decision," she said.

"There's the coaches' input and the players' input and the leadership group, there are a number of people that need to have a say and bring important information to the table as to whether a player is capable of jumping back on.

"From a sports psychologist's point of view I certainly would not be comfortable with that … being weig