The retired Hawthorn legend was joined by TV personality Roland Rocchiccioli, dual premiership player and grand final coach John Northey and current development coach at the Western Bulldogs Chris Maple for the inaugural Peter Stevens Nissan Grand Final Breakfast at the Ballarat Golf Club on Saturday morning.

Ballarat football-lovers weren’t afraid to throw the expert panel the tough questions as part of the breakfast with Essendon’s new coach, the future of Western Bulldogs games played in Ballarat and Alastair Clarkson’s coaching all up for discussion.

Despite staying tight-lipped about who Essendon’s new coach will be, Sewell was happy to reveal it was likely to be announced in the next week.

But it was Maple’s response to a question asked about the Ballarat and Western Bulldogs relationship that had the room in applause.

“Ballarat’s going to be significant for our footy club … we’re going to make Ballarat ours,” he told the room.

Maple also discussed the removal of the substitute and changes to the interchange cap, which will see rotations reduced from 120 to 90 rotations per game in 2016 under changes announced to clubs earlier this month.

Maple said the reduced rotations would evidently mean players coming into the draft will need to be “endurance beasts”.

“You will have to be able to run longer. It’s become a strenuous game,” he said. 

But the biggest question of the day for Maple which had many people wondering, was, why does it seem everyone who kicks a goal then comes off the ground?

“They have probably been told to get off the ground three minutes before,” he told the audience.

“It’s (after a goal is kicked) a neutral time of the game where you can get someone off the ground.”

Event organiser and Rotary Club of Wendouree’s Peter Byrne said thousands of dollars was raised from the event with planning for a bigger and better breakfast next grand final day already in the motion.

“We’ve never done anything like this before. You have got all these people driving to Melbourne that we thought we could just do something here,” he said.

“The panel we had was fantastic, and the questions that were asked were great

“This has been a great morning.”

Proceeds will be donated to Child and Family Services Ballarat, Ballarat White Ribbon Day and Prostate Cancer research.