Boak was controversially wooed by Geelong - just a pleasant drive from his family home on the surf coast at Jan Juc - and was disenchanted with some of the goings on at Alberton, specifically the ''disappointing'' sacking of his coach Matthew Primus.

His mother Chicki, a widowed mother of three who lost her 48-year-old husband to cancer when Boak was just 16, had never wanted him to leave. His younger sister Cassie had particularly struggled without her brother and wanted him home.

Losing Boak, for Port Adelaide, would have been a disaster on many levels. Retaining him was a bigger coup than the multi-million-dollar sponsorship deal with Renault or the lucrative peace deal the club has achieved with the SANFL.

The club at one point last year toyed with offering him the captaincy to stay but did not - the captaincy decision was ultimately made by new coach Ken Hinkley - while Geelong seemed so desperate to recruit him it sent a posse into Adelaide to meet him, including the coach, the captain and a Brownlow medallist.

''We had a tough time last year,'' admits Boak. But sitting with Chicki in an MCG coffee shop looking over the arena where he will make his debut as Power captain against Melbourne on Easter Sunday, the pair make it clear that the pull of home and family was less tangible than generally believed.

''I probably changed my mind six or seven times and we were on the phone constantly, but mum would only say what she always says and that's that she only wants what's best for me. I just realised that going through so many hard times at the club I didn't want to leave when we were down. I love the club. I love my teammates and I love the culture. They're family to me now. I couldn't leave them.''

Added Chicki: ''As a parent, when they are drafted you just never know where they are going to go. It was hard when he left, but last year I just wanted him to be true to himself and that we were behind him 100 per cent.

''I didn't mind [all the speculation], that comes with football. I work at the local primary school and the kids were asking me every day if Travis was coming home. I'm not surprised he stayed. He's very like his father in many ways and I think I know how his father would have felt.''

An experience that Boak says he will treasure forever meanders into the conversation when he is asked how he wants to be remembered as a footballer. He said he hadn't really thought about it, but then recalled a story he heard the day of his father's massive funeral at the Torquay Football Oval. Chicki allowed him to spend several hours in the club rooms - now named for Roger Boak - with a large group of Roger's old teammates who had journeyed back to the Tigers for his funeral.

Boak senior played 230 games for Torquay and his son's favourite personal on-field memory is not one relating to his 108 senior AFL games or two Port shared best and fairests. It was the day his TAC coach Mick Turner allowed him to play his one and only senior game for Torquay at Queenscliff - where Roger played his 200th, and a very young Travis ran through the banner - in his father's No. 5 jumper.

At Roger's wake, a younger teammate of his father's approached the 16-year-old and told him of the day that Roger Boak was awarded a best-on-ground medal but gave it to the younger player, insisting that he had given his utmost and deserved it more.

''Sitting around that day with all these guys telling me stories about dad - I'll treasure that forever,'' said Boak. ''To hear about him handing an award to a younger player, that was so like him. He wasn't complicated, he was such a selfless man and a very gentle man and a selfless footballer.

''I probably never sat down and thought about it, but I want to be remembered like that. Being a selfless player who helped other people. And as a player who helped get Port Adelaide back to where it needs to be. I'd like to be one of the players who drove the club back to where it belongs.''

Boak's ambition is good news for those concerned that he has committed on paper to the club for only two seasons.

Boak is particularly close to teammates Cameron O'Shea - his current housemate who he said would be welcome in his yet-to-be purchased new home on the coast - Robbie Gray and Paul Stewart. Leaving them behind, said Boak, presented as a prospect as tough as leaving home when he was 17.

The club back then ''bent over backwards to help us'', recalls Chicki, who the club flew over as often as the AFL salary-cap watchdogs would allow - particularly in the second season when Boak struggled with homesickness. He still recalls heading back to Adelaide after his first Christmas break as the worst. ''It was scary and I was so nervous and frightened,'' he admits now.

Boak has come a long way from the teenager who, mortified, threw up his breakfast at an early training session. Back then, coach Mark Williams attempted to oversee the relocation and housing of Chicki, Sarah and Cassie Boak to Adelaide but the prospect of leaving home, for them, was too tough.

(Williams called Boak to congratulate him on being awarded the captaincy last week. The pair reminisced and Williams told Boak he believed the leadership would make him an even better player. On learning that Boak and Gray had invested in a pub near Glenelg, Williams also suggested Boak might like to buy the Williams family home).

Chicki had been a widow for a little over a year when Travis was drafted by Port. She predicted to colleague Emma Quayle a week before that draft that when her son's name was called out, there would be relief and a few tears. In fact, on the day: ''I cried my heart out,'' said Chicki. ''I cried all day. And I swore and swore.'' Travis interjected at this point to stress that swearing was not a normal trademark of his mother's. ''I'd never really heard her swear like that,'' he said.

Chicki also told Quayle back in 2006 of Travis: ''I'm extremely proud of him. Very much so. He's kept himself together and he's dealt with things most kids would never think of. He's been unbelievable.''

She could not have imagined then what she and Port Adelaide know now about Boak's ability to cope in the midst of the second mortal tragedy to engulf his young life.

Last September, barely 24 hours into an end-of-season trip to Las Vegas, Boak and his nine travel companions were contacted from Australia to be told that teammate John McCarthy, who had left them in a nightclub in the early hours of that day, had died.

The club does not want this to be another story reliving the horror of McCarthy's death, but everyone at Alberton familiar with the aftermath says it was Boak and Alipate Carlile who took charge. Back in Jan Juc, there was a brief period in which Chicki knew only that a Victorian Port Adelaide player had died in Las Vegas, a period that ended when Boak briefly called his mother before moving into a shocked form of autopilot.

''It's just something you would never want anyone to go through,'' said Boak, ''that you would never expect to happen and never think you would experience. We didn't know what had happened or how to react, but we knew we had a lot of young players and we really had to make sure that we stayed together. We just knew instinctively we didn't want to spend another night in Las Vegas and the way we stuck together was really important.''

Unable to get on a flight out of Las Vegas and determined not to separate even into two or three taxis, Boak and Carlile hired a large limousine so that all 10 could remain in one vehicle en route to Los Angeles where counsellors provided by the Australian Embassy met the players at their hotel. The group stayed up together all night before flying home the following day.

Hinkley spoke to Boak and the senior players about McCarthy in a practical sense before embarking upon the sensitive issue of reviewing the team's 2012 performances. With McCarthy featuring in so many passages of play, Boak and vice-captain Ebert and the senior group agreed they would continue to discuss their teammate in the present tense.

''We're looking at J-Mac and how much he was a part of the club throughout last season every time we go through a review or look at a passage of play,'' said Boak. ''He was part of our group and as far as we're concerned he'll always be our teammate, so Ken just talks about him in the present tense as our teammate.

''The club's put a lot of things in place to keep an eye on people who might be struggling. Peter Rohde and Keith Thomas have organised on-going counselling and if we see as players that someone is struggling we're there to look after him, make sure he is helped.''

Contemplating McCarthy in the present tense as he watches his image on 2012 review tapes is not an uncommon coping mechanism for Boak.

There is still just a hint of the 16-year-old schoolboy, just weeks back from the national junior tour of Ireland, who lost his beloved father and so quickly became a figure of strength for his mother and two sisters.

But Roger Boak, said the Port Adelaide captain, was as real to him now as ever. ''I know when I run out onto the MCG I'll look out into the sky, which I do every time I play, and l know he's there. I know he's watching me and I know he's supporting me.''