IT’S A unique brotherhood, the coaching fraternity.

Its members are subjected to a level of media scrutiny that at times - when they’re out of contract and their side is struggling - rivals that normally reserved for the Prime Minister.

And the coaching ‘brothers’ wage sporting war on each other for at least 22 weeks a year, assiduously devising new ways of bringing one another down.

That’s the coaching world most of us see.

But there’s another side to it. One of camaraderie forged through common interests and common experiences. Who else can fully relate to the pressures a coach has to work under other than another coach?

That camaraderie was on display at a meeting between the AFL coaches and the AFL Coaches' Association in Etihad Stadium’s Laureate Room on Thursday, an annual get-together coinciding with the AFL season launch.

Thirteen of the competition’s 17 coaches attended, with Damien Hardwick (Richmond), Dean Bailey (Melbourne), Michael Voss (Brisbane Lions) and Chris Scott (Geelong) the only absentees. A smattering of assistant coaches also came.

At the meeting, the coaches’ elder statesman, Collingwood’s Mick Malthouse, chatted casually with the next most experienced coach in the room, Rodney Eade of the Western Bulldogs. But he later mingled just as comfortably with one of the coaches’ 2011 new boys, Gold Coast’s Guy McKenna.

Then again, Malthouse and McKenna are no strangers. Last year’s premiership mentor coached McKenna for most of his West Coast playing career and later took him on as one of his assistant coaches at Collingwood.

It was just one example of how just one or two degrees separate the competition’s ringmasters.

To continue the Malthouse example, one moment he was cracking jokes with North Melbourne coach Brad Scott and Geelong assistant coach Blake Caracella, who were both on his assistant coaching staff as recently as 2009.

The next, he was catching up with his long-time captain at West Coast, John Worsfold, who in turn later caught up with the man he served as an assistant coach at Carlton, the AFLCA’s newly appointed president David Parkin.

While completing one of the event’s obligatory tasks, signing a table full of white Sherrin footballs, Malthouse asked Carlton coach Brett Ratten how his new assistant coach Gavin Brown was going.

When told Brown had settled in well at Visy Park, Malthouse told Ratten: “I can't think of anyone more loyal".

Signing the footys seemed to invite a bit of chatter.  

As Scott and Adelaide coach Neil Craig practised their signatures, Craig asked Scott how his twin brother Chris was “enjoying” senior coaching since taking over from Mark Thompson at Geelong at the end of last season.

Scott replied Chris had been enjoying his new role when they’d last spoken but “the first three months were a whirlwind”.

While the other coaches had arrived at the meeting decked out in their respective club polo shits, Craig had arrived in his ‘civvies’. Armed with a backpack, he quickly ducked into the men's room and emerged looking immaculate in his Adelaide club gear.

Another person who made a beeline for the men’s room on arrival was the Federal Minister for Sport, Mark Arbib.

Mr Arbib was running late for a photo shoot with the coaches. They’d earlier been assembled from all over the room by AFLCA coaching development manager Paul Armstrong, who’d interrupted some as they tucked into the spread of sandwiches, fruit, biscuits, tea and coffee on offer.

When Mr Arbib took his place among the players, he did so in the front row, with Craig and Hawthorn’s Alastair Clarkson on either side of him.

A replica of the premiership cup was placed in the foreground of the shot.

Interestingly, it was placed between Eade and Craig, two long-term coaches yet to taste football’s ultimate success. You couldn’t help but think what both would give to be holding up the real thing on the first Saturday in October.

After the photographers had finished snapping, Arbib addressed the coaching group. He told them the AFL competition was “amazing" and thanked them for the support they’d given to the AFL's community programs, emphasising they’d helped give Indigenous communities and children something to aspire to.

Perhaps the last word on the day should be left to the coaches.

Scott and Worsfold told afl.com.au the meeting was one of the few opportunities coaches had to discus common concerns.

“We all face common challenges so the opportunity to put them on the table and then discuss them with the key people at the AFL is invaluable,” Scott said.