"As a guy, I feel the need to be more masculine, more strong," says Izaiah - the chattiest of the boys in the session we observe.

"Relationship violence is very serious. Learning about it is a very big part of growing up as an Australian teenager."

Yet change is hard to come by. 10 years ago, Rosie Batty's son Luke was killed by his father, Greg Anderson . Ms Batty went on to become one of the country's top campaigners against family violence, but the national conversation has frequently been reignited by further devastating incidents.

These include the murders of teenagers Jack and Jennifer Edwards, who were shot by their father John Edwards in 2018; the killings of Hannah Clarke and her three young children , whose car was set alight by her estranged husband Rowan Baxter in 2020; and last year's murder of young woman Lilie James by Paul Thijssen, with whom she'd had a fleeting relationship.

So while the recent wave of violence against women has applied pressure on state and federal governments to do more, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's call for change across all of society is alarmingly familiar.

So too are other concerns. A lack of mental health support, historically inadequate police approaches to domestic violence complaints, and the over-representation of Indigenous Australians as both perpetrators and victims of family violence are just three of the issues which come up again and again.

"At the end of the day, educating young people and this programme going into schools is one piece of a very, very big puzzle," Tara Gleig says. "To be able to make change and [make] that generational culture, societal change, it has to be a collaborative approach."

Under the floodlights of a chilly Australian Rules football pitch In Melbourne's inner suburbs, another community programme is trying to do just that. They want to inject change into perhaps the most traditionally macho slice of Australian society - the sports field.