IT'S fair to say I've been on something of a crusade since the start of the season.

In the interests of research, I've been keen to find out just exactly what Saints' players get up to when they're not on the training pitch or playing matches.

I wanted to get away from asking the standard questions footballers have always been asked - the perennial what did you think of that performance?' and what do you expect from the next game?' sort of inquiry?

Because let's be honest, sometimes with footballers you know what you're going to get. It's like Groundhog Day.

Ask any new signing paraded (generally with scarf or shirt, sometimes both if they're particularly fortunate, sometimes with a model aeroplane if they're Rudi Skacel . . .) what they think and the stock answers will come flooding out.

Great to be here', this is a club with a lot of potential', looking around you can see it's a Premiership club with Premiership facilities' (okay, Colchester's new signings might not say that last one, but all of George Burley's summer arrivals trotted it out as if it were a prerequisite of meeting the media.

The day a new signing tells me well, do you know, I've made a mistake coming here? The manager and I won't see eye to eye and I promise the fans I'll be hopeless. Always have been. Why they've just shelled out half a million on me, who knows?', do you know what day that will be . . . that will be the day hell freezes over.

Anyway, back to the plot. Music. It's something virtually everyone likes in some shape or form. Theatre, films, indian restaurants, books . . . are all things some people like and some don't. But music, surely that touches everyone? Like eating, drinking and sleeping.

First up was Alexander Ostlund, who'd agreed to a post-training drink at a bar on Southampton's Oxford Street. It suited him as he only lives across the road.

The informal chat got off a great start when the Saints media representative got the drinks in, an action always guaranteed to please any journalist (or so the stereotype goes ...). For those taken in by Ostlund's hard rock image of tattoos, beard, flowing hair and captain caveman' impressario (see picture of him celebrating Gareth Bale's goal at Derby back on the opening day of this season), it might be hard to comprehend he opted for just a coffee.

(Probably all his teammates would have followed suit. I don't know that, I'm just presuming. In the next few weeks after meeting Ostlund I interviewed David McGoldrick, Nathan Dyer, Rudi Skacel, Andrew Surman, Martin Cranie, Kelvin Davis, Kevin Miller and Bartosz Bialkowski and I doubt if any of them ever leave training and skip merrily to the nearest pub.

Soft drinks and the likes of Powerade, used to help energy levels, were mentioned but never beer, lager or cider.

It never used to be like this. Reading Jeremy Wilson's Southampton's Cult Heroes book, you can't fail to be struck by the alcohol-related tales which seemed to underpin some footballers' lives from the late 1960s through to the late 1980s).

Again, I've digressed. Ostlund quickly got into his stride when I threw in a music question to get the talk going.

In almost 20 years of sports journalism, I'd never really conducted an interview like this one. Football, for once, wasn't the point of us meeting, it was the peripherals which combine to make Ostlund who he is.

The love of rock music, of bands some of his dressing room colleagues have never heard of, how important it is for his family to settle in Southampton . . . a picture emerged of that rare beast in 21st century society: A professional footballer who couldn't care less for the latest styles and music tastes, who did what he wanted to do, an individual at the centre of a team environment for his whole working life.

From talking to his teammates, it appears no one shares Ostlund's music tastes. Fair enough, Guns 'N' Roses, Mtley Cre, the Sex Pistols, Nirvana, Red Hot Chilli Peppers, AC/DC have never been dinner party muzak in the same way Dido or David Gray have.

The likes of McGoldrick, Dyer, Leon Best and Darren Powell are all into their R&B, their hip-hop.

They are probably not the only ones. McGoldrick reeled off a list of rappers I'd never heard of. That was the generation gap talking: how many 37-year-olds from Devon backgrounds would have heard of Mobb Deep, for example?

But then again, he's probably never heard of Lynyrd Skynyrd, another band name-checked by Ostlund.

McGoldrick said he'd never heard of Guns 'N' Roses, who unsurprisingly are one of Ostlund's top bands. I did find that hard to believe.

Surman told me he'd pieced together a CD of various musical tastes which was played in the dressing room before games. Justin Timberlake was on it. Perhaps that's why Ostlund hasn't been playing recently - he can't bear to be in the changing room while that sort of music is blaring out . . . !

Though most of the players are music fans, none of them appear to go to concerts regularly - though I guess the fact they are late night and/or weekend events rule them out.

Kevin Miller did go and see David Gray in concert, though he quickly added only because the missus wanted to go' as if that would see him avoid any grief from his colleagues.

Talking of grief, Matt Le Tissier would be laughed out of the dressing room if he tried to instill any of his favourite music on the current players.

Appearing on the Saint Radio's Dell Memories programme, producer Tim Manns asked Le Tiss to select his top tunes.

I'm sure he wasn't expecting the likes of Shania Twain, Shaggy, Shakin' Stevens, Chesney Hawkes and John Travolta and Olivia Newton John to be chosen!

The image of Ostlund sitting there in the dressing room trying to get himself psyched up to the likes of This Ole House and The One and Only is pretty surreal.

The venue for most of the above interviews was the relaxation room at Saints' Staplewood training ground. Found on the top floor of the training dome - Sir Clive Woodward's legacy at the club from his time looking at revamping the club's off the field facilities and culture - the room contains two computer terminals, a television with games console, a plasma TV screen, some comfy sofas and an adjoining room with horrifically gaudy black and white leopardskin relaxing chairs and a goldfish tank.

Sorry, Clive, but I never saw any players staring wistfully at the fish while trying to comprehend just how they'd been beaten at Notts County or Colchester?

As I sat in the relaxation room, I wondered what the likes of Mick Channon, Terry Paine, Bobby Stokes, Peter Osgood and Alan Ball would have made of it all.

Unlike them, McGoldrick, Dyer, Cranie and Surman will never know a time when we didn't have mobile phones, Internet, Ipods, X-boxes and DVDs.

In their day, the legends too had a relaxation room - it was called the pub.

Visiting it never seemed to do the aforementioned legends any harm, but of course it was a different era back then.

And one that will probably never be seen again.