Adam Goodes is married, busy and happy. He works, plays social basketball and regularly puts his head into the Swans' office to see old friends and talk to coach John Longmire - but never about footy. His cause now is to look out for opportunities for Indigenous youth to make the most of themselves, just as others once looked out for him.
As in his playing days, Mick O'Loughlin is never far away. He played alongside Goodes for a dozen seasons, and still does at basketball, signed up Goodes as godfather to his children and was ready with a hug in 2015 when Goodes quietly announced the end of his glittering 372-game career. He was there again on Thursday at the second of what he hopes will be an annual fundraiser for the GO Foundation. So were Buddy Franklin and Adam Gilchrist and Dan Sultan, guitar in hand, and that is not even half of the "A" list.
GO is - as if you could not guess - Goodes-O'Loughlin. Launched in 2009, it narrowed its focus in 2012 to funding scholarships for Indigenous children in inner Sydney, who are sometimes overlooked in charity's rush to the outback. Sporting ability does not come into it. The first two alumni finished high school last year and are now at university, one doing science-law, the other a business degree, meantime interning at the Swans.
"It's given me a lot of joy, and a lot to be proud about," said Goodes. "They're the real success stories. There's a lot to be proud about outside of football."
Goodes has rarely been sighted in public since he slipped past O'Loughlin and through that changeroom door at Stadium Australia that night to hand in his notice. His valedictory season had been blighted by the way a section of the football public had turned against him, booing him incessantly, for their own childish sport. It shook him so much that he stood out from one game to try to break the cycle.
He has never spoken about it at length. How could you blame him? Every time he opened his mouth in the last years of his career someone tried to fill it in.
But he hasn't been hiding, and O'Loughlin says he is not scarred. "It's not something we discuss over and over," he said. "He's married. He's enjoying life as a new husband: that takes a bit of adjusting to! I palm my kids off to him and tell him, if he has kids too soon, this is what he's in for.
"We have a laugh every day. We play social basketball together. We love being around each other. I haven't noticed any difference in him. He's just the same Adam Goodes I've known since I was 17."
The GO Foundation works out of the Swans' offices, using some of their secretariat. You might imagine for Goodes that is a form of catharsis, a bridge from one world to another. It's not. "Adam's been doing this since the first day he chucked on a Swans jumper," said O'Loughlin. "He realised he was going to be a role model. Nothing has really changed for Adam.
"The foundation is business as usual for Goodesey. He enjoys being around the kids, helping them to understand it's a tough world out there. How do you survive? In our view, the No 1 thing is education. We're not trying to reinvent the world. We're just trying to give more and more opportunities. There's a lot of goodwill out there. It's about harnessing that."
Goodes enjoys that he sustains contact with the Swans, but feels no footy itch. "I'm 18 months out of the game," he said. "It's a very short time. I'm happy what I'm doing at the moment." By year's end, he hopes to have completed an Australian Institute of Company Directors course so that he can chair the GO Foundation board and sit on others as his horizon expands.
But he baulks at a suggestion he was approached to take a seat on the AFL Commission. "If I answered every bit of speculation, I'd never stop," he said. "I'm definitely not in the hunt for a position on the board there.
"I don't have too much spare time now. But I'm enjoying the break away from footy."
Goodes and O'Loughlin starred in a time when Indigenous players were flourishing in the AFL. There is a perception now that some are finding the game's stringent environment difficult again. Outbursts of racist abuse, most infamously in Adelaide, do not help. The venerable Swans say they are too remote from the game now to know. But O'Loughlin said he thought the AFL still was on the ball.
"The younger generation realise it's a ruthless industry," he said. "You've got to do a lot of things right to survive. I love what the AFL are doing in their programs. And now that AFL Women's has taken off, there are opportunities for our indigenous women to play the game."
