The little girl with the blonde hair isn't the only reason Jaymie Graham no longer plays football for a living. He had a year left on his contract when he sat opposite coach John Worsfold at the end of West Coast's season but he had played only six games that year, dealt with a few niggling injuries, and the coach was blunt: there wouldn't be many more games on the way.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Graham could have hung in, clawed for more, hoped that Worsfold changed his mind or he somehow forced the coach's thinking to shift. But would that have been rewarding?
Graham had played 37 games in a four-year career off the rookie list and come within one week of playing in a premiership team. Now he works for an earthmoving company in Perth. At 25, he decided to retire, rather than be forced out not knowing what to do next.
"I feel comfortable," he said. "I did all that I could."
There was another reason Graham didn't turn optimistic eyes on other clubs, consider moving to a new state and a new team for however long they wanted him. Earlier this year, he became a father for the first time, to Hudson. Six months earlier, he and his partner Kasey took Graham's five-year-old sister, Candy - the little girl with the blonde hair - into their home. His life as a footballer, so dictated by habit and routine, changed drastically.
"I used to go off to bed at certain times, do certain things in the morning before games," he said. "My whole life was routine, routine, routine. But this year, I'd find myself down at the park with the kids and there'd be only 2½ hours left before the game. I'd look down at my watch and think, 'Hang on, I've got to go.' It was actually good, not to think about everything so much."
The calm had been a long time coming. Ever since he started at the Eagles, Graham and Kasey had been working to get Candy back into their family. As that effort began, he had four other siblings under five - Jimmee, now 11, Dylan, 10, Annie, 9, and Kane, 7, move in with his grandparents, Peter and Robyn, the same people who brought up Graham and his brother, Mitch, after their mother's drug addiction took over her life.
When Candy was born, Graham knew his grandparents couldn't take her in too, and considered her his responsibility.
He and Kasey began caring for her full-time last year and the last thing he wanted to do in potentially pursuing his football career interstate was to disrupt her life again, to move her away from her brothers, sisters and home for his own reasons.
"I look at Candy and she's got her home here now. She's at school, she does her surf lifesaving and calisthenics, she's making some friends," he said. "If I was single, then I would have had a real crack at it but with the two little ones, I wanted to do the best thing for them. It was a big decision but it was also a pretty easy one, in the end."
Graham can't remember ever not knowing his mother, Trudi, had problems. He knew what drugs did - how they made her so tired, so sick and so old - before he really knew what they were. He can remember staying in different places - hotels and motels - and his mum sending him down to the shops on his bicycle to buy her cigarettes. Some mornings, it would be up to him to make breakfast for himself and Mitch, and get himself off to school.
He worried about Mitch, very much. He memorised the phone number of his grandparents and, at only five, would ride his bike down to the pay phone, call them reverse charges, and plead with them to come for him and his brother. They'd be there within the half-hour. "I pretty much made the decision to leave home as a five-year-old," he said. He looks at Candy now, and can't believe he did it. "I knew what was happening, I understood. Almost every weekend we'd be with Nan and Pop and eventually there was one incident where it got too much, where that was it. We couldn't stay there with Mum."
As he's grown older, he has understood more. Graham has seen photos of his mother at 18 or 20, and she did not look the woman he knew.
"Up until the age of 22, she was normal and quite beautiful, actually," he said. "Looking at the photos, the way she deteriorated was unbelievable. For the last few years of her life, she looked shocking."
Graham never had much to do with her, although he had begun dropping the kids off for visits, and he was in South Africa with the team about this time last year when Trudi decided she could not go on. Before she died, she gained a job at a hospital and did what she could to get things together but it all became too hard.
While Graham didn't know her well, flying home on his own was hard. Explaining to the kids what had happened was even more difficult. If his mother left him with one thing, it is a deep appreciation for what he never will become.
"It taught me a lesson," he says. "Both me and Mitch, we would never touch drugs I've seen what can happen. People do it to themselves, and it affects so many other people, it affects so many lives. It's sad. I just think it's so selfish."
Now that he is older, and with Candy and six-month-old Hudson in his life, he understands the challenge it must have been for Peter and Robyn to raise their kids, then Jaymie and Mitch, and now the latest batch without a break.