A few years after his football career finished, Alex Carey was on his way to Canberra to play cricket for the Prime Minister’s XI. It was the first, small taste of representative cricket he had ever got to play, and he was feeling excited about it. He found his seat on the plane, sat down and was buckling up his seatbelt when he glanced up and saw Kevin Sheedy walking down the aisle towards him. “Down he came and as it turned out his seat was the one right next to me,” Carey said. “We got to have a big catch up after a few years, which was really good.”

The last time the pair had seen each other was at the end of 2011, when coach Sheedy had taken player Carey for a coffee at the Rooty Hill RSL and told him he hadn’t made the list for the GIANTS’ very first AFL season. The reasons didn’t surprise Carey – that his lack of leg speed was going to hold him back, along with the number of experienced recruits and high-end draftees that the club was about to bring in.

But having been at the GIANTS since before they were the GIANTS – Carey moved to Sydney straight out of school to play TAC Cup footy for Team GWS after he missed out on being drafted – it wasn’t a nice feeling to realise that after all his hard work, he wasn’t going to get to be around when the AFL team played its first game and the fun stuff really started to happen.

“I was shattered,” he said. “I’d been through it once before when I missed out on that dream of being drafted, and to hear Sheeds tell me I wouldn’t be there anymore was worse because I loved it there. I felt like my game was really improving. And I’d sort of been through all those tough times as part of the under-18 team when we didn’t really have much at all, but with all the good players coming in I think that just kept pushing me further down the list until I was off the list.

“I didn’t have any special attributes as a footy player, now that I look back on it. A lot of the good players at the time were real athletes and I was that slow midfielder who trudged around and tried to find the footy. My aerobic base definitely picked up though, and I was pretty clean, so I thought I’d be OK and when the time came it hit me pretty hard. Sheeds sat me down to tell me and within a couple of days I was back in Adelaide working out what to do.”

Things didn’t happen easily from there, even though it looked for a while like they might. Carey made his one-day cricket debut for Australia in early 2018, earned a national contract and has since become an important part of the team as well as vice-captain of the national T20 side. At the 2019 World Cup he was Australia’s fourth highest run scorer and took more catches than a wicket keeper has taken at any World Cup, ever. Playing Test cricket is among the things he would like to do next but his time at the GIANTS – in combination with what happened next – taught him sport doesn’t follow a script and to enjoy the moment he is in.

Carey went straight home to Adelaide from Sydney, intending to play for Glenelg and try again. That plan changed at the end of the pre-season, when he decided to go back to cricket, the sport he had pushed aside to purse football. He spent the winter getting ready for that instead. His first season back was a great one – he was called up from grade cricket to play for South Australia in the Sheffield Shield, played three matches towards the end of that summer and was signed up to the state squad.

But when his form fell away the next summer, and he lost the contract he had only just been given, Carey had to start thinking about what life without full-time sport would be like and how he would make money, taking up a job with a financial planning company in Adelaide.

“That was actually good. I really enjoyed it, the people were fantastic and it wasn’t the worst thing, although it’s made me grateful ever since for the chance to run around a cricket field rather than sit at a desk all day,” he said. “I worked full-time there for about 18 months and they were probably the best seasons I’ve had, in terms of grade cricket anyway. I loved finishing work and getting to go and train and see my mates. I was just enjoying it. I started to make some runs and then I got another chance, with the wicket keeping gloves this time.

From there things did get moving, quickly. “I got called back up, played three more state games and got my contract back and things started to happen for me I guess. Getting the chance with the gloves was good because I’d been opening the batting before then and sort of trying to work out what I was going to be. And I definitely worked really hard for it. But when I got that second opportunity I was just thinking, ‘how good is it to get to do this full-time again and to get to play for South Australia?’

“I was so thankful to have that state contact and be playing state cricket. That was all I needed, I just wanted to do well there, which I think was a good thing. I wasn’t distracted, I was just loving it. I’d watch Matthew Wade and Peter Neville and Tim Paine and think, ‘how good are these guys?’ I’d had a few ups and downs and started to learn about the important things in life, so when the chance came with Australia, I was in a really good head space to do it.

“I was obsessed with being as good as I could be when I was young and I still have that desire to work, because you can’t get too far without it. But it wasn’t everything, like it used to be. I was just in a good place to enjoy my chances and appreciate them as they came.”

Carey has moved on in other ways, since he left the GIANTS. He met his wife Eloise not long after moving home from Sydney and has a 19-month old son, Louis, who couldn’t care less whether he makes a century or a duck. He was meant to be in India right now playing for the Delhi Capitals but is appreciating this unexpected chance to spend some time with his little boy at home. “It’s been a nice forced break that I think everybody was half hanging out for. We’re away so much. To have this time with my family is something I want to really enjoy.”

Carey was there from the very start, with Greater Western Sydney. He loved working with Alan McConnell and Brett Hand while captaining the under-18 team; he met one of his best friends when he moved into a Breakfast Point apartment with the 17-year-old Dylan Shiel and he still receives regular coaching advice from Sheedy’s offsider, Mark Williams. “My friendship with Dylan is quite special, we connected really well and we’re still really close now,” he said. “And Mark is great. He’s a great mentor and person to speak to and a very big supporter of mine. He still follows me closely and puts the coaches hat on now and then.”

Carey was disappointed that it all ended before it started, in a sense. But he experienced things at the GIANTS – moving away, looking after himself, experiencing life as a full-time footballer – that he is sure helped set him up for the setbacks and successes that have followed.

“I definitely had to grow up pretty quickly, but it was more than that,” he said. “I loved all the hard work they put us through and even to be let go is something I appreciate now because of what’s ended up happening with my cricket.

“I didn’t leave GWS regretting anything which is probably the biggest thing I look back on. I was exhausted, I did everything I could, I couldn’t have worked any harder than I did to stay on the list and it just wasn’t for me. I still met some great people and made some friends so I’m thankful for the experience and for the position it’s helped put me into now with my cricket.

“It gave me that realisation that things can change, and that you have to enjoy yourself while you’re doing something. If anything I was a probably a bit too focused when I was up there; I was doing everything to the nth degree to try and make it and I found that it can all end really quickly anyway. Now with my cricket, it’s just do it all with a big smile on your face, appreciate the position you’re in and have fun because what’s the point of it all otherwise?”