TOBY Thurstans never went home.
As a teenager, Thurstans arrived at the Port Adelaide Football Club from Crib Point in Victoria as the No.39 call in the 1998 AFL national draft. He became the longest survivor of that promising class of teenagers that included Michael Stevens, Adam Morgan and Derek Murray.
By the time he took off the boots for the last time as an AFL player, a premiership player of 110 games - symbolically against Brisbane in round 21, 2009 - Thurstans was starting a new phase of life, with a wife and their family in Adelaide.
"It never came into consideration to go home ... and now I have been here for 25 years," says Thurstans, a three-goal hero in the 2004 AFL grand final that deposed Brisbane at the MCG.
In that time, Thurstans has found two new families - his own with South Australian-born wife Alana and their two children, Darcy and Milla; and the extended family at the Port Adelaide Football Club.
Today, Thurstans is the father figure of both. He is the first president of the new Port Adelaide past players and officials group - the critical piece in the jigsaw puzzle that has been Port Adelaide since entry to the national league in 1997 and, most critically, after the One Club reunification in 2012.
While the Port Adelaide Football Club has for decades - during the SANFL era - kept its past players and officials connected with their own circle within the club, the rise to the AFL and growth to the AFLW has created a new landscape with new challenges.
"So we have started afresh," says Thurstans.
"In the SANFL, we always had a past players group. But since the AFL became part of the club in 1997 - and now the AFLW - we have found players have drifted off for various reasons. Some do go home ...
"I always was passionate about having a past players group. I have felt very passionate about it."
The same agenda stood with club chief executive Matthew Richardson and former player and current administrator David Hutton, who have both strived to correct the ills of the SANFL order in 1997 to have a wedge between Port Adelaide's operations in the AFL and SANFL arenas.
Today, it is one club, three senior teams in three leagues - and one family. A big family too.
"We needed to make this happen," adds Thurstans who today is waiting for a constitution to be completed and tested. The data base of former players and officials also needs to be completed, particularly with names of players who did go home. He has former players John Butcher, Alan Gill and Paul Rizonico along with former team runner and fitness coach David Arnfield aligned to form a committee along with an AFLW representative from Port Adelaide's newest team.
Thurstans' phone has hit the numbers of former players Steve Summerton and Brayden Lyle and former club general manager Ian McKenzie often to work through the challenges of meeting the needs of every past player and official at a new-look Port Adelaide Football Club.
"We want our former players to have a platform, more than just a reason to meet up regularly at a reunion or at home matches at Adelaide Oval or at Alberton - we want them to have a connection to the current group of players. When you play for Port Adelaide, you are always part of the Port Adelaide Football Club.
"A lot of players leave the club and don't come back because they feel they need to be invited. They are always welcome.
"Everyone understands the club has a 100 per cent focus on the current players. But the past players will not be forgotten. We want them back at the club. They should not feel they need to see the red carpet being rolled out before they step back into their club."
Past players have sometimes - by their pride in the bricks they placed in the wall at the football club - been noted to be the most difficult members of any club's family.
"Travis Boak and (current captain) Tom Jonas love the past players being part of the club today," says Thurstans.
"Once you retire, you can go to games. You can go to training. I found myself looking up to the current players and asking myself, 'Should I go up to them?'"
Thurstans is not alone. Many other former players question how they fit in their football club once out of the changerooms.
"I have spoken to a lot of players who feel the same way - they do want to stay connected to their football club," Thurstans said.
For Thurstans, this return to a significant role at the Port Adelaide Football Club ends a long stint away from the hotbed of senior football. He seems one of the rare exceptions from the 2004 AFL premiership squad. He did not take up coaching nor seek a media career, even after a short sample of radio commentary in retirement.
"Maybe it is because I don't have an ego ...," says Thurstans. "As an athlete, I was competitive. I loved the lifestyle the game gave me. I did not enjoy the scrutiny that came with it.
"Coaching, that is not me. I am not super confrontational. I know coaching creates a lot of anxiety. There is so much involved in the job. There is so much riding on very decision you make. I don't need that. I am happy to coach my son in basketball and football but that's it."
Thurstans hit the books to find his future beyond football, studying construction management economics.
"I went straight into the construction industry on retirement," Thurstans said. He had six years as a project manager with a commercial builder and today is the business development manager at BluBuilt Constructions.
He is now building a critical part of the Port Adelaide Football Club's soul.
As an ultimate ambition, Thurstans wants the past players group to play a significant role in helping the adjustment to life after high-profile football.
"It would be nice to get to a point where we are helping players who have been hit with hardship," Thurstans said.
Already the new past players committee has aligned with the club's long-serving Swoopers team to raise funds for the community football clubs that have been so critical in Port Adelaide history along the LeFevre peninsula.
