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. Graham could have hung in, clawed for more, hoped that Worsfold changed his mind or that 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 from nine to five every weekday, for an earth-moving 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 is another reason why 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 before then, he and his partner Kasey had finally been able to take 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, became less-defined by where he was meant to be, and what he was supposed to be doing.

"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 two-and-a-half 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 has been a long time coming. Ever since he started at the Eagles, Graham and Kasey have been working to get Candy back into their family. As that effort began, he had four other siblings under five - Jimmee, now 11, 10-year-old Dylan, nine-year-old Annie and Kane, 7 - move in with his grandparents, Peter and Robyn, the same people who brought up him and his brother, Mitch, after their mother's drug addiction took over her life. When Candy was born, Graham knew there was no possible way his grandparents could take her in too, and considered it his responsibility to do what he could.

He and Kasey began caring for her full-time at about this time last year, and so the last thing he wanted to do in potentially pursuing his football career interstate was disrupt her life again, to move her away from her brothers, sisters and home for own his selfish reasons. "I could have gone. I could've moved over east and spent a couple of years with another team, but I didn't think another move for Candy would be fair," he said. "If it was going to be for a fair while, then maybe, but with footy you just never know. I could have gone away and been back in a year, and that would have been really disruptive.

"I look at Candy and she's got her home here now. She's at school, she does her surf life saving and calisthenics, she's making some friends. 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 on 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 has grown older, he has understood more. Graham has seen photos of his mother when she was 18 or 20, and she did not look like 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 his West Coast teammates about this time last year when Trudi decided she could not go on. Before she died, she had taken a job at a hospital and was doing 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. Both me and Mitch, we would never touch drugs," he said. "I don't want to make the same mistakes she did, and I never will. I know how bad drugs are, and I know what they can do to people's lives. I see myself as a strong person and I know I wouldn't ever get dragged along by peer pressure to do anything like it, because 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."

After his grandparents took him and Mitch in, Graham grew up in Kalgoorlie, where his uncle and pop trained horses. He played cricket in the summer, footy in the winter, and he felt like a kid. Being raised by his grandparents meant early dinners and early bedtimes, but it also meant getting spoiled. He had everything he wanted; he did feel a little bit different to other kids, but he was happy.

Now that he is older, and with Candy and six-month-old Hudson in his life, he has also understood how much of a challenge it must have been for Peter and Robyn to raise their kids, then Jaymie and Mitch, and now the latest batch - all in a row, with no break. He has recently become involved with Wanslea Family Services, which runs a "Grand Care" program for people who, for whatever reason, have taken unofficial custody of their grandchildren and, at first, he was amazed by how many others were caught in the same situation. "There's so many," he said, "and almost always, it's drugs."

He heads along to the occasional barbecue, to kick footies with some of the kids in the program, and hopes to help them realise that being brought up by people other than your parents doesn't mean you're different, and that you don't necessarily have to follow in the path of your parents. "Some of these people are getting no government support and they're so determined to keep their families together," he said. "I think of my nan, she has leukemia, and she's still making four lunches every day. Both her and my pop, they're just amazing people and they're so humble. They should be retired by now, but they wouldn't have it any other way."

Graham has also come to appreciate how difficult it must have been for his grandparents to not only take him and his siblings in, but to watch their own daughter fall apart before their eyes - trying everything, not knowing what more they could do. "They would have had to go through a lot," he said. "They tried everything with mum, they really did. I think it just gets to the stage where you've done all you can, when you've tried so hard. It gets to the stage where it just hurts, when you're doing so much and the person isn't worrying about anything else but themselves. It's hard, but at some stage you've got to get on with your own life and I think that's where it got to with mum. Everyone tried so hard to help her, but if she wasn't going to help herself, what can you do? I think she realised, but she realised too late. Towards the end, she knew. But sometimes you just have to let it go, as hard as it is."

Bringing Candy home has been trying, too. Before Graham and Kasey began looking after her full-time, they had access to her on weekends. She was living two hours away, and so Graham would drive out to pick her up each Friday night, drive back, play footy on the weekend and drive her back on the Sunday. "It was pretty tough," he said. "We'd have her for the weekend, but I felt like I was hardly getting to spend any time with her. Sometimes we'd be playing in another state, and that's when it was really on my mind. Once I was on the field it wasn't, but sometimes I'd feel a bit guilty that I wasn't at home and I wasn't helping out. I felt like I should have been, that it was up to me, that it was my responsibility. I felt a lot of guilt and eventually I said that to Kasey, and she said it had never even crossed her mind."

The pair's relationship has been challenged, but Graham is sure he would never have been able to take on so much without his bright, strong-willed partner, and Kasey is amazed by what, at such a young age, Jaymie has had to do. "He was 19 years old and writing emails trying to get his little sister back," she said. "He was doing things that not many 19-year-olds find themselves doing. He's a bit of a clam, and that was a problem. I talk, and he keeps it all to himself. But it's incredible what he's done. Football's stressful enough, but he's had all these issues going on outside it. And he just dealt with it. He knew what he needed to do."

Candy has her own "full-time" bedroom now, and a nephew to play with. Hudson was born on her birthday, which, said Graham, "got her nose a bit out of joint. But she's just a very happy little person."

He has enjoyed watching the other kids live their new lives too; he collected them from the Perth airport when they moved over from Sydney five years ago, and can remember how unhealthy they looked, how bad their teeth were. They were also used to looking out for each other, with five-year-old Jimmee running the show. "You'd give one of them an ice-cream, and all four of them would share it. They were so used to watching over each other," Graham said. "Now they're all spoiled; they all want their own!"

Each has experienced some learning difficulties, but they're nice and settled too. In October, everyone packed up and went to Thailand on holiday together. Recently, Jimmee was made a member of his schools' student council. "That was a big day," Graham smiled. "I look at him and that was me, in a way. It's really hard to think back, and imagine that. We both had to grow up quickly."

Graham started his new job late last month; he's getting used to a whole new routine. He'll play for South Fremantle next year, but is not missing those long, hot summer training sessions. When he thinks about his career, the first thing that jumps into his head is how he was cut from the 2006 team, two days before the grand final, after playing in every single game for the year. "I was this close to playing in a premiership, but I didn't," he said. "I think that's when I realised, this is a game where you can put in so much work and still not get anything for it." Still, he feels satisfied. He played 37 games, and not everyone gets to do that. "I don't regret anything. I did all that I could and I don't regret the decision I've made now," he said. "It's time to find something new. It's not all because of the kids, but obviously they're a priority now. I'm really looking forward to watching them all grow up."

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