It’s not entirely unheard of for a groom to be late for a wedding and not the end of the world if it happens, providing all works out in the end.

But what’s the football equivalent? Perhaps being captain of a team that is running late for a game. And on your first day at the helm?

If former South Melbourne champion Jack Graham was alive today we could ask him about this bizarre situation that unfolded 75 years ago.

It was Round 2 of 1944. In his 10^th season, Graham had just taken over as captain after first-choice skipper Herbie Matthews had broken his leg in the opening game of the season.

The Swans, coming of a 27-point win over Carlton in Round 1 in which Graham had kicked an equal career-high five goals, were drawn to play Geelong at Kardinia Park in Round 2.

It was to be Geelong’s first home game in their return to the competition after a two-year hiatus due to World War II.

All was going well in the life of the then 28-year-old Graham until the players assembled in Melbourne to catch the train to Geelong. It was late. Very late.

So late, in fact, that at the scheduled 2:40pm start time the South Melbourne team had not even arrived at the ground. Graham was like the groom who had left his bride at the altar.

Without the back-up of floodlights there was much panic, but after a hurried trip from Geelong railway station to the ground and an abbreviated preparation the game got under way at 3:12pm.

Happily, like the wedding scenario, all worked out. Graham kicked a team-high three goals and logged his first win as skipper as South beat Geelong by 19 points.

This was the 134^th game in the wonderful career of Jack Graham, which began 84 years ago today, on 10 August 1935.

Graham, a 191cm ruckman/key position player, hailed from Red Cliffs, a small town on the Calder Highway 16km south of Mildura, which is known for citrus fruits and grapes, and in the 2016 census had a population of 5060.

Graham was the Swans champion who almost wasn’t. He had originally moved to Melbourne to play with Collingwood before changing his mind at the last minute.

He debuted at age 19 in Round 15, 1935 against Carlton at Princes Park, breaking into a side that sat on top of the ladder and effectively replacing the great Bob Pratt after he had kicked eight goals  in the game before.

Curiously, Graham played his second game in Round 14, seven days later, on 17 August. Another pointer, perhaps, to the fact that he was going to be special. After all, how often does Round 15 precede Round 14?

Graham watched on as the Swans, premiers in 1933 and runners-up in 1934, finished the 1935 home and away season on top of the ladder and beat second-placed Collingwood by 21 points in the semi-final to again reach the grand final.

He watched, too, as they lost the premiership decider to Collingwood by 20 points after leading by 15 points at quarter time.

For the next 13 years he was a fixture in the Swans side before a sadly acrimonious exit in 1949 when, after being replaced as captain by Bert Lucas, he played only four games before accepting a job as captain-coach at Minyip in the Wimmera region, 320km north-west of Melbourne.

Still, through a career of 227 games and 233 goals he left a wonderful and especially versatile legacy best identified by three contrasting career highlights: he played at centre half back in the 1936 grand final, was an undersized ruckman in the 1945 grand final, and at 32,  in his 215^th game in 1948, he kicked 10 goals at full forward.

Winner of the South Melbourne best and fairest in 1945, when they played in the famous ‘bloodbath’ grand final loss to Carlton, he was official captain from 1946-48 after his caretaker role in 1944, was the club’s leading goal-kicker in 1941 and 1948, represented Victoria 15 times and captained the Big V in 1948.

One of the very best players in the competition through his prime, he finished 7^th in the Brownlow Medal in 1937 and equal 6^th in 1941, and polled 57 Brownlow votes from 1937-41 – fewer only than teammate and 1940 joint winner Herbie Matthews (90), Footscray’s 1941 winner Norm Ware (81), Essendon’s 1934, ’37 and ‘38 winner Dick Reynolds (77), Collingwood’s equal 1940 winner Des Fothergill (66), Footscray’s Harry Hickey (59) and Essendon’s Hugh Torney (58).

And he was desperately unlucky in 1945, when he was named Footballer of the Year in a season in which the Brownlow was suspended due to the war.

Ironically, Graham had tried to enlist in the army but was rejected because as a fireman he was a member of the army reserve.

In 15 years Graham played under eight different coaches at South  – Jack Bisset, Roy Cazaly, Herbie Matthews, Jack Baggott, Joe Kelly, Johnny Leonard, Bill Adams and Jack Hale.

Having played his first 132 games in jumper #22, he ranks second in games for the club #22 behind only Jason Saddington (142), and, having played his last 95 games in #27, he ranks third in games in #27 behind Reg Gleeson (128) and Eddie Lane (96).

Inducted into the Swans Hall of Fame in 2011, he was the fourth Swans player to play 200 games after Vic Belcher, Mark Tandy and Jim Cleary, still ranks 21^st on the club’s all-time games list and is one of only 10 Swans to play 200 games and kick 200 goals.

The others are Adam Goodes (372 games/464 goals), Jarrad McVeigh (324/200), Michael O’Loughlin (303/521), Ryan O’Keefe (286/261), Stevie Wright (246/247), Daryn Cresswell (244/208), Bob Skilton (237/412), Paul Kelly (234/200) and Tony Morwood (229/397).

Although Fitzroy’s Tony Ongarello experimented briefly with the place kick in the 1950s, Graham is regarded as the last player to specialise in this now forgotten version of goal-kicking.,

Whenever he took a mark within range of goal Graham would dig a divot with his right heel, place the ball at an angle on the divot and let fly.

Through 214 games Graham had never kicked more than five goals in a game, and had only kicked more than three goals in a game six times.

Then, in his 215^th game in Round 8, 1948 against Geelong at Kardinia Park, he did something that only six others among now 1423 Swans players have done. He kicked 10 goals in a game.

It is a mark that Tony Lockett reached seven times, Bob Pratt six times, Lindsay White three times, and Harold Robertson, Richard Osborne and Graham reached once.

Graham was 29 days beyond his 32^nd birthday when he posted double-figures – second oldest behind Lockett’s last double-figure haul in 1998 when he was 32 years 132 days.

Twelve games and 18 goals later Graham was finished. After his coaching stint in Minyip he took charge of South Adelaide in the SANFL before eventually retiring with wife Audrey to the Gold Coast, where he died on 14 April 1984 at just 67 following complications in surgery to help heal damage done via untold blows to his shins during his playing days.

The Graham legacy lives on. And not just at the Swans. The family name is also huge at Geelong, where Jack Graham’s son Ricky played 35 games from 1965-69, including the 1967 grand final loss to Richmond, before coaching stints in Tasmania and Queensland, and a short term as a board member with the Brisbane Bears.

And his grandson Ben, now on the coaching staff at the Western Bulldogs, played 219 games from 1993-2004, including the 1995 grand final loss to Carlton, and was club captain and a best and fairest winner, before eight years as a punt-kicker in the NFL with the New York Jets, New Orleans Saints, Detroit Lions and Arizona Cardinals, where he was the first Australian to play in the Super Bowl.

Together Jack, Ricky and Ben Graham make for a very good football trivia question as three members of the same family who each played in an AFL grand final in 1945, 1967 and 95.