Thirty-one years ago today there was a wild goal celebration among Sydney players at the Paddington end of the SCG.

Not because the Swans had won a close game or a final. Or anything special like that. The Swans were more than 100 points up against Melbourne when an unconvincing 40m drop punt on the run wobbled through the big sticks to set off absolute pandemonium.

In the middle of it, mobbed by teammates one and all, was Rod Carter.

Why? Playing the 215^th game of a career that ultimately reached 293 games, the then 31-year-old fullback had kicked his first and what turned out to be his only goal.

It was Sunday 27 July 1986. The Swans, second on the ladder with a 14-4 record, were flying and were hosting the second-bottom Demons, who were struggling at 5-13.

At three-quarter time the Swans led by 94 points. It was 22.12 to 7.8. So, Carter took it upon himself to get a little adventurous.

“I couldn’t get a kick down back because the ball was never coming down so I ventured up the ground,” he said, not for the first time telling the story of one of the club’s most famous goals

“I was between wing and half forward when Warwick Capper got the ball and I called for it.

“I could see the look in his eye … there was no way he was going to give it to me.

“But when he turned and looked at the goal he saw how far out he was and he realised he couldn’t kick it that far. So, almost begrudgingly, he gave me a handball.

“I was on the run and had a ping. It wobbled a bit but fortunately it went through.”

So, ended what was then and still is the longest wait for a AFL player to kick his first goal.

It was 4,424 days after his AFL debut for Fitzroy against Geelong at Kardinia Park on 17 June 1974.

And despite being an AFL player for a further 1,476 days before his final game for Sydney against Melbourne at the MCG on 11 August 1990, he never again saw that two-fingered salute from the goal umpire.

His first goal wasn’t the first time he’d troubled the scorers. He kicked a behind in his 44^th game for Fitzroy against Richmond at the Junction Oval in 1977. And he later kicked another behind in his 234^th game for Sydney against Melbourne at the MCG for a career score total of 1.2 (8).

Carter remembers albeit a little uncertainly another occasion when he could have got on the scoresheet.

“I was either my 200^th AFL game or my 250^th AFL game … I can’t remember … but I was only ever let out of the backline of very special occasions,” he said.

“I was lining up from 40m and the boys were just bagging me. The umpire even said, ‘what’s going on?” and they told him I’d never kicked a goal. The umpire said, ‘you’ve got to be kidding’.

“It was the sort of pressure I wasn’t used to and predictably I didn’t score. That’s why it was much better when I finally did kick a goal because I was on the run. I didn’t have to think about it.”

Carter’s extraordinary long wait for his first and only goal is invariably the thing for which he is best remembered, but it shouldn’t be. Kicking goals wasn’t his job but stopping them was. And he did that better than most.

An AFL Life Member, he was a 2011 inductee into the Swans Hall of Fame, and was widely regarded as one of the premier defenders in the game during a career that spanned 17 years.

It was a career that began at Banyule, near Heidelberg, about 12km north of the city in Melbourne.

He lived in the Fitzroy zone and grew up a Fitzroy supporter. Just. “I lived 400m from the Collingwood zone so I was pretty happy I wasn’t zoned to Collingwood,” he said with a laugh.

At 16 he joined the Fitzroy U19s and worked his way through the Reserves to the Seniors.

“I played my first game on Kenny Newland down at Geelong. I played half back and he played half forward, and I think he may have got the two Brownlow votes that day,” Carter recalled.

Indeed, Newland had 24 possessions and kicked four goals in a two-point Geelong win while Carter had 16 possessions. But that wasn’t only why he remembers the game well.

“I was a skinny 19-year-old kid playing against a bloke who was much older and had played 150+ games. Before the first bounce I put out my hand to shake his hand and he just looked at me. I looked away and thought ‘that’s not very nice’.

“And then whack. I felt his fist crash into my face. I thought to myself ‘this is going to be beautiful.”

Carter played 76 games for Fitzroy over six years from 1974-79. His last game for the club, ironically, was against South Melbourne at Junction Road in Round 2, 1979. South won by 53 points.

He was released mid-season and was ‘devastated’. He didn’t play at all for five or six weeks, and after approaches from several VFA clubs he joined Port Melbourne because it was handy to his studies at what was then Footscray Institute (now Victorian University).

“Port was a great club … a real working-class club ..the people were tough as teak,” he recalled, having finished off the season in good fashion with ‘The Borough’.

But he still had a burning desire to play League football.

“I was approached by several VFL clubs and trained at Richmond pre-season but I quickly worked out I was the wrong body type for them. They were mostly really chunky and I was lean. So I ended up at South Melbourne.”

How? It’s a good trivia story about the man widely known as ‘Rocket’.

“I was training at South but Fitzroy wanted money for me. South said no so Fitzroy revoked permission for me to train there. In the end I played a practice match for Port ironically enough against South.

“I wasn’t playing too flash but I got the ball once and after I’d had a kick I felt bang … David Rhys-Jones hit me in the face. I had a depressed cheekbone fracture. Fitzroy thought I’d be out for a while and in the end a deal was done.”

Carter was traded from Fitzroy to South Melbourne in return for 1972 Brownlow Medallist Len Thompson, who at 32 had played 20 games at South in 1979 after 14 years and 268 games at Collingwood.

It was a massive win for the Swans. Carter went on to play 10 outstanding years in the red and white, while Thompson played 13 games for Fitzroy before he retired.

And why ‘Rocket’? “In my early years at Fitzroy we had a practice match at the Old Watsonia Army Barracks. I played the second half and when I chased down a ball I ran passed a couple of players. The crowd ooh-ed a bit and a teammate called John Duckworth (older brother of Essendon star Billy Duckworth) suggested I’d moved like a rocket. It stuck.”

Carter remembers well walking into the South Melbourne club rooms for the first time.

“The only free locker was 13 so I got changed there. Then the footy boss came up and asked what number I wanted. He offered 13 and 60 and I was a hit superstitious so I said I’d take 60.

“He looked at me a bit strangely, asked what locker I had got changed in, and said ‘how about you take 13’. So I did. In the end I decided I’d try to make it unlucky for the opposition.”

Carter did that and more. Having played his first two seasons with the club under the South Melbourne banner based at the Lake Oval, he put together a phenomenal Swans record.

In his first 10 years he played at least 20 games eight times and twice played 19 games, missing just 14 games in that entire decade. He retired after seven games in 1990.

“I was lucky. I was probably fourth choice fullback at the start of my first season at South but things fell into place for me. Victor Hugo was a boy from Narrandera but his wife was homesick so he went home, and then Rick Dickinson broke his finger. Someone else got injured too … I can’t remember who is was … and I got my chance,” he recalled.

Carter was one of the last players to relocate to the Harbour City, having stayed in Melbourne for a finger operation. And after living in Sydney in ’82 he commuted between Sydney and Melbourne in ’83 while finishing his teaching qualifications.

But in 1984 he settled in the NSW capital, and he’s still there 33 years on.

Despite his early time at Fitzroy he is 25^th on the all-time games list of 1421 Swans players, and equal 929^th on the club’s all-time goal-kicking list, ahead of 159 who have a ‘zero’ in the goals column.

Only two Swans and none in almost a century have played 100 games for the club without kicking a goal – Arthur Rademacher (101 games 1913-1920) and Bill Dolphin (100 games 1905-11).

Carter was 35 years 286 days old in his last AFL game, making him the sixth oldest Swans player all-time and the youngest since Jack Bissett, captain-coach from 1933-36 when the club finished 1^st-2^nd-2^nd-2^nd and coach of the Swans Team of the Century, played his last game in 1936.

The only five Swans players older than Carter have been Bill Fraser (37 years 53 days in 1904), Arthur Hiskins (37 years 37 days in 1927), Bill Windley (37 years 5 days in 1905), Bissett (36 years 32 days in 1936) and Bert Howson (35 years 349 days in 1908).

Seven others in the 35+ category were Adam Goodes (35 years 245 days in 2015), John Rantall (35 years 266 days in 1979), Barry Round (35 years 218 days in 1985), Laurie Nash (35 years 150 days in 1945), Paul Roos (35 years 97 days in 1998)), Harry Brereton (35 years 95 days in 1922) and Billy Billett (35 years 19 days in 1923).

Rantall, Round and Nash were all members of the Team of the Century, named in 2003.

In retirement Carter spent 10 years working for AFL NSW, coaching the NSW U16 and U18 teams that produced among others Jarrad McVeigh and Kieren Jack, and later did talent scouting for Collingwood, where his finds included Jarrod Witts (now at Gold Coast) and Michael Hartley (now at Essendon).

For the past eight years he has been back in the education game, and now the 62-year-old divorced father of three considers himself “very fortunate” to be teaching physical education at the academically-selected Sydney Technical High School.

Despite his time at Fitzroy Carter is very definitely a Swans man. “Unquestionably,” he said. “And I’m so proud of what the club has done, establishing a strong AFL foothold in rugby league heartland and building a culture second to none in the AFL.”

But having played in Fitzroy’s 1979 night premiership he has recently accepted an invitation to attend a reunion of that team organised by the Brisbane Lions.

He also went with ex-teammate Brett Scott to the Swans’ Round 14 SCG clash with Essendon, where he had a refresher course on the camaraderie that AFL football is.

At the SCG he bumped into Round, his first South Melbourne captain, and together the ex-Swans trio spent much of the evening with ex-Bombers Terry Daniher, Ronnie Andrews and Stephen Carey.

“It was something I hadn’t done in years and we had the time of our lives. When you are playing you tended to be pretty guarded but to spend time with those guys at the footy was fantastic.”