AFTER three months of gruelling pre-season training, a handful of practice matches in the NAB Cup and 24 intense premiership season matches including two finals, you’d expect most elite footballers to kick up their feet come holiday time.
That was certainly not the case for Swans co-captain Adam Goodes, who returned to the Club this week, following an action packed 10 weeks of leave.
In the first of a three part series Goodesy talks about his trip to Sri Lanka…
Goodes kicked off his end of season break with a working holiday to Sri Lanka, in conjunction with the AFL Players' Association and an organisation called Global Reconciliation.
The travelling party to Sri Lanka included Goodes’ brother Brett, former team-mate Brett Kirk, new Adelaide Crows recruit Richard Tambling and his housemate Jono, and also Hawthorn’s Brad Sewell.
The group ventured to witness first-hand how the country is dealing with reconciliation, and Goodes says the experience was a fascinating one.
“Sri Lanka is a melting pot of religions and cultures with the population of Australia, within the size of Tasmania, which I thought was just unbelievable, but they all seem to get on pretty well,” Goodes explained.
“Obviously they’ve had a civil war that finished around 12 months ago, and for the people in the North of the country, all they’ve known for the last 27 years is war. So the next phase of reconciliation is getting up north and helping the organisations in Sri Lanka already, to help continue their work in the reconciliation field,” he said.
Goodes explained that one of the highlights of the trip was meeting with Sri Lanka’s Indigenous Vedda people, who are regarded by many as the first inhabitants of the country and to this day live a traditional life on the land.
“That experience of seeing, in this day and age, people still living in traditional ways, was a fantastic thing for myself and my brother, and the others on the trip.
“The chief that we spoke with just had so much wisdom on the world and how to live your life and how to uphold your culture. The main message was that culture is all about your beliefs, and living up to those beliefs and sharing them and passing them onto the next generation.”
As a result of the trip, a group of Sri Lankans will visit Australia next year and tour some remote Indigenous communities, while a documentary and photographic presentation of the tour is also in the pipeline.
More to come on Wednesday and Thursday. Tomorrow, in part two of Goodesy's Great Adventure, he discusses his trip to Ireland with the international rules team.
