GEELONG president Colin Carter appeared in such rude health when AFL.com.au paid him a visit on Thursday that it was hard to believe he was recovering from a life-threatening situation.
Just six days earlier, Carter had been woken in the middle of the night by pain in his chest. The pain became so bad that he felt like all the Cats' ruckmen were standing on him.
His wife Angie called an ambulance, and the paramedics who arrived at his home in Melbourne's eastern suburbs soon realised that he was suffering a heart attack.
Around 90 minutes after first feeling the pain, Carter was diagnosed with a blocked artery and found himself on an operating table.
The surgeon, a Hawthorn supporter (Carter jokes that he's lucky the surgeon didn't know who he was), inserted a stent in the damaged artery and the crisis was averted.
By Thursday, the 70-year-old was out of hospital and was jovially trying to sort through the mountain of flowers and presents that were still being delivered to his home.
A tiny mark on his right wrist, where the stent was inserted, and some bruising on his right arm were the only clues as to what he had been through.
"I feel absolutely normal," Carter said with a grin.
"The old adage 'get to hospital quickly' is so true. There's no substitute for it. Get there quickly if you've ever got chest pain.
"I'll probably have to take some blood-thinning medication for the rest of my life, but other than there seems to be no long-term damage."
The heart attack prevented Carter from attending Geelong's annual general meeting, which was held on the day he left hospital.
But he won't be sidelined for long. Having convinced his doctors to let him drive again after two weeks' rest, he plans to return to the golf course ("I'll use a cart for a while"), his work with the Boston Consulting Group and his business at the Cats during the early days of January.
Eddie McGuire and Colin Carter meet in the middle of the MCG after the Cats' 2011 Grand Final win
Initially a member of Geelong's board between 1987 and '93, Carter ended his first period as a director when he was appointed to the AFL Commission, on which he served until 2008.
Having returned to the Cats' board in '08, he was made president in late 2011. At Wednesday night's AGM, it was confirmed that he would serve for another three years in the top job.
Carter has set his sights on achieving plenty between now and the end of that term. High on his priority list is boosting the Cats' membership from its 2013 tally of 43,000 to more than 50,000.
He also wants to secure funding for stages four and five of the Simonds Stadium redevelopment. After a recent trip to Canberra to lobby politicians from all parties, he is quietly confident that the club will be able to secure substantial funding in two or three years.
"I'd say I'm a bit more optimistic about getting some help that I thought I would've been," Carter said.
"There's no guarantees, and everybody's got no money at the moment, but the timing that we need the money in 2015, '16, '17 seems to open things up a bit.
"Given the bad news that has hit the Geelong region (with Ford closing down and numerous other businesses shedding jobs), we believe a construction project is good for the area.
"We can document that 90 per cent of expenditure on stage three (the Players Stand) was spent in the Geelong region."
Providing he can achieve what he wants in the next three years, Carter is likely to then step away from the presidency.
"That's my expectation at this stage," he said. "There's been no firm decision, but that's probably what I'll do."
For now, a return to full health is his No. 1 priority.
"I have to make sure I don't do anything stupid," Carter said. "But my redeeming feature, in this case, is that the thing I do too much of is sitting in front of my laptop. I'm not someone who likes to get out there throwing bags of wheat around."
SIX POINTERS WITH COLIN CARTER
What do you like most about the game?
"The people. That's a bit anodyne, I suppose, but the people you meet in football are fantastic."
What don't you like?
"I don't like the flooding and the crowding of players around the ball. If you can count 32 of the 36 players inside one 50m arc, and the other four just outside it, I think that's disgraceful."
What would you change about the game?
"It would be the flooding. I don't know what the solution is. It might be to have just 16 players per team on the field, I'm not sure. I'm hesitant to just create rules for the sake of it, but when the ball is disappearing under 20 players, I think that from an aesthetic point of view we need to break that up."
Favourite player?
"I love them all, but I do watch Stevie Johnson particularly closely when he's got the ball."
Why 'Stevie J'?
"I think it's great to have personalities on the team like Stevie. One thing you've got to say about Steve is that he's a consummate team player. He's often trying to feed the ball off, although sometimes it might be to ridiculous places. And we desperately hope we can get Dan Menzel back. He could be another Steve Johnson."
How will Geelong go next year?
"A realistic goal is a top-four finish. We're very confident that our team will be a good one. But we do know that it's going to be very tight between up to 12 or 13 clubs. If you lose two or three games that you could've won, then you can go from fourth to 10th pretty easily."
