Last month, Joel Corey, David Wojcinski, Max Rooke, Trent West, Tom Lonergan and Shane Mumford based themselves in remote Aboriginal communities in Gove and Groote Eylandt.
Their role was to use their footy nous to engage people through clinics, cultural activities, leadership talks and sports nights aimed at all levels of the community.
Eighteen Cats have taken part in three trips over the past 12 months, the repeat visits proving that kinship through footy has far-reaching effects.
Geelong football operations co-ordinator Darylin Ramondo puts it simply: "Having sportsmen as role models makes it easy to send a message into the community."
The visits have helped highlight the lack of football opportunities on Groote Eylandt, which the club believes has resulted in the appointment of a regional development manager to service the area.
The indirect benefits are starting to emerge, too. In line with programs such as Qantas Kickstart and the Clontarf Academy in Western Australia, Geelong has instituted a system to improve school attendance.
Following the players' trip to Gove, nine students from the area, aged 14 and 15, were flown down to Geelong for a week as a reward for their efforts at school. The feedback from teachers suggests that school attendances are better than ever before.
The visits through the years have sensitised the players and training staff to cultural differences. A funeral in a community, for instance, will affect attendances at planned sessions with the players.
"There seemed to be quite a lot of funerals there at stages," Geelong player development manager Ron Watt concedes.
Other experiences left lasting impressions on the capacity for remote communities to band together – as the club found out on one 38-degree day in Birany Birany (pronounced 'Bran Bran'), two-hours' drive on a dirt road from Gove.
"There would have been about 120 kids at Birany Birany," Watt recalls.
"But it was made up of four different community schools that had come together for the day for a sports program. We worked with them for about five hours on a whole lot of different sports, football one of them, and it was a terrific day.
"That's a big thing for them to get that many kids together. All those kids had to travel between one and two hours to get to the spot that we were at."
A link through Cat Nathan Djerrkura, who lived in Gove until he was 16, has assisted a cultural exchange of sorts between the players and the community.
"We've probably had the privilege of being involved in things we wouldn't normally have the chance to experience – dancing, and the boys getting up and being involved, dinners with elders," Ramondo says.
"At Groote Eylandt, seeing the rock art, which is centuries old in caves, is a privilege as well."
Watt says the transformation in the players is palpable, the experience helping them to become more rounded individuals, and even encouraging a few to contribute ideas on how to make a difference in the future.
"David Wojcinski is one who springs to mind," Watt says.
"He's just so keen and passionate about wanting to go back again and make a difference with the environment. He's come up with a couple of strategies he thought we might be able to implement to combat the problem of rubbish up there."
The visits also increase understanding between indigenous and non-indigenous players, no doubt enhancing team interrelations.
"Our Aboriginal boys – you do see them actually grow and become really happy that people have experienced their culture and they've been able to share that. You can actually see it happening in front of your eyes," Watt says.
