Andrew Donaldson made his way into the locker room carrying something no equipment bag could hold. Tucked closely under his arm was a box containing his father’s ashes, soon to be buried with those of his mother at the local cemetery in Clunes where their love story began.

Andrew approached the No.13 locker door, into which the names of Vin Gardiner, Jack Howell, Milham Hanna and of course Graham Donaldson are forever etched. 

“I wanted to pop over with Dad,” Andrew said, “because it’s the last chance for me to physically be with him back in his old club before we take him to Clunes.

“It's quite an emotional thing … completely sentimental.”

Though born in Horsham, Graham spent much of his life in Clunes after his father, a policeman, was transferred to the Victorian goldfields town – and Dawn was a local Clunes girl.

Twenty-five years have now lapsed since Graham died at the age of 66, his wife Dawn having passed only four days before last Christmas. In a few weeks, Andrew and his older sister Andrea will reunite Dawn with Graham in the grave their late mother had acquired.

It’s a matter of record that Graham Donaldson represented Carlton in 106 senior appearances from 1955 to 1962, the final two seasons as captain. He officiated as Assistant Coach to Ron Barassi from 1967 to 1970 and was at Barassi’s side through the much-vaunted 1968 and 1970 Grand Final triumphs. It was a contribution that placed the Donaldson name firmly in Carlton’s history long before Andrew ever pulled on the jumper himself.

Andrew’s own path to the ground then known as Princes Park began after he completed his schooling at Camberwell Grammar and joined Carlton as an Under 19s hopeful. He arrived full of promise, but wholly unprepared for the demands of the League game, and his first in-club experience came fast and hard. On his first night and accompanied by his father, he was ushered  into the then CEO Ian Collins’ office and asked to put pen to paper, before Sergio Silvagni escorted him onto the ground for the necessary meet-and-greet with Coach Trevor Keogh and the training staff.

“Training was a real shock to the system,” Andrew conceded. “On the second night I was sent off on a 10-kilometre run and I was bloody rooted . . . and then they got the footies out."

Named at full-forward, Andrew turned out for his first game with the Carlton Unders in 1982, as fate would have it at the Junction Oval - the very ground where Graham had first turned out for the seniors, against St Kilda back in ’55.

Andrew was a member of the team which recorded the highest score ever posted at Under 19 level - 42.30 (282) to St Kilda’s 8.4 (52) - in the 16th round of that season. Andrew himself put one of the 42 over the goal umpire’s hat, and he and every team member was awarded a trophy for their efforts.

But by his own admission, Andrew struggled to grasp what football at the elite level truly demanded, and the idea of training every Saturday simply didn’t register.

“I didn’t twig,” he admitted, “which told me just how disconnected I was”.

As the training nights in absentia mounted, Master Donaldson was issued with the none-too-subtle ultimatum from then deputy manager Shane O’Sullivan – he should look to further his playing career play elsewhere, with the door left ajar if he “turned into anything”.

“I was mortified,” Andrew said of the moment. “I just didn’t realise.”

Andrew’s father then tried to broker a move to Fitzroy, the club where he (Graham) had also officiated as senior coach, but contractual and clearance complications put paid to that – and so it was that Andrew joined the amateur ranks with Old Camberwell Grammarians and chased the leather until his mid-20s.

Andrew harbors no regrets, but he does carry with him the memories of that solitary season with the Carlton thirds – the demands of coach Keogh, teammates like Milham Hanna, Mick Kennedy and Shane Robertson (all future Carlton Premiership players at senior level) and of the resident runner David McKay – a four-time Premiership player in his own right.

When McKay arrived at Carlton as an outsider from Newlyn in 1969, Graham became a mentor of sorts. “Swanny really appreciated that,’ Andrew recalled, “so when I came here, he took me under his wing and tried to help me."

Now, as he prepares for his parents to be reunited again, Andrew’s pilgrimage to Ikon Park has come full circle – and as Andrew unhesitatingly declared by the No.13 locker, “I’m through and through a blue boy".