Krakouer would never have thought to call Port Adelaide and ask the club to take him back. Not after the way he had left at the end of 2010, to take up a contract with the Gold Coast, not knowing how to let anyone know, wishing he could get out of it before he left and lasting just one season with the Suns. He hadn't stayed in touch with anyone, really, at the Power, but what he didn't know was that the people there had never forgotten him. Stuart Cochrane, the club's welfare manager when Krakouer left, had kept tabs on him mostly through his father, who called in every now and then to give the club he loved some tips on how to play better. Cochrane can remember people openly wondering if they could get Krakouer back on the very day he quit the Suns, simply because they had always liked him so much. His name came up again when the club started piecing together its first standalone SANFL squad ahead of last season, and coach Garry Hocking found himself needing some senior bodies. By that stage no one had any idea where Krakouer was, what he was doing, what sort of shape he was in or how they could contact him. But Paul Vandenbergh had met him through friends a few years earlier, and after just a couple of calls the club's Aboriginal programs manager was able to find a phone number and help put the coaches in touch. No promises, he and Hocking told Krakouer. But would you like to try out for the Magpies? Their messages arrived at just the right time. Krakouer was ready to test himself again, to take his football further. He had a seven-year-old son in Adelaide and it was the place that felt most like home to him; he had grown up there after being drafted as a skinny teenager whose greatest goal was to earn enough money to buy a piece of land and turn it into a go-kart track for him and his friends. When he got the text, he showed it to one of his cousins and told him he wanted to say yes. Then he sat with one of his uncles, and asked what he should do. "We had a bit of a chat, and he was really passionate about me coming back and giving it a crack. He was worried about me and he just wanted me to be happy and to turn back to footy. He had his reasons for why he was feeling like that towards me, he could see his nephew was going a bad way and he wasn't happy about some of the stuff I was doing," Krakouer said.

"He said that to me and so did a few of the other aunties, a lot of the elders, basically. They could remember this little kid walking down the street with a footy in his hands every day and it was like, 'where has that kid gone?' They were thinking about me and about my happiness, because there were some dark days there for me. I think they could see the problem a lot more than I could, and they wanted me to get away from that and go back and find footy again." At first, it wasn't about playing for the Power again. For a long time, that was the last thing on anyone's mind. "It was about giving him a chance, wanting him to feel good about himself and to live a life he was happy with," said Cochrane, who collected Krakouer from the airport and took him straight to training. "He had the same big smile and he was the same cheeky kid, but then you look across and make your assessments and seeing the sort of shape he was in, I had huge doubts. But we liked the guy; everyone liked him. And I don't think it was really even about footy. It was more, is there a chance we could throw this guy a lifeline?" It started with a few (slow, walked) laps of Alberton Oval. Through pre-season and the first few games of last season Krakouer felt a long way behind the other players and the only thing he wanted to do for a long while was catch up. He didn't have a car and he didn't have much money, so he relied upon Vandenbergh to get him around and was at his house often for dinner. He spent a few weeks couch surfing, staying with Byron Pickett and his family for a while before moving in with Jake Neade and his host parents. Between training sessions he worked for Vandenbergh, travelling for hours every week to help out with the club's community programs, coaching the teenagers in its Aboriginal academy and volunteering for anything else that came up. "He put his hand up for everything and it helped him find his way back into the club," said Vandenbergh. "I was worried about him for a while, when he didn't have a secure home, and knowing that it was financially hard for him. You didn't want that to be the thing that hindered him coming back, but he coped with that, he never complained about anything and he came in here and worked hard. And every day I would think, you could be so important. "We do a lot of work with kids about never letting go of your dreams, having a crack, never giving up, and I thought, 'man, this guy could have such a powerful story for so many kids, if he could pull it off'. I don't even know if he was thinking about the AFL at that stage. But you'd watch him work and train and make sacrifices and every week there was that little bit more improvement." Cochrane noticed it, too. "You'd see a glimpse, you'd see a little pocket of talent and think yep, he's still got it. You could see him start to love and enjoy his football again."

It wasn't easy. "It was the hardest thing I've ever done," said Krakouer, who was called into Ken Hinkley's office early in the season and told he wasn't hard enough, that he needed to get more serious or stop wasting his and everyone else's time. It was hard to hear, but it also made him think for the first time that he might actually be some sort of chance to make it back onto the Power list. Krakouer was given a list of things to do: fitness goals to work towards, a skinfold reading to reach. He stepped up his "sweaties," intense indoor cardio sessions. He lost weight, got fitter and felt even more motivated. Some of the senior players came out to watch him train with the Magpies; others made a point of asking Cochrane how he was going. In one early scratch match Vandenbergh noticed Alipate Carlile look instinctively for Krakouer and toss him the ball to kick in after a point, thinking 'these guys still believe in him.' "To come back in, it was weird," said Krakouer, who felt nervous walking back into the club for the first time. It was the same place it had always been, but so much had changed during his time away. No one even mentioned the Gold Coast, though; it was almost like it had never happened. "Straight away there were lots of little handshakes and hugs from all of the boys. It made me feel welcomed back. I wasn't sure what it was going to be like, but it was a relief." Slowly, Krakouer's fitness and form began to come together, to complement each other. On grand final day he kicked three goals and at the end of the season he was asked to speak to the leadership group about why he wanted another chance to play alongside them. "What should I say?" he asked Vandenbergh. "Don't even think about it," he told him. "Just go in there and be yourself." When Krakouer was drafted as a teenager, he was quiet, shy and assumed good things would happen. When other players started telling him he would surely be picked up again, he didn't let himself believe them and when Hinkley called to say he had been rookie listed, it still felt like just a start. Krakouer was dressed, warmed up and ready to play 10 minutes after getting into the rooms, when picked to play his first game back five weeks ago, nervous and a little uncertain. Had the game changed? How? Would he be strong enough, quick enough, good enough? "It's a different game to when I was playing before. You can't stop thinking for one second," he said. "I had plenty of doubts coming back, about whether I'd be able to match it." He still does. But he's glad he does, in a way. He knows that he doesn't want to let this chance go easily and feels grateful that he is getting to answer all of his questions at the club that has always felt like home. "It means a lot to me but it's hard to fully understand because I'm stuck in the moment," he said. "When I take a step back and look at what I've done, I guess I might see it. But right now I don't want to take anything for granted. I didn't know what I had, until this opportunity. Not many people get a chance like this, so I want to take in as much as I can."