Ed George has a pending date with the first day of the rest of his life.
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But before that happens, he hopes that he has a date with destiny: his Tamworth Swans winning the 2020 premiership.
The 19-year-old is in a holding pattern awaiting a restart of his first year at Macquarie University in Sydney - his campus life abruptly upended by the coronavirus.
He is doing a double major in economics and applied finance online from his Tamworth home.
George had been at uni for just over a month when COVID struck. He was about to play his first preseason AFL game for the university.
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"But you've gotta look at the positives," he said. "I'm playing football with the boys again, and we've got a red-hot team this year."
Indeed.
On Saturday at Riverside 5, the Swans recorded their second win of 100-plus points this season when they beat the Kangaroos 19.23 (137) to 5.5 (35) in the Jacob Vallender Memorial Round (Tamworth have two wins and two losses in 2020).
The Swans have endured a well-documented horrid time since their last premiership win, in 2009. George has been a shining light amid the gloom.
Last year the midfielder, who likes to get "down and scrappy", became the second player to win the Gillies Medal in back-to-back seasons.
He made his senior debut for the Swans as a 14-year-old in 2015. He had run water in the club's 2009 grand final defeat of the Nomads in Armidale. His father Brendan, now coach of the Swans women, played in that much.
George has long desired playing in a premiership-winning Swans side himself. But after relocating to Sydney, he may have thought the prospect of that happening was gone.
However, it has now come tantalisingly into focus. "We have eyes on the premiership this year," George said.
