Tom Swift was a gun junior footballer. Brisbane legend Michael Voss said he was the best 16-year-old in the country.  The young West Aussie averaged 36 disposals at the Under 16 Championships; the most by anyone in 15 years; now that’s elite. But a year later he thought his blossoming career might be over. Playing for the AIS/AFL Academy he tore the ACL in his left knee, the next year he suffered another knee injury, this time to his lateral ligament.

For two years Swift hardly played, he missed the Under 18 Championships but such was his reputation and after a stand-out draft camp, West Coast claimed the midfielder with their second pick and number 20 overall in the 2008 National Draft.

At the time Swift described his drafting as a “dream come true”, but four years and 34 games later he decided to walk away. Six months on Swift has “no regrets at all”. He hasn’t fallen out of love with the game; he’s just fallen in love with something else. The ‘it’s not you, it’s me’, reasoning rarely flies but for this Eagle it’s completely acceptable.

Mid-way through last season the goal posts began to shift. Swift started to feel greater passion for his part-time university studies – a Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Western Australia. Despite being only 22 and well below his football peak he decided there would be greater opportunities outside the boundary than inside.

“If I kept playing footy it would probably eat into the time that I could use to excel at my studies and get to the level I want,” he said.

“The benefits I saw from going down that road outweighed the success I was going to have as a footballer, not that I didn’t have confidence in myself or didn’t believe in the club. I just wanted to make the most of my opportunities.”

Swift consulted his parents, both doctors, and a range of people before rejecting a contract extension; a move that stunned West Coast.

The top junior footballer was also a top student, his final year marks ranked him in the top 40 students in WA. He will complete a Bachelor of Commerce within two years with a view to pursue post-graduate studies in the future in either Medicine or Engineering.

“Right now it’s a matter of doing as well as I can at uni and to get the best marks possible so I can give myself the best opportunity to pursue whatever comes up,” he said.

He is enjoying the surety of results that comes with studying, something he didn’t always experience in elite sport.

“You can really invest as much time into it as you want, and your results are going to be proportional to the amount of time you invest in it. In something like footy, the physical and especially the mental side I have found that if you invest too much time into it, it can actually have a detrimental effect,” he said.

It is no secret Swift was a target for AFL fans in the West, not least of all the West Coast fans. He says the criticism “was difficult at times” and “eye opening”, but had no influence on his decision.

“I had to learn to deal with it and to be honest, that is one of the best things I got out of footy; the ability to handle that adversity and put it behind me and move on,” Swift said.

“I had very high expectations of myself and I probably put more pressure on myself than anyone else did to be honest, so in terms of what other people were saying it probably wasn’t more pressure than I was putting on myself.

“I learned to internalise that and only worry about what I was thinking and what the club was telling me to do. Those external pressures can rattle young players going into the AFL system.”

Swift is proud of his achievements and while he admits he is no “footy head”, he loves football and is in no way jaded by his experience in the AFL system. In fact, his time as an AFL footballer exceeded the expectations he had as a wide-eyed draftee.

“I thoroughly enjoyed my time and in a lot of ways it exceeded my expectations in terms of what I gained outside of the direct football context. The life skills I have been able to learn and apply to all aspects of my life have been invaluable,” he said.

“West Coast was the best club I could have asked for and they did everything right by me so I was very grateful for everything I was given there. I guess it’s about different passions and different directions.”

Swift is not playing football this year, instead he will concentrate on full-time study, but he is likely to return to play for Claremont in the WAFL in the near future. “I definitely haven’t become disenchanted with it at all,” he said. He will follow the Eagles this year and chats regularly with ex-teammate Scott Selwood.

Since the end of last season Swift has enjoyed catching up with friends away from the football industry, some of who he travelled to the United States with. New York took his breath away and he flagged the possibility of returning there to attend college in the future.

From the outside one might suggest by retiring Swift is running from the challenge of AFL football, but in reality he is going harder and faster to develop a future off the field, something he feels will be more rewarding and more sustainable.

Why there are many asking why one would walk away from the dream job? You get the impression Swift is a guy continually asking why not? Sometimes it takes a step to the left at the right time for a new door to open and like his surname suggests, he is waiting for nobody.

“It’s a black and white case of moving onto the next phase of my life, without any regrets and being happy and content with where I am at.”