Life is good for Raiders legend and former senator Glenn Lazarus.
"My wife calls me Sir Lunch-a-lot. I have a lot of lunch and coffee," he tells The Canberra Times from his favourite cafe in Farrer.
Lazarus is relishing his semi-retired lifestyle back in the capital, calling Canberra home once again after spending the last few decades living in Brisbane.
Despite the odd frosty morning, the 57-year-old - nicknamed "The Brick With Eyes" in his Raiders heyday - has no regrets about making the move late last year.
"The things that I liked about Canberra growing up here haven't changed, like the great sense of community and just the ease of getting around," Queanbeyan-born Lazarus said.
"In Sydney I almost got hit by a truck on the way to State of Origin."
Family is what has brought the former Kangaroos front-rower and his wife back to their old stomping ground.
"A lot of our family decided to move back here for one reason or another, and when my wife and I were sitting in a house in Brisbane through COVID things got a bit lonely," he said.
"We'd drive to Canberra and stay for a month and then we'd go back to Brisbane, but it was just getting silly.
"Our children are all living here now, my wife's mum and my mum are still here, so it's good to be around them and help them out, and I've also rekindled friendships from when I was playing for the Raiders."
Teammates and coaches Lazarus once shared the Raiders locker room with have become his go-to coffee date company, with current Canberra coach Ricky Stuart still one of his closest friends.
Lazarus said the conversations with former footy mates often cover health issues as well as rugby league, as injuries from years of playing inevitably catch up with them.
No matter what they're doing in their lives now though, Lazarus said there remains a "special connection" among his Raiders mates.
But with Stuart he particularly enjoys getting the lowdown on all the latest updates from the club where Lazarus made his first-grade debut in 1987, and was part of the 1989 and 1990 premiership-winning teams.
"I always want to know what's happening with the Raiders with Ricky," Lazarus said.
"I've met the current players and they're wonderful.
"Ricky gets criticised every now and again, but people don't see what he does behind the scenes, and what he does for the community, and the club.
"He just bleeds green and the players now in the system for a couple of years have improved greatly, so I think he's doing a wonderful job and the Raiders are doing well."
Of course moving back to the city where he won multiple premierships for the Green Machine also means getting pulled up by adoring fans who have not forgotten the achievements of Lazarus during the Raiders' glory years.
In addition to his two titles with Canberra, Lazarus later won with the Brisbane Broncos and the Melbourne Storm, and remains the only player in rugby league history to claim premierships with three different clubs.
All of those premierships he won were also the first for each of those clubs. For his efforts, Lazarus is rightly considered a club legend three times over, but in Canberra, the Raiders fandom is something else.
"People really do still remember the late 80s and early 90s Raiders fondly," he said. "It was a such a special time playing in three grand finals in a row, and four in five years.
"I've got such great memories coming back after winning grand finals. There's diehard fans but I've always said that Raiders have the toughest fans having to sit at GIO Stadium in minus-two degrees on cold nights to watch footy.
"They are very passionate."
Every now and then Lazarus will get asked about whether he'd consider a return to politics, but he said he's gladly left that life behind.
He described the almost two years as a Palmer United Party senator as "a bit stressful", preferring to recall the "rewarding" work he did between 2015-16 as an independent.
But overall, it was the time-consuming nature of being a senator that took the greatest toll.
"When I was a senator in Queensland, I was never home," Lazarus said.
"I remember when I walked into Parliament House for the first time and thinking how I used to drive past there every day to get to training, and then when I had a role there it was a very surreal, and a bit of a weird feeling."
Nowadays Lazarus is all about spending more time with his wife, and their daughter and two sons, all of whom work in public service - a very Canberra story.
There's the occasional trips to Sydney or Melbourne to help out his wife who runs a public relations business from the capital, and in between that, Lazarus is more than content filling his cup having coffee catch-ups, doing park runs and taking his chocolate labrador Monty and cavoodle Billy for walks around Canberra.
"What I [always] liked about Canberra is it had city facilities but a country town feel, and it honestly still has that, which is why it's such a nice community," he said.
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