Top picks have been a disaster for Swans

 
Bruce Walkley Roar Pro

By , 27 Aug 2008 Bruce Walkley is a Roar Pro

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General action during the AFL Round 16 match between the Carlton Blues and the Sydney Swans at the Telstra Dome. Sean Garnsworthy/GSP images

The pickle the Sydney Swans have found themselves in after an appalling second half to their season should be setting the alarm bells ringing loud, clear and often at AFL headquarters as the boffins there persist in their push for a second team in Sydney.

The Swans have lost seven of their last nine games and find themselves certain to play in the finals mainly through the misfortunes of a draw by the Tigers and a stupid one-point loss by Brisbane.

With an ageing list there seems nowhere for Sydney to go but down – but that’s one place they simply can’t afford to go.

If the Swans followed what would be a sensible path for any other team in the competition, except possibly the Lions, they would swing the chopper, get the best kids they can at this year’s draft, cop a season or two of hammerings and then grab the pick of the crop when it’s their turn to take the cream of the young talent.

But there are a couple of compelling reasons they can’t do this, one of which is often overlooked.
Cast your minds back to when the Swans did get first go at the best of the best available young talent, and look what they ultimately got out of it, which basically was four-fifths of five-eighths of you-know-what.

Sydney got No.1 pick Darren Gaspar in the 1993 draft, and Anthony Rocca and Shannon Grant at Nos. 1 and 2 in 1994.

Gaspar played 21 games with the Swans in two seasons before moving to Richmond and playing 200-plus games there. Rocca played 22 games in two seasons, then became a 200-gamer at Collingwood.

Grant was cajoled into staying three seasons in Sydney, where he clocked up 58 games before going to North Melbourne, and will make it 300 career games when he turns out for the
Shinboners against Port Adelaide this weekend.

All three were reluctant to go to Sydney in the first place, and left for similar reasons, mostly family-related.

The Swans put in a lot of time and effort on developing all three into well above average players, but never got the benefit of their full potential, although Grant did play in their losing grand final side in 1996.

The Swans’ eventual premiership breakthrough in 2005 could arguably have come a fair few years earlier had these three played five or six more seasons at the level their later deeds proved they could clearly reach.

Their trips through the revolving door have no doubt taught the Swans a valuable lesson – better to sign a No.21 or 31 who wants to prove he should have been higher up the list than a No.1 whose heart isn’t in it, so dropping to the bottom to get a top draft pick won’t guarantee future success.
The other, more obvious, reason the Swans can’t afford to take the plunge is the Sydney entertainment market.

The Sydney club’s average home attendance in 1994, the year after Ron Barassi engineered an end to their 26-game losing streak, was 9,814 – up about 400 over the depths of 1993.
In 1997, the year after their grand final appearance, the Swans were drawing an average 35,818 to the SCG (that was before the “blockbuster” games at the then non-existent Homebush stadium boosted their figures considerably).

Even with the inflated figures since the big-drawing games were moved to Homebush, that 1997 figure hasn’t been surpassed – the average in 2006, the year after the premiership win, was 34,259, when membership reached a record 30,382, and last year, with 28,764 members, a drop of 5.6 per cent, the attendance figure was 35,632.

But – and don’t have any illusions about this – the memberships and attendances could easily drop by 20,000 if the Swans aren’t seen by the people who put their bums on the seats to be competitive (translation for the Mexicans: top six at least).

On top of all this, a second Sydney team? Madness.

So the reality facing the Swans is that they have to find about half a dozen more players like Darren Jolly, Ted Richards and Henry Playfair, whose present clubs find superfluous to their needs but who still have plenty of good football left in them.

Fremantle defender Roger Hayden might be a good one to run the pencil over. His performance against Richmond last weekend went a long way to preventing a shellacking.

Hayden’s marking in that game reminded me a lot of Kevin “Bulldog” Murray, Ian “The Rat” Bryant and Don Gale, father of Brendon and Michael and one of the best Tasmanian footballers never to play in the VFL/AFL.

All three of those former state representative back pocket players could take a good grab overhead (so could The Rat’s boxer dog, by the way), as well as read the play to a tee, and if Hayden could move east and stay injury-free I reckon he’d give a team like Sydney some pretty good service.

Adelaide’s Nathan van Berlo, one of the most underrated players in the comp, would be another pretty handy recruit, but I doubt the Crows would let him go – unless, of course, they could get a proven goalkicking forward, perhaps with the initials BH, in return.

This week the Shinboners should clinch a well-earned fourth place, with wins by Collingwood, the Saints and the Swans pushing the over-achieving Adelaide down to eighth.

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