The Roar
The Roar

AFL
Advertisement

How the Swans and Storm have thrived in hostile territory

Roar Guru
25th September, 2016
Advertisement
The Storm - along with the Swans - are the favourites to win the grand final this weekend. (AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy)
Roar Guru
25th September, 2016
38

Over the last two decades, the Sydney Swans and Melbourne Storm have been the most consistent teams in the Australian Football League and National Rugby League respectively, codes that dominate each other’s cities.

This weekend, both clubs will contest another grand final in their respective codes with the Swans to face the Western Bulldogs at the MCG on Saturday, while the Storm will tackle the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks at ANZ Stadium the following day.

For the Swans, this will be their fifth grand final dating back to 2005, while the Storm will be contesting their sixth decider since 2006, and seventh overall. In addition, this will be the third year (after 2006 and 2012) in which both clubs have reached the climax match in their respective codes.

The two clubs’ consistencies over the last decade in particular is testament to their desire to thrive in a sport that doesn’t normally receive huge coverage in their city.

In fact, since 2002, both clubs have missed the finals just once, though in the case of the Storm their finals absence was enforced as salary cap breaches uncovered in 2010 sentenced the club to finish that season dead last on the ladder.

Between 2006 and 2009, the Storm had produced remarkably phenomenal seasons, reaching the grand final four times, winning two of them – by beating the Manly-Warringah Sea Eagles and Parramatta Eels in 2007 and 2009 respectively.

However, it was all uncovered as a fraud on April 22, 2010, a day which will forever go down as one of the toughest days in the club’s history.

In the wake of the salary cap breaches, then-NRL CEO David Gallop stripped the club of their 2007 and 2009 titles, the hat-trick of minor premierships won between 2006 and 2008, as well as the $1.1M in prize money earned throughout that period.

Advertisement

In addition they were fined half a million dollars for breaching the salary cap, had their eight competition points earned to that point of the season stripped, and were to finish the year without earning a single competition point – even in bye rounds.

This meant that players such as Billy Slater, Greg Inglis, Cameron Smith and Cooper Cronk could no longer consider themselves premiership players, even though they were part of the teams that were victorious on grand final day.

However, the players who took part in those years were still able to keep their premiership rings, while Inglis and Slater are still to this day recognised as the Clive Churchill Medallists from 2007 and 2009 respectively.

But as the saying goes, “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”. Coach Craig Bellamy and his players would famously stand united in the days following the exposition of the breaches, saying the club would “fight our way back from here”.

Fight back they did.

After having to offload Inglis, as well as Ryan Hoffman and Brett White among others, the Storm got back under the cap for the 2011 season and would finish a game short of the decider, having claimed their first legitimate minor premiership.

Twelve months later, the Storm didn’t only return to the grand final, they also managed to win it, defeating the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs 14-4 to win their second legitimate premiership, following on from the 1999 title.

Advertisement

Slater, Smith and Cronk could finally call themselves premiership players, while Bellamy could also consider himself a premiership coach, after their honours were rendered invalid due to the salary cap breaches.

All four have held the Storm together for well over a decade now.

Smith debuted in 2002, the last time the club failed to reach the finals because of their performance (they finished 10th that year), and became full-time captain in 2007, while Slater and Cronk debuted in 2003 and 2004 respectively.

It was the club’s poor 2002 season, which came three years after their first premiership in just their second year of existence, that prompted the sacking of then-coach Mark Murray in favour of Bellamy.

The trio of Slater, Smith and Cronk would later prominently feature in the all-conquering Queensland State of Origin side that has won ten of the last eleven series dating back to 2006.

The Maroons’ success, and Smith’s leadership of his club (since 2007), state and country (both since 2012), is the primary reason why the Storm are sometimes referred to as “Queensland’s fourth team” after the Broncos, Cowboys and Titans.

While they did their absolute best to raise the profile of rugby league in AFL-dominated Victoria, early in their history they had to play out of a hopelessly outdated stadium which has since been demolished.

Advertisement

They also once had to share Etihad Stadium – an oval stadium not suited to rugby league.

After moving out of Olympic Park Stadium at the end of 2009, and having to use Etihad for three matches in the first quarter of the 2010 season, the Storm finally moved into AAMI Park that year and have since enjoyed very strong crowds.

It is for this reason why the Storm have been one of the strongest performing clubs in recent NRL history, in addition to them surviving through the salary cap scandal which threatened to rip the club apart.

Four years on from their most recent premiership, the Storm now have the chance to add a third legitimate title to their trophy cabinet when they face the Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks in Sunday’s NRL decider.

Winning another title would again prove the club’s detractors wrong, whereby many believed they would slowly fall out of premiership contention especially with most of their veterans on the wrong side of 30 and thus in the twilight of their careers.

Slater won’t feature in the decider though, due to a troublesome shoulder injury which flared up after just one match this season. He had undergone surgery on it last year, and since then Cameron Munster has deputised very well at fullback.

In fact, the 22-year-old has been earmarked as the permanent successor to Slater in each of the Storm, Queensland and Australia’s number one jerseys when the Nambour native eventually retires from the game.

Advertisement

The same year the Storm won their second clean title, the Sydney Swans won the AFL flag, upsetting favourites Hawthorn by ten points after making over 100 tackles for the first time that season in the grand final.

Like the Storm in the NRL, the Swans have been a model of consistency in the AFL, with their only finals absence since 2002 coming in 2009 when they finished 12th with eight wins and a percentage of below 100 for the first time since 1994.

That was the year the club won their most recent wooden spoon, also the last of a hat-trick of last-placed finishes they had endured in the early 1990s.

The poor performances forced the AFL to act, with Ron Barassi being installed as coach in 1993 and Hawthorn champion Dermott Brereton being recruited for little on-field impact (he would later return to Victoria to finish his career at Collingwood).

The first of many turning points came in 1995 when Paul Kelly, who led the Swans courageously through the dark days, won that year’s Brownlow Medal at the end of a much improved season for the club, before which Tony Lockett and Paul Roos arrived from St Kilda and Fitzroy respectively to bolster their on-field fortunes.

Barassi left the Swans at the end of that year in a much better state than when he found them, and since then the club has proven to be one of the most consistent clubs over the past two decades, missing the finals just three times (in 2000, 2002 and 2009) and finishing with a percentage below 100 just once (in 2009).

This year marked their 18th finals campaign in the past 21 seasons; that is easily more than any other club has managed in the same time period. They won just over 50 per cent of the finals matches they have contested (21 wins, 19 losses).

Advertisement

Their persistence and desire to survive in a rugby league-dominated city was finally rewarded with the 2005 premiership, which was their first in 72 years and since relocating from South Melbourne.

The side that year was led by Paul Roos, who became caretaker coach in 2002 after the sacking of Rodney Eade, as well as stars such as Barry Hall, Adam Goodes, Leo Barry, Jude Bolton and Brett Kirk, among many others.

Those who had struggled under the coaching of Eade would flourish under Roos, and few would later do so under current coach John Longmire, who took over at the end of the 2010 season.

Having had to wait 72 years between drinks, it would only take the Swans seven years to return to the premiership dais, when as mentioned above they defeated Hawthorn to claim the 2012 flag.

Goodes, Bolton, Lewis Roberts-Thomson and Ryan O’Keefe would join Vic Belcher as the only players to ever feature in two South Melbourne/Sydney premiership winning teams.

Goodes later missed the chance to become their first (and only) triple-premiership winner when the Swans lost to the Hawks by 63 points in the 2014 decider. His retirement at the end of 2015 left no survivors from the 2005 side at the club (though the last survivor anywhere, Sean Dempster, currently plays for St Kilda).

These days, the club is led superbly by co-captains Kieren Jack and Jarrad McVeigh, both of whom were locally born-and-bred, as well as a strong midfield boasting Luke Parker, Dan Hannebery and Josh Kennedy, rising stars Isaac Heeney and Callum Mills, and star full-forward Lance “Buddy” Franklin.

Advertisement

Shortly after the end of the 2013 season, Franklin stunned the AFL world when he announced that he would move to the Swans on a nine year, multi-million dollar contract – figures not seen since Alastair Lynch’s ten-year term at the Brisbane Bears (later Lions) between 1995 and 2004.

Following on from the impact Tony Lockett and Barry Hall made when they arrived at the Swans from St Kilda (or in the case of Franklin, Hawthorn), Buddy would continue to keep Australian rules football in Sydney on the map.

Coupled with the redevelopment of the Sydney Cricket Ground between 2012 and 2013, the club’s membership would crack 50,000 for the first time, and this in turn has contributed to continued strong on-and-off field performances this year.

Had Buddy signed with Greater Western Sydney, as had been speculated for most of the 2013 season, instead of Sydney, there is the chance the Swans wouldn’t be where they are right now, and that is shooting for their sixth premiership when they face the Western Bulldogs in the grand final at the MCG this Saturday afternoon.

It is a match in which they will start favourites, on the back of their phenomenal regular season which saw them claim their second minor premiership in three seasons and concede the least amount of points of any team.

But, as 2014 showed (and 2012, in the case of Hawthorn and 2008 with the Geelong Cats), finishing first at the end of 23 rounds and entering as favourites doesn’t mean anything if you can’t perform in the biggest match of the season.

Though the Swans were humiliated on the big stage, the two ex-Hawks they fielded that day, Franklin and Josh Kennedy, were quite easily the two best players on what was without doubt a dirty day for the club.

Advertisement

It is the demons of what happened two years ago which John Longmire’s men will be desperate to bury, as they look to vindicate every cent they offered Buddy when he came off contract at Hawthorn at the end of 2013.

It would also cap off one of the great individual comebacks to the game in recent memory after he withdrew from the club’s finals series last year in order to deal with issues surrounding mental illness.

Without him, co-captain Kieren Jack and Luke Parker, the Swans crashed out of September in straight sets but the club has rebounded in spectacular fashion to be back in the grand final for the third time in five seasons.

Another Sydney Swans premiership win, as well as a Melbourne Storm victory in the NRL, would repeat their feat of 2012 in which both clubs won the title where the other sport dominates.

It would also consolidate their statuses as the most consistent clubs in their codes in cities where typically don’t receive a lot of media coverage except for blockbuster matches and finals in September.

close