Collingwood is a sporting club with a culture of loyalty – step outside those parameters, and your time at the Magpies will finish quicker than a highlights package of Australia’s current tour of India.
This ideological purity will survive over anyone, including Dane Swan.
His interview on The Footy Show and subsequent club-imposed fine is the escalation of long-running tension between club and player that has existed for 18 months.
Where has this tension developed from? From the anomaly that is Dane Swan the person.
In a world of professionalism, where football is a player’s only job, the Magpie midfielder is a throw-back to the early 1990s.
Football isn’t everything to him and he also likes to have a social life.
He was even quoted last year as saying he would like to retire at the end of 2014 because he wants to enjoy his life.
“I will play out my contract and, at the moment, I think that will be the end of me,” he said in February last year.
“I like to enjoy life and footy takes away so much of your social life.
“I don’t want to be [mid-30s] and sort of not be able to do what I want to do.”
But with the departure of key ally Mick Malthouse and the promotion of Nathan Buckley, Swan’s new mentor had a new plan.
Remembered as one of the most professional footballers of his time, Buckley’s intensity was different to the laid-back nature of Swan.
2012 became tense, with Swan dropping out of the leadership group followed by accusations in the media he was a critic of Buckley’s coaching style.
The crescendo of this story was a two-match suspension handed out to Swan in August 2012 for drinking alcohol, despite pledging with the rest of the team not to drink until the end of the season.
While he finished the season strongly, a damning article written by Caroline Wilson in November claimed he had been a disruptive influence at Collingwood and hinted at the possibility he may have a drug problem.
While Nathan Buckley strongly defended Swan in a tweet, the lack of response from club president Eddie McGuire and CEO Gary Pert was intriguing.
McGuire, who enjoys a freezer like temperature relationship with critical media and an Antarctic relationship with Caroline Wilson, surprisingly refused to put the boot into the story.
“We’re not going to go into the blame game,” he said last November.
“What we don’t want to start doing is having a witch hunt.”
Judging by Thursday’s interview, the lack of outward defence from McGuire looks to have pushed Swan into publicly defending his reputation.
It seems both Swan and the Magpies have trust issues with each other.
Swan feels he is being deserted while attacks are impinged on his character, while the Magpies seem frustrated with his individualistic attitude.
While the relationship is still somewhat tenable, with McGuire backing Swan to stay, the next four to six months see a focus on the internal working of the Westpac Centre not seen in a few years.
Any developments or new incidents may see Swan, the Magpies, or both, terminate their relationship after 2013, which will spark the biggest player frenzy since Chris Judd.
While nothing is concrete, watch this space.
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