The Sydney Swans and the COLA Myth

Twenty years ago the Sydney Swans Football Club was in a world of hurt after years of mismanagement. How the old VFL foundational club from South Melbourne is still with us today is somewhat of a miracle.

The Swans are on the cusp of becoming an AFL giant, having missed the finals only four times since 1994, the last of three consecutive wooden spoons.

Five grand finals and two premierships have stabilised the club after a long history of instability.

The clubs achievement’s out of the ruins of the early 1990s is remarkable, and the insult from the drama over the COLA is failure to acknowledge where the club has come from, and how they managed it.

The perpetuated myth the AFL gives the Swans handout after handout, when the AFL has had very little involvement with their overall success, stings. The majority of what the Swans have been able to achieve has been their own doing.

Signing Tony Lockett at the end of 1994 was not the brainchild of the AFL; it was Richard Colless’ and Ron Barassi’s decision. The Academy is also a Swans initiative.

The AFL allowed the Swans extra cap room to be able to assist players with the high cost of living in Sydney, which is not jut confined to Bondi, Neutral Bay or Mosman. A quick drive down the road to the Shire or up to the North Shore, or over to Leichardt or Newtown, high costs of living are going to greet the Swans players. And it’s not just rental and housing prices, NSW insurance premiums are through the roof.

The same reality is greeting the Greater Western Sydney Giants players over on the Hawkesbury. Parramatta is developing at the speed of light, only increasing the Sydney network demand for housing and rent. It’s one of the reasons why both the Hunter and Illawarra, Sydney’s neighbouring regions, also experience high costs of living.

However, as a far as the Swans are concerned, the COLA is not a major contributor to their success, and if anything, it helped stabilise the club’s list. Nothing more, nothing less. Prior to the 2011 season, the Swans were running at losses and on the back of huge profits. The Daily Telegraph reported in May of 2010 the club had been running at a loss of $2 million over three years.

In the last three seasons the club has reported profits of $114,956 (2011), $207,007 (2012 premiership) and $646,745 (2013.

Compare this to Collingwood, who at the end of last season reported a net profit of $16.4 million.

In September, The Financial Review reported the Sydney Swans will secure a net profit of about $15 million for 2014, but it doesn’t make the challenges of having an AFL club in NRL heartland disappear. And neither has the COLA been responsible for the Swans securing large profits. It’s never been a financial boost to the club.

Even so, the AFL’s silence for why the Swans were banned from trading players until 2017 is perplexing. There may be a method to the madness, and if there is, the AFL needs to come out and say so.

By then, the Swans should have had numerous retirements and player movements. Adam Goodes, Ted Richards, Heath Grundy, Rhys Shaw, and possibly Mike Pyke and Kurt Tippett will have retired or moved on, freeing up space for the Swans to do trades and be prepared for life post-COLA.

If this is the case, the AFL should explain rather than having AFL boss Gillon McLachlan insult the club with, “You can’t have everything, you can’t have everyone,” remarks. Swans and opposition supporters alike deserve to know and should not be left in the dark, because at the moment it looks like there is something to hide.

Is it lost on McLachlan the Swans were declared dead in 1993 and the laughing stock of Australian sport? A string of embarrassing off-field woes to go with the on-field woes didn’t help. The AFL slogan in the 1990s was, “I’d like to see that”. It was also the punchline to a joke, “the Sydney Swans win a game”.

AFL has come along way in Sydney, in a city and state where the game was once derided as aerial ping pong. Now it seems the AFL is in self-sabotage mode all because of irrational fears and hysteria swept up over the COLA. The game in Sydney does not need a return to those embarrassing days.

The belief the Swans exploited the COLA to secure Kurt Tippett and Lance Franklin on the back of winning a premiership has been the overriding factor in having it phased out. However, there has been no sensible explanation for how the COLA helped the Swans win two unlikely premierships in 2005 and 2012.

In 2005 it was with a side playing a brand of footy so ugly that then AFL chief Andrew Demetriou said Sydney would not win a premiership playing the way they were. In 2012, the Swans won a premiership from virtually nowhere. Only a few pundits dared to consider them a top four chance as they had a team of inexperienced youngsters mixed with a missing forward line, has-beens and rejects, and a Canadian rugby player.

Did the COLA suddenly build good culture and make the team play better? Did it suddenly produce second-to-none club administrators and list managers? Did it help John Longmire implement his ‘slingshot’ game plan, which led to the Swans’ 2012 flag?

Was the problem confounded to the Swans winning premierships, or what happened after the 2012 premiership – the recruitments of Kurt Tippett and Lance Franklin? Why would this be a problem when the Swans were doing what they have always been doing since Richard Colless took over the club in 1993? Or do the rules change when a club has a COLA?

Tippett and Franklin were recruited to keep the club moving forward, and the club was only doing what clubs like Hawthorn have been doing. If the Hawks can recruit James Frawley on the back of winning back-to-back premierships, to go with their own string of high-prized recruits over the years (Brian Lake, Ben McEvoy, Shaun Burgoyne and David Hale), then why can’t the Swans recruit Franklin and Tippett?

Sydney is the most volatile and competitive sporting market in Australia, and the Swans have to keep making sure they are moving forward in it by being successful. In 2002, Colless learned this quickly and his masterstroke was getting Andrew Ireland on board.

Ireland, along with Paul Roos, revolutionised the club’s recruiting process. No longer would they rely on recruiting big-name players, also ending the myth teams had to bottom out to get the best out of the draft. They began looking at need based and second-tier players who were desperate for a crack at senior AFL footy like Josh Kennedy and Ben McGlynn, and took punts on rejected players like Mitch Morton.

Along the way, the Swans’ winning culture drew attention to Sydney’s attractive lifestyle, luring players of the ilk of Lance Franklin. If Franklin is only one player who has looked at Sydney for this very reason, it’s frightening to wonder who else the Swans may have had to knock back.

In 2012 Colless said this had become a common reality for the Swans, when at one time, it was a struggle to get players to the Harbour City. Now players’ managers consistently sound the Swans out. Not a bad problem to have, but perhaps the AFL wishes they would be more interested in the other Sydney team they’re trying to establish.

At the very least, the GWS Giants have proven the COLA alone will not attract players, it’s the whole package, and that is what the Sydney Swans have been able to present.

The Swans should be happy to see the COLA go, but the AFL shouldn’t let the club experience pain either as it is phased out. In any case, if the COLA alone is responsible for their success, then the non-existent explanation of how bares great testament to the myth.