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Tony Lockett’s elevation to AFL legend at the game Hall of Fame ceremony, was a reminder of a significant anniversary for the code and the Sydney Swans.
2015 marked 20 years since Lockett first pulled on the red and white, after 12 seasons at St Kilda.
Some of Lockett’s greatest deeds were performed with the Saints, including his Brownlow year of 1987. In 1991 he kicked an astonishing 127 goals in 17 matches, at an average of 7.47 goals a game – a record which may never be broken.
Lockett’s greatest legacy is arguably what he achieved for the Sydney Swans and the game in Sydney. Even if his stats at St Kilda are marginally better.
To put it into perspective, he averaged 4.9 goals at the Saints, and 4.7 at the Swans.
It was the instant impact Lockett had in Sydney in 1995, where he elevated the Swans from the bottom of the ladder for the first time in three seasons, and helped put the club and the game in the Sydney conscience.
Not only that, the crowds steadily began to rise at the SCG as the club finished 12th.
Coincidentally the Super League War had decimated rugby league during Lockett’s first three seasons in Sydney, which gave the Swans an unexpected opportunity be in the spotlight.
Plugger’s impact on the playing group was also instantaneous. Then-Swans skipper Paul Kelly had a breakout season, winning an unexpected Brownlow Medal, and he gave emerging players like Michael O’Loughlin confidence.
A year later the club would play in its first grand final in 51 years, after Lockett kicked ‘that behind’ in the preliminary final against Essendon.
Before Plugger arrived in the Harbour City, the Australian rugby league premiership was at the peak of its powers, and Australian football was a scorned sport. It had long been derided as aerial ping pong and ‘GAYFL’.
The Swans were a basket case and the laughing stock of Australian sport – it had no respect. Apart from diehard supporters in Sydney, the old VFL foundation club once known as South Melbourne, was all but dead.
Richard Colless and Ron Barassi were asked do the impossible – bring a dead club back to life.
The club had tried a marquee player with Dermott Brereton, who proved to be a disaster, playing 7 underperforming games for 7 goals, and served two-thirds of the season on suspension.
Between 1992 and 1994, with only one draw and 8 wins to boast of, including a losing streak that stretched 26 games, the average crowd attendance in that period was 9733.
In 1995, the average was 15,976.
On the surface, Lockett and Sydney did not seem a perfect match.
The Peter Caven incident was fresh in the minds of the small band of Swans supporters, and the “there’s a pig at full-forward,” had only occurred two years earlier.
Yet a media shy Plugger, whose ferocious battles with Melbourne’s fishbowl are legendary, in an rugby league soaked Sydney media, proved compatible.
Sydney allowed Lockett to just play and enjoy his footy.
Concerns over Lockett’s rouge ways and ugly tribunal record proved a non-issue. There was little doubt he would be a success.
Prior to that comeback in 2002, he played 95 games and kicked 459 goals, earned three All-Australian selections, another two Coleman Medals, and kicked over 100 goals on three occasions.
Plugger’s crowning moment in Sydney was breaking the goal kicking record at the SCG, however what he achieved for the Swans, along with Paul Roos, whose impact was as big, was a winning culture which has never really subsided.
It has yielded five grand finals for two premierships and the Swans have only missed the finals three times since 1995 (2000, 2002 and 2009).
The 72-year drought breaking premiership of 2005, even though Lockett did not play in it, is just as much his as it was the players who did.
Had it not been for Lockett coming to the club, who knows if some of the players who featured in that side, would have been there – such as Barry Hall, Darren Jolly, Paul Williams and Jason Ball.
Lockett shattered the myth the Swans were a club not worth considering going to. He made it an attractive proposition, COLA or no COLA.
The growing Bloods culture, to go with Sydney’s attractive lifestyle, has become a lure hard for players to pass up.
During his AFL Hall of Fame interview, Michael O’Loughlin, one of the clubs greatest ever players – who debuted in Lockett’s first season in Sydney – said he didn’t want to go there, when he was drafted, “Because [the Swans] were shit!”
He changed his mind about the city once he got there, and it helped knowing Lockett had signed with the Swans.
The fact Lance Franklin approached the Swans before speculation of him going to the GWS Giants became rife, says enough.
The Sydney Swans have since gone from a basket case to a virtual super power. The club is closing in 50,000 members for the first time it’s history, which for a Sydney based AFL club is sensational.
Even if, presuming one-third of the membership comes from Melbourne and interstate, it is remarkable.
Over the last 20 years, home attendances average 31,019, an average a Sydney-based NRL club can only dream of.
The Swans guernsey alone is now worth $3 million. The club’s sponsors and corporate backers are into the multi-millions – it is getting bigger. Yet it was Lockett who lit the fuse.
Being at the SCG last weekend and watching the Swans against the Blues, and seeing how far the club has come, the doubters really need to rethink their argument when it comes to the Swans.
The doubters have argued for years – once Lockett retires, the crowds will drop. They never really have.
The doubters say, once the COLA is gone, the club is stuffed. The club has since re-signed players.
It’s the same old doubting line. Yet to see the kids wearing Buddy’s No.23 Swans guernseys, suggests the ex-Hawk will be the icing on the cake that Lockett helped produce.
Because like the kid’s wearing the No.4 guernseys of Tony Lockett in the late 1990s, history is repeating itself with Lance Franklin.
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