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BRETT GEEVES: Are the Swans still 'cheating with that bloody academy' - or time to cut them a break?

26th April, 2022
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26th April, 2022
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Callum Mills is a special footballer.

In the past two weeks, he has gone into takeover mode, dismantling the Hawks with a four-quarter performance that produced 37 disposals, 11 marks, five tackles, one goal, 162 fantasy points, 214 Supercoach points, and a perfect 10 from the coaches’ votes to sit alongside his perfect 10 from the week before against a hapless West Coast.

The collective team effort in the last quarter from the Swans in the Anzac Day victory over the Hawks, at their Launceston-based fortress no less, was a sight to behold.

Peter Ladhams made Hawthorn’s hybrid ruck, 196cm Connor Nash, look like a ruck bag by spoon-feeding his on-ballers with precise taps and first use from stoppages.

Callum Mills of the Swans

(Photo by Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

Chad Warner was enormous and it’s a shame he’s from WA, and was taken with pick 39, and not a product of the Swans academy and its populous city zone, because it would have added nicely to where I’m headed next.

Errol Gulden was busy, Nick Blakey kicked and ran like a lizard possessed, Braeden Campbell was there too, and Isaac Heeney was his usual high-flying, game-changing self.

The Swans were at it, again, cheating with that bloody academy.

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In September of 2016, I wrote the following after Callum Mills was named winner of the AFL Rising Star award.

THIS will no doubt bring unwanted negative attention from Sydney supporters, who believe their team’s rise — and sustained success — at the top have come about “the hard way”.

Just like their share portfolio and their harbourside yachts. No insider trading here, move along people.

The Swans used pick No.3 last year to select Callum Mills, who this week was crowned the 2016 AFL Rising Star after a brilliant debut season.

Pick No.3, in the AFL’s eyes, amounted to picks 33, 36, 37 and 43, after the 20 per cent academy discount was taken into consideration.

Let me provide a very famous sporting example of how the Mills draft pick/points swap fiasco might have looked if it had happened in the NBA in, say, 1984:

— Michael Jordan (pick No. 3)

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FOR

— Steve Colter (33), Charles Jones (36), Ben Coleman (37) and Greg WiItjer (43)

Yep. This is ugly.

But what came next was just as ugly. I copped it so badly on social media for my satirical use of a cherry-picked draft from another sport that my blood was to be spilled in front of the virtual sex-bots that fill Elon Musk’s new plaything.

Or maybe it was because I cherry-picked the 2009 AFL Draft as the closet to home example of why anyone other than Sydney supporters think the Swans have been gifted the golden ticket to talent by way of the largest city zone to develop their cyborg footballers in an AFL-funded laboratory.

Pick 3 – Dustin Martin

FOR

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— Anthony Long at pick No. 33 (delisted)

— Joel Houghton at 36 (delisted),

— Jamie Macmillan at 37 (a very serviceable half back-wing for North Melbourne), and

— Marcus Davies at 43 (delisted).

Keep in mind too, that in 2016, the Next Gen Academies had been implemented, but had not reached a full 12 months for potential draft benefit/equality, meaning the concept of zones and academies were in place to support the expansion clubs Gold Coast/GWS, with Sydney and Brisbane reaping reward too as battle grounds against NRL talent for the growth of the game.

Oh, and at that time, Sydney had finished no lower than 12th in the previous20 years, had a larger salary cap than everyone else, missed the finals only three times in that time and had a four-year run of 5th, 2nd, 4th and a premiership prior to being gift-wrapped a top three talent in the 2015 draft.

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Come with us Swans fans, you can understand our jealousy!

And even though the academy system is now based on equality, with each club represented by a Next Gen Academy and region to work in, it doesn’t stop us as fans from using our perceived historic lack of equality, as an excuse as to why the Swans are so damn good.

Departing the game on the weekend as a dejected Hawks supporter, I overheard an equally teary member of the Hawks brethren bemoaning the fact that we’d been smashed by “those bloody Swans Academy kids and their inflated salary cap”.

I know Launceston isn’t quite with the rest of the world in the 21st century – they’re sure excited about the introduction of the Pegasus Network – but come on Launceston based Hawks fans, it’s time to remember the Swans have been on the receiving end of the AFL’s Wheel of Sanctions via a trade ban throughout seasons 2015 and 2016 as a result of the COLA implementation and the league’s perception it was having too big of an impact on their ability to attract marquee free agents after they signed Kurt Tippet to $875k per over four years and Lance Franklin to $1,111,111 per over nine years.

Only the AFL could implement a rule and then punish you for following it.  

With the implementation of the Next Gen Academies for all clubs, even though some club zones are laughably small – spare a thought for St Kilda, whose zone starts at the Fennel Street Café and follows the Moorooduc Highway south, along the coast, and ends at the Frankstown South Maccas – it is time to place the Swans Academy and COLA benefits into the lessons learned history pile.

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The Swans know footy.

If you are going to feel sorry for anyone, it shouldn’t be yourself, make it Tasmanian kids, they’re being courted by North Melbourne… when they’re not playing basketball. #jackiesonthemarch.

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