The South Melbourne/Sydney Swans boast a history which now takes in 126 years, 1441 players, 29,177 goals, 1193 wins, 90 finals and 36 different playing venues. And 2500 games in the VFL/AFL.
Saturday afternoon’s SCG clash with the Gold Coast Suns will be club’s 2500th game since the league’s inception in 1897. The tally does not include the games the club played in the earlier league – the VFA.
Only Collingwood (2605), Carlton (2559), Essendon (2526) and Geelong (2507) have played more games in a competition which began at 3pm on Saturday 8 May 1897, when South Melbourne were among eight clubs to kick off a breakaway Victorian Football League.
South played Melbourne at Lake Oval while Fitzroy played Carlton at Brunswick St, Collingwood hosted St Kilda at Victoria Park and Essendon travelled to Geelong to play Geelong at Corio Oval.
It was a competition that came out of the Victorian Football Association, formed 20 years earlier with 10 start-up ‘senior’ clubs – Albert Park, Carlton, East Melbourne, Essendon, Geelong, Hotham (later North Melbourne), Melbourne, St Kilda, South Melbourne and West Melbourne, and a host of ‘junior’ clubs.
Clubs were not classified senior or junior by age – it was a measure of ability and experience.
In 1880 South amalgamated with nearby Albert Park, which dated back to 1867 and were known as South Melbourne in their first year. They retained the name South Melbourne and adopted the red and white colors of Albert Park.
They were formally nicknamed the ‘Southerners’ but were more popularly known as the ‘Bloods’ because of the bright red diagonal sash on their white jumpers, which became a red ‘V’ in 1932.
The very first side included six players who would be members of the first grand final side in 1899, when they were beaten by a point by Fitzroy – Dave Adamson, Bill Fraser, Bert Howson, Jim O’Hara, Mick Pleass and Bill Windley.
Ruckman Pleass was the first to 50 games in 1890. Pleass and rover Windley, a member of the club’s 1888, ’89 and ‘90 premiership sides, shared the honor of being the club’s first 100-gamers in 1903 and wingman Howson was the first to 150 games in 1906 before he coached South in 1918-19.
Forward Dinny McKay, a triple VFA premiership player and regular Victorian representative in intercolonial matches during the VFA era, kicked the first South Melbourne goal – a snap that bounced through late in the second quarter.
The first player to 200 games for South Melbourne was Vic Belcher, who posted his double century in the 1918 grand final win. He was also a 1909 premiership player and coached South from 1914-15 and in 1917 (after the club sat out the 1916 season), and coached Fitzroy from 1922-27.
John Rantall was the first South Melbourne player to 250 gams in 1979, and Michael O’Loughlin first to 300 games in 2009.
Remarkably, although the club had played 1526 games before he was born, 1952 games before his debut, and 142 games since his retirement in 2015, 372-game games record-holder Adam Goodes has played 14.9% of games all-time. His 28 finals represent 31.1% of the club total.
The top 10 on the all-time games list after 2499 games is: Adam Goodes (372), Jude Bolton and Jarrad McVeigh (325), Michael O’Loughlin (303), Ryan O’Keefe (286), Josh Kennedy (274), John Rantall (260), Heath Grundy and Kieren Jack (256), and Mark Browning (251).
South Melbourne played their first four games at Lake Oval and in the first season thereafter visited Corio Oval at Geelong, Fitzroy’s Brunswick Street, Melbourne’s MCG, Carlton’s Princes Park, St Kilda’s Junction Oval, Collingwood’s Victoria Park and Essendon’s East Melbourne Oval.
They added to the travel log Richmond’s Punt Road (1908), Essendon’s new home at Windy Hill (1922), Footscray’s Western Oval, North Melbourne’s Arden Street (1925) and Hawthorn’s Glenferrie Oval (1926).
Geelong’s new home at Kardinia Park was next in 1941, followed by Footscray’s temporary home at Yarraville and St Kilda’s temporary home at Toorak Park in 1942, before South played the only game at Albury in 1952.
In 1965 the club played at North’s temporary home at Coburg and the new St Kilda home at Moorabbin before the League’s new ‘big thing’ at Waverley became the 20th ground to host South Melbourne in 1970.
The SCG, which had hosted three games in 1903-04 and one in 1952, hosted two games in 1979 as the word ‘expansion’ joined the League’s vocabulary, and four including South Melbourne’s first visit in 1980.
In the ‘new’ era the now Sydney Swans played for the first time in 1987 at Subiaco, one of two West Coast homegrounds, and Carrara on the Gold Coast, original home of the Brisbane Bears. They added Adelaide’s Football Park in 1991 and made an overdue first appearance at the WACA in Perth in 1994.
Since expansion took on a broader meaning after the turn of the century, the Swans have played at 10 new grounds – Docklands (now Marvel Stadium) in Melbourne in 2000, the old Olympic Stadium (now Accor Stadium) in Sydney (2002), Canberra’s Manuka Oval (2003), York Park (now University of Tasmania Stadium) in Launceston (2012) and Hobart’s Bellerive Oval (2013), before heading across the Tasman to Wellington, New Zealand (2013).
Sydney Showgrounds, now Giants Stadium, was the 33rd different ground to host the Swans in 2014, followed three weeks later by the League’s new venue at Adelaide Oval, the new Optus Stadium in Perth in 2018 and finally Cazaly’s Stadium in Cairns in the first Covid year of 2020.
Across the journey, the club has played the very first game at seven grounds – Lake Oval, Western Oval, Albury, Coburg, the Olympic Stadium, Wellington and Perth Stadium.
The club reached its 500th game in its 30th year of competition (no games in 1914) and took 27 years over the next 500 games, 24 years each for the third and fourth blocks of 500 and have been just 21 years in going from 2000 to 2500.
Fittingly, South Melbourne’s 500th game was at Lake Oval in Round 8, 1926 against Fitzroy. Coached by Charles Pannam, they posted a 13.15 (93) to 9.5 (59) win over a Fitzroy side coached former South favorite Vic Belcher. It was Roy Cazaly’s 175th game.
In the 1000th game in Round 6, 1953, the legendary Laurie Nash was coach for just the sixth time against Geelong at Kardinia Park. They lost 7.5 (47) to 14.16 (100) with a side in which 126-gamer Ron Clegg was the only player with more than 100 games.
The 1500th game in Round 18, 1978, coach Des Tuddenham took them to a 14.9 (93) to 9.16 (70) win over Richmond at Waverley, and in the 2000th game at the SCG in Round 3, 2001 the Swans, curiously the ‘away’ side against North Melbourne under Rodney Eade, kicked 10.1 to 1.3 in the fourth quarter to win 23.13 (151) to 11.5 (71). Daryn Cresswell, Adam Goodes and Greg Stafford shared the Brownlow Medal votes.
The Swans also sit fifth in wins all-time. Not surprisingly, the wins order is the same as the games order – Collingwood 1566, Carlton 1450, Essendon 1404, Geelong 1404 and Sydney 1193.
The 500th was in Round 10, 1950, when they beat Richmond by 15 points at Lake Oval, and the 2000th win was in Round 10, 2008, when they beat Richmond by 82 points at the SCG, the gold-star trio of Adam Goodes, Ryan O’Keefe and Brett Kirk, with 899 games between them, taking the Brownlow Medal votes
The top 10 on the all-time wins list for the club after 2499 games is: Adam Goodes (216), Jarrad McVeigh (203), Jude Bolton (184), Michael O’Loughlin (171), Josh Kennedy (169), Ryan O’Keefe (164), Heath Grundy (160), Kieren Jack (159), Vic Belcher (151) and Luke Parker (149).
There are two variations from the top 10 in games to the top 10 in wins, with Belcher and Parker replacing Rantall and Browning. Goodes leads the club in both categories.
The Swans are equal sixth all-time in finals. It’s the same five clubs plus Richmond, who are fifth just three finals ahead of the Swans, and Melbourne, equal with the Swans. Collingwood (185) lead from Carlton (139), Essendon (132), Geelong (129), Richmond (93) Swans and Melbourne (90).
The Swans 50th final was the 1998 elimination against St Kilda in wet conditions at the SCG, which the Swans won 12.17 (89) to 13.9 (87) after the Saints’ Nicky Winmar missed a desperate snap from 15m in the closing seconds, which could have changed the result.
It was Paul Roos second-last game, with Dale Lewis (32) and Daryn Cresswell (30) heading the Sydney possession count and Michael O’Loughlin kicking four goals.
