Dean Moore is not one for sweeping statements or gross exaggeration. Quite the opposite. So, when the man who helped co-ordinate the Swans relocation to Sydney 40 years ago says it might just be the most unique story of its kind in world sport it’s time to listen.
Certainly, it identifies the enormity of the task when AFL head office in Melbourne basically said to the Swans “go and build a new club in Sydney” without any sort of meaningful financial or administrative support. And by the way … you’ve got three months.
It is why Moore, a life-time Swans and AFL man now assisting with the development of the Royal Hall of Industries at Moore Park, which will soon become Swans headquarters and a world-class sporting and community hub, is in total awe of the people who made it happen. And particularly the players.
As the Swans celebrate 40 years in the Harbour City this week, the ever-measured Moore says “when you think about it, it’s a bloody miracle it even happened.”
“In hindsight, its incomprehensible. And without the total buy-in from the playing group, especially the senior players, it would not have happened. They took an unbelievable leap of faith, and their resilience and their commitment just to make it happen was extraordinary. I’ll forever be in awe of those people and the contribution they made not just to the Swans but to football in general.
“Imagine starting clubs like Gold Coast and GWS, or a team in Tasmania, without any sort of AFL plan or backing today. It just wouldn’t happen. But that’s exactly what did happen 40 years ago, and a huge part of the legacy of all that is the modern concept of football expansion.”
The extraordinary story of a club basically moved from football heartland in Melbourne to largely foreign territory in Sydney began for Moore when, in mid-October 1982, having just returned from a fortnight’s holiday, he was summoned to the office of then South Melbourne CEO Brian Dixon.
He was 25 at the time, a football-loving university graduate who was three-and-a-half years into his dream job in football. Albeit after something of a bumpy start.
In May 1979 Moore had joined the minimal staff of the South Melbourne Football Club. He was appointed Assistant to the General Manager, or Secretary as it was known, based at Lakeside Oval, Aughtie Drive, South Melbourne.
Naively, as he admits in hindsight, he hadn’t realised at the time that it wasn’t a 9am-5pm job Monday to Friday. It would require him to work on the weekends, Or more particularly, match days.
His first instinct was to quit. After all, playing local footy at Riddell’s Creek was the centre of his universe. He wasn’t about to give it up. Until he met triple Brownlow Medallist and then South Melbourne coach Ian Stewart. In Moore’s own words, not only was Stewart “football royalty” he was engaging, charismatic and persuasive. Almost hypnotic, even. And wise. Very wise.
And so, in selection speak, it was ‘out’ the budding young Riddell’s Creek wingman (retired) and ‘in’ a young, wet-behind-the-ears football administrator. A quiet, humble man who 43 years on staunchly understates his enormous contribution to the Swans and football in general.
He’d worked at South Melbourne in 1979 as the club finished 10th on the 12-team ladder with a 6-16 record under Stewart. In 1980 as they climbed to 6th at 13-9 and in 1981 when they slipped to 9th at 8-14. And in 1982 under new coach Ricky Quade, when the Swans played their home games in Sydney on a fly-in, fly-out basis while still based at Lake Oval. They finished 7th at 12-10.
The 12-month fly-in experiment in Sydney had been a good one in a football sense, but the club was struggling financially. Everyone knew it, but as dark as the future might have seemed, Moore wasn’t expecting what he got when called into the office of Dixon, a five-time Melbourne premiership player, Melbourne Team of the Century selection, AFL Hall of Famer and former Minister for Sport in the Victorian Government.
“He basically told me the Board had decided to relocate the club to Sydney, that I was going to oversee the relocation of players, and that he wanted me in Sydney by the end of the month – two weeks later,” Moore said.
So, two weeks later he took up residence at the Chateau Commodore Hotel in Kings Cross, not knowing a single person in Sydney, and began mission impossible.
Fittingly, when the Swans launched their 40th-year celebrations in March this year Moore was asked to propose the toast to the club. He did so with heart-felt passion and provided an insight into circumstances that most outsiders could barely believe. In part, he said:
“In our 40th year in Sydney, I thought it appropriate to briefly reflect on the move from South Melbourne. Important to remember where you have come from.
“By the early ‘80s the outlook for South Melbourne was bleak. The last premiership was 1933. (We’d played) only two finals matches (we lost both) since the infamous 1945 Bloodbath Grand Final. Less than 3000 members, stagnant revenue, sizeable debt, ongoing annual operating losses, Lakeside Oval in a state of disrepair. It was a grim situation. The club appeared doomed.
“Sydney offered hope, but it was a bold and divisive decision. It sparked a bitter struggle between two factions who both loved their club. The pragmatists who saw Sydney as the only chance of survival. And the ‘Keep South at South’ movement who saw Sydney as the end of the club. Friendships were broken, families divided. This was an emotionally charged time.
“The VFL supported and in many ways engineered the move. It was the first step in their vision for a national competition. However, the relocation was totally under prepared, under-funded, under resourced.
“Unbelievably there was no venture capital by the VFL. No short or long-term investment strategy. Their belief was the game itself was so good. And Sydney was a lucrative market there for the taking. Compare that to the support provided by the AFL to the expansion clubs of today.
“In a very fundamental sense, the club arrived in Sydney and simply did not have the money required to properly establish and run a VFL club in a new market.
“Finding suitable accommodation and employment for players in a very short time frame was an immediate and pressing challenge. Back then players had full time jobs away from football. Many players were leaving well paid secure jobs without any guaranteed employment in Sydney.
“Facilities were basically non-existent. No dedicated training ground. Training on the SCG was simply out of the question. No gymnasium. We were training nomads. Finding grounds wherever we could. SCG No 2 when it wasn’t being used for cricket. Or as a car park. Centennial Park. The Army Barracks. Showground. Erskineville Oval. Anywhere.
“The club had to find medical staff, trainers, property stewards. All the football club staffing and infrastructure taken for granted in Melbourne simply didn’t exist. We literally had to start from scratch in a new frontier that had very little understanding, or interest, in our game.
“On reflection it’s amazing the club survived. The resilience and commitment of those involved was crucial. Players, coaches, staff deeply committed to the cause made a significant and lasting contribution. Driven by a lack of success and bitter struggle with the Keep South at South group, there was a fierce resolve to make it work. The sort of resolve that laid the foundation upon which the Bloods Culture was built.”
It was a strong and powerful insight from a man who has red and white running through his veins despite 25 years working at the AFL, where he finished as Football Projects Manager in October 2009 when, having begun his working life at the Swans, he returned as General Manager – Football to replace Andrew Ireland when Ireland became Chief Executive.
Unquestionably, the efforts of those on and off the field 40 years ago are a big part of the ‘Bloods’ culture, and the reason why the Swans are one of the most respected clubs in the League. A true destination club.
There is a famous story told countless times by ex-Swans ruckman Steve Taubert of how Moore would meet relocating players and families in Sydney with a copy of the Yellow Pages and say ‘good luck’.
And while the humorous recount of the ruckman, who was a member of the relocating playing group, comes with a sizeable and recurring dose of typical Taubert embellishment, Moore concedes there is an element of truth in what he says. Because it was a bit like that.
“I did not know a single person in Sydney, and I didn’t know Sydney itself. Yet there I was trying to find accommodation, jobs, schools ... everything a player and his family might need.
“It didn’t help too that the cost of living in Sydney back then, as it is now, is much higher that is in Melbourne. So, players were leaving beautiful homes in Melbourne and finding their money didn’t get them anything like the same sort of thing in Sydney,” Moore said.
Any weird job stories? He just laughed. “What I can guarantee is that very few ended up doing the same thing they were doing in Melbourne in Sydney. They took anything they could get,” he said.
“I really do believe that in the history of world sport you’d be hard-pressed to find a story like what we went through,” Moore said. “It could have completely fallen apart without the commitment and resilience of the playing group.”
Moore said coach Rick Quade, captain Barry Round and vice-captain Mark Browning were ‘magnificent’ in their leadership of the playing group. “They believed in what we were doing, and they led the charge … if they’d wavered, we were in trouble. But the solidarity of the entire group was outstanding. They wanted to make it work and their resolve was unshakeable. Whenever there was a problem – and there were plenty – they found another way.
“And while the footy people were pivotal to it all, there were so many others who played an important role. There are too many to list here, but they know who they are and they should be very proud.
“There were a lot of loyal people in Melbourne who continued to support and help the club, and there were a host of new people who jumped on board in Sydney and have been part of the journey. To every one of them the club owes a debt of gratitude.”
The Swans’ first administration office in Sydney was at Bondi Junction, where they borrowed some space from Graham Huggins, a long-serving former St Kilda president who had been appointed by the VFL to do a feasibility study on a team based in Sydney in 1981.
His report concluded that there was “an untapped market in Sydney which represented an excellent opportunity for the league”, and he had moved to Sydney to be the AFL ‘man on the ground’ ahead of the Swans’ relocation.
The original off-field team who relocated with the players included coach Rick Quade, general manager Barry Lyons, marketing manager Barry Rogers, assistant coach and match committee member Ray Ball and Moore who was team manager. Recruiting manager Greg Miller, chairman of selectors Tony Franklin (who would later fill in as coach for one game in 1984 when Quade was admitted to hospital with a bleeding ulcer) and accountant John Phillips straddled responsibilities in Melbourne and Sydney.
Not all the players moved to Sydney for the 1983 season. Some senior players remained in Melbourne, while there was also a group of younger players like an up-and-coming Warwick Capper, who were based in Melbourne.
“It was a tough situation – we’d pick a side and often on the Friday or Saturday a player coming into the side would fly up to Sydney and play without even training with the group. Often, they didn’t even really know the senior players who were based in Sydney.”
As Moore eluded to in his toast, facilities were a massive problem. He remembers one day while the Swans were training on the SCG No.2 Oval they suddenly found they had dozens of cars for company.
“We were allowed to train there if it wasn’t being used for anything else. Often it was used by the SCG Trust as a carpark, and the fact that we weren’t warned even though we had approval to be there showed where we ranked in the hierarchy,” he quipped.
“Just finding somewhere to train was a nightmare because there were very few suitable grounds ... and even less with AFL goal posts. We had no such thing as a gym .. just a few free-standing weights. But we were all in it together. Like all football clubs, there were a lot of good people and while we did it tough, we had a lot of fun at the same time.
“The willingness of everyone to roll up the sleeves and just make it happen was pretty special. You look back on it now with a great sense of pride … it was a significant time in AFL history. We knew we were doing something very exciting, and we were changing the face of the game. Forty years on it’s a truly national competition, and it all started in Sydney.”
Indeed it did, and as club this week celebrates 40 years in Sydney it is appropriate to go back to the closing words of Moore’s toast to “this great club in this great city”.
“Let us acknowledge and celebrate its history and all those who have walked this path before us. Let us pay tribute to the club’s great players and great moments that we all hold so dearly,” he said.
“The “I see it, but I don’t believe it” moments. The “here it is” moments. The “what a team, that culture, the Bloods” moments. The “cometh the hour cometh the champion” moments. A “grand final from the top shelf” moments. All “dead set massive moments” that stay in our hearts forever.
“Let us also salute the club’s resilience. Its ability to endure in the face of great adversity. Its longevity. Its courage. The courage to relocate to Sydney. Its values and what it stands for. Its strength to call out wrongs and lead by example. Its empathy and its caring. Its honesty. The honesty and accountability of sustained high-level performance by the team over a long period.
“And let us never forget the impact it has on people’s lives – the joy, the hope, anticipation, sense of belonging, the respect, the pride, the love. This club has the power to change people’s lives.”
