Chad Warner and James Rowbottom will go into the 2023 season having claimed a significant place in Swans club championship history in 2022.
The young pair, who finished second and third behind Callum Mills in the Skilton Medal, became only the third and fourth players aged younger than 22 to finish top three since 1996, when detailed records have been available.
Only Michael O’Loughlin, who won it at 21 in 1998, and Luke Parker, who did likewise at 21 in 2014, have finished top three in the coveted medal aged under 22.
Even pushing it out to top five adds only two players in the same age bracket, with O’Loughlin fourth in 1997 at 20, and George Hewett fifth in 2017 at 21.
Using age and experience at the last round of the home-and-away season as the benchmark point for comparison purposes, Warner was 21 years 94 days old at the time and just 36 games into his career.
This left Warner one game short of being the least experienced player to finish top three in the Skilton Medal in this era. Only Josh Kennedy, third in 2010 after 35 AFL games – 22 for the Swans – had played less often at the top level.
Rowbottom was 21 years 336 days old and 69 games in at the same stage, posting his second top 10 finish after he was seventh in 2020.
Only four players have finished top five in the Skilton Medal since 1996 with less than 50 AFL games behind them – Kennedy, Warner, Shane Mumford, who had played only 40 games when runner-up to Kieren Jack in 2010, and Nick Malceski, who was a 44-gamer when runner-up to Brett Kirk in 2007.
The 2022 Club Champion dinner, held five days after the grand final, was a predictably sombre night, with the disappointment of a hefty loss in the biggest game of the year still lingering.
But the count revealed a message of significant magnitude which gives reason for genuine optimism about a side whose 18 wins in 2022 has been bettered only four times by the club in 41 years based in Sydney.
While ordinarily you would think the top-end players in a grand final team would generally be older and more experienced than their counterparts in the lesser sides, it was quite the opposite with the Swans.
Using the same age and career game count benchmark, the Swans top 10 ranked third-youngest (average age 25 years 95 days) across the competition and were mid-table in experience (average 130 games).
The top 10 included 20-year-old Errol Gulden (7th), 21-year-olds Warner and Rowbottom (3rd), 22-year-old Tom McCartin (6th), 24-year-old Ollie Florent (10th), 25-year-old Mills and 26-year-old Isaac Heeney (5th).
With the possible exception of 151-gamer Heeney, all are in the first half of their career. And even that might be selling him short.
Jake Lloyd and Luke Parker, who finished 8th and 9th respectively at 28 and 29, are not exactly counting down the days to retirement, leaving only Dane Rampe, who finished 9th at 32, in the veteran category.
Only Hawthorn and Fremantle had a lower average age for their top 10 B&F place-getters than Sydney, with Carlton fourth-youngest, followed by Essendon, Adelaide, Port, Gold Coast, North, Western Bulldogs, GWS and St Kilda.
So, among the 12 youngest groups only runners-up Sydney and the 8th-placed Bulldogs, eliminated in the first week of the finals, played in September.
Brisbane, who finished 4th overall, were ranked sixth-oldest, followed by Melbourne (5th), Collingwood (3rd), Richmond (7th) and Geelong (premiers).
Surprisingly, the oldest B&F top 10 in the League was at West Coast, where the average age was 11 days short of 29, with five players 30-plus.
The West Coast top 10 also boasted the highest average experience (178 games) from Collingwood (164), Geelong (154), Richmond (142), Bulldogs, Brisbane and Melbourne (140), Port (132) and Sydney (130).
Less experienced than the Swans was the B&F top 10 at St Kilda (129), GWS (126), Gold Coast (115), North and Carlton (111), Adelaide (106), Essendon (103) and Fremantle (87), with Hawthorn (84) the least experienced group – before off-loading their two oldest and most experienced top 10 finishers – Tom Mitchell and Jaeger O’Meara.
Interestingly, too, the Swans’ B&F top 10 of 2022 was younger than their counterparts in the grand final teams of 2005, ’06, ’12, ’14 and ‘16.
