Dylan Stephens has been in the AFL system 1235 days. He’s played 35 AFL games, been an emergency 16 times, and played 15 times in the VFL, pulling on the boots at 13 different grounds – seven AFL grounds and six suburban grounds.
He’s travelled interstate to play 27 times since making Sydney home after he was drafted with pick #5 in the 2019 National Draft, but there is one screaming blank on his young travel log.
Drafted from SANFL club Norwood, Stephens has never played in South Australia.
But on Friday night, when Sydney play Richmond at Adelaide Oval in the AFL’s Gather Round, the Mildura-born wingman will finally get to pull on the boots in front of his adopted ‘home’ crowd.
Family and friends will be in the crowd as the 2-2 Swans, sixth on the AFL ladder, face a 1-1-2 Tigers, who sit 12th after a five-point loss to the Western Bulldogs last week.
Stephens has visited eight AFL venues for his 35 AFL games (and four VFL games): SCG (14), MCG (4), Marvel Stadium (4), Perth Stadium (4), Carrara (3), Gabba (2), Stadium Australia (1) and Cairns (1) – and suburban grounds at Moore Park and Blacktown in Sydney plus Chirnside Park, Port Melbourne, Coburg and Whitten Oval in Melbourne.
Drafted with pick #5 in the 2019 National Draft, Stephens is following a tradition in which 15 Swans players have also worn the red and blue of the Norwood Redlegs, who won the SANFL flag last year under ex-Hawthorn, Western Bulldogs and North Melbourne player Jade Rawlings.
Heading the list are 2005 premiership pair Jared Crouch and Nic Fosdike, top 10 draft picks in 1995 and 1998 respectively, and 2012 premiership player Heath Grundy, a rookie pick in 2004.
Adam Heuskes, who after his career at Sydney had stints with Port Adelaide and Brisbane, was another Swans top 10 pick in the 1993 draft.
Others to have played for both clubs during the Sydney era have been Matthew AhMat, Scott Direen, Robert Neill, Simon Phillips, Jim West, Ben Wilson and Nathan Irvin. Meanwhile Sydney Swans CEO Tom Harley played for Norwood before being drafted into the AFL, and Swans chairman Andrew Pridham is Norwood’s #1 ticket holder.
The connection between the clubs goes back to the Second World War, when Norwood’s Gordon Sawley and Jack Oatey had short stints with South Melbourne while in Melbourne on war service.
Sawley, later killed in a training accident off Scotland in 1942, played seven games in 1941, while Oatey, a legend of South Australian football, played five games with South in 1944.
Oatey, an inaugural inductee to the AFL Hall of Fame in 1996 and elevated to Legend status in 2021, has a stand at Adelaide Oval named in his honour. Also, the player judged best afield in the SANFL grand final is awarded the Jack Oatey Medal.
Jim Taylor, a 153-game Swans star who was club champion in 1953 and ’57 and twice top 10 in the Brownlow Medal, had a season with Norwood mid-career in 1955, while Bob Kingston, a 91-game Swan from 1961-67 and the club’s leading goal-kicker in 1965, played at Norwood from 1968-70.
Recent Statistical Summary
Isaac Heeney will have fond memories of Adelaide Oval as he steps out for the Swans in Friday night’s Round 5 clash with Richmond.
In seven games at the ground Heeney averages two goals and three times has kicked four goals – a big slice of his career total of 13 hauls of four goals or more.
His 2.0 goals per game average at Adelaide Oval is better, even, than his 1.27 goal average at the SCG.
Heeney will be a key figure as the Swans look to extend a two-game winning streak over the Tigers, having beaten them by six points at the SCG last year and by 45 points at the MCG in 2021.
Overall, the clubs have met 33 times since the turn of the century, with the Swans enjoying a 19-14 edge. They are 9-3 at the SCG and 1-1 at the Olympic Stadium and 7-5 at the MCG but are 2-4 against the Tigers at Marvel Stadium.
Oddly, Friday night’s game will be the second in four years between the clubs at a neutral venue after they met at the Gabba during the Covid season of 2020, when Richmond won by eight points.
History between the sides since 2000 tells the Swans brainstrust that the veteran Tiger trio of Trent Cotchin, Dustin Martin and Jack Riewoldt will be key figures.
Cotchin (9), Martin (8) and Riewoldt (8) head the Richmond Brownlow count in games between the clubs in this era, and in the last 15 games have polled 13 times between them.
In the same period Sydney’s best vote-getters have been Ryan O’Keefe (12), Jude Bolton (10), Adam Goodes (9) and Lance Franklin (9).
Franklin, missing this week through injury, has kicked four goals or more six times against Richmond, including seven goals at the SCG in 2016 – a club best this century.
In the same game Josh Kennedy had 37 possessions to equal Jake Lloyd’s 37 at Marvel in 2019 as the Swans biggest single-game haul since 2000.
Equivalent bests for Richmond in the same era have been Martin’s 36 possessions at the MCG in 2014, and Matthew Richardson’s seven goals at the SCG in 2004.
Six players have played for both clubs this century – Nick Daffy, Tom Derickx, Nathan Gordon, Mitch Morton, Toby Nankervis and Greg Stafford.
