Essentially, it's everything that makes up our identity. Ingenuity. Spirit. Tradition. Virtue. It's our legacy from the past, they’re our stories, and it's our responsibility to preserve and share them with future generations.

This week, the Sydney Swans once again celebrate our own unique history. One-hundred-and-forty-nine years' worth of blood, sweat, and tears laid bare before us. Moments to savour and some we'd rather forget, all tracing the ripples of time and space.

A glance over the history of our club will provide you with glorious tales of ten premierships, the most Brownlow medalists in the game's history, and countless hall-of-fame champions. Look a little closer; you'll find where the now-famed culture was born.

Ingenuity:

The club's 1930s foreign legion period genuinely encapsulates the sense of courage and initiative in which the club was formed. An auspicious recruitment drive took club officials across the land, most notably to the untapped treasure trove of talent in Western Australia. Nothing of its kind had occurred before, and it heralded a golden era, with a third VFL premiership arriving in 1933. 

The club was affectionately known as the Blood Stained Angels until this point. During the depression, the VFL introduced the Coulter Law, which effectively limited players' earnings from football. Unemployment levels had topped 30% in W.A., and South set its sights on sandgropers.

Archie Crofts owned a chain of grocery stores, and he also happened to be the South Melbourne vice-president. He employed a posse of Perth-based footballers, and football writer Hec de Lacy joked that the club's moniker should become the Swans due to the influx from the west. 

Those Swans featured in four consecutive Grand Finals without adding to their 1933 flag, thwarted by moments of madness in 1934 & 1935. The '34 team favoured to defeat Richmond lost by six goals. After the match, champion full-forward Bob Pratt and rugged half-forward Peter Reville confronted teammates rumoured to have taken bribes ahead of the decider.

On the Thursday night before the '35 Grand Final, Pratt stepped off a tram in Prahran and was struck by a truck, badly injuring his ankle, placing him on crutches, and ruling him out of the big game. Ironically, the driver was a Bloods man.

Despite the tribulations, the era was crowned with that famous 1933 flag, defeating Richmond by forty-two points. According to legendary Swans historian Jim Main, the team celebrated with a dinner at the South Melbourne Town Hall and, late in the night, rubbed salt into Tiger wounds by riding through the streets of Richmond in a charabanc.

Spirit:

The 1945 VFL Grand Final played between South Melbourne and Carlton is colloquially known as The Bloodbath. It was played six weeks after World War II ended, and the brutality of the match is footy folklore. The Swans were renowned as the glamour team of the era, and two club legends, Herbie Matthews and Laurie Nash, were playing their final match that day.

Opposition teams held the collective belief that South's game style could be negatively impacted through physicality, and as was the nature of 'depression footy,' violence. In the second term, with his team trailing, Carlton enforcer Bob Chitty zeroed in on the Swans' talented teenage duo, Billy Williams and Ron Clegg - knocking them both out.

Between them, Williams and Clegg would win South Melbourne's next six best and fairest medals. With no reserves available, they both played on.

Square-ups ensued, the umpire stopped play four times in an attempt to restore some semblance of order, and during one brawl, a suspended Carlton player jumped the fence to take part.

Author Ian Shaw wrote a book about the match, and according to him, South wingman Ted Whitfield kept to his normal routine on the morning of the game - he drank six beers. Whitfield later became one of nine players reported, despite pulling his jumper over his head and running away from the goal umpire trying to take his number. 

The connective force of life incorporates all kinds of differentiated elements, and football during the war years was uncompromising. While the Swans lost the match, they played with the resolve befitting the time. 

In 2006, Martin Flanagan wrote, 'One of the Carlton players, Jim Clark, who had desperately wanted to go to the war and been prevented by his family, told me with pride how a returned soldier in the crowd had told him the match embodied the spirit of Australians at war.'

Tradition:

Canadian Professor of Psychology Jordan B. Peterson has twelve rules for life. His third - make friends with people who want the best for you - details the reciprocal nature of a positive relationship. 

Happiness dwells in the soul. For the people of South Melbourne, joy was intrinsically linked to their football team. They forged a collective strength, with the Lake Oval providing a comforting haven, and regular attendees became like family.

At last year's Swans Hall of Fame dinner, chairman Andrew Pridham relayed a story about the Lake Oval barman and his pet cockatoo, who contently perched on the barman's shoulder as he served the faithful their frothies. The cockatoo's colourful vocabulary, directed squarely at the opposition, epitomised the locals' passion for the red and white.

The origins of the word barracking can, in fact, be traced back to 1870s South Melbourne. According to Dr. Matthew Klugman of Victoria University, the occasion was a local cricket game marred by ill-feeling between players and the vocal spectators. 

'To barrack was to jeer or shout out abuse. Not only was such behaviour deemed offensive, but barrackers behaved unfairly, cheering one side while haranguing the other. It soon became known that those at fault were viewed as uncouth working-class men', Klugman concludes.

Despite its idyllic epithet, Lakeside was far from comfortable. While conditions grew increasingly outdated, a faithful following remained. If the home team managed to salute, satisfied Swans would scamper towards the welcoming watering holes of Clarendon Street, always conscious of the 6pm closing time.

The upbeat nature of supporters ensured that club fundraising efforts, including disco nights, dinner dances, bingo afternoons, and Little River Band concerts, as part of Ron Clegg's pleasant Sunday mornings - Smoky's Sunday Sippers - were always well attended.

Virtue:

By 1981, the VFL's objective of establishing a national football competition became its priority, but the League's motivations had as much to do with economics as any visionary ideology. Expansion was the means to the competition's survival.

As a result, in 1982, after much heartache, the Swans migrated north to make Sydney their new home amid assurances that riches and renown awaited. Ask any of the pioneers, though, and each will tell you that the VFL never delivered on the promises made. As Stephen Wright says, 'We were promised the world and given an atlas.'

Captain Barry Round later said, 'They were trying to treat us like pop stars, and Rugby League people were treating us like intruders.'

With adequate training venues few and far between and telecommunication devices not what they are today, team manager Dean Moore worked miracles in assembling the troops. The first club office was located above a cake shop on Oxford Street, sparsely furnished with second-hand tables and chairs. Months into the 1983 relocation process, CEO Brian Dixon wrote to members and supporters requesting assistance to gain employment for seven players.

Just weeks earlier, impressions were that the worst was over, and when Prime Minister Bob Hawke entertained over five hundred people at a lavish season launch dinner at Sydney Town Hall, guests which included socialites, celebrities, VFL President Dr. Allen Aylett, and the presidents of the other major football codes in NSW, and all were suitably impressed.

Perception and reality are two different things, though, and with the venture being severely undercapitalised by the game's governing body, the club's resources were perennially stretched.

With the irregular, at times non-existent payment cycle that the players found themselves in, just meeting the day-to-day requirements of running a household proved difficult. Sometimes, couples living close by would pool whatever remained in their pantries just to create a meal. 

The pioneers just got on with it. Without them, no Swans would be playing on the MCG this week. Because of them and the vast interconnected web of determination that they're a part of, our boys will tackle the Tigers, inspired by the Bloods of Old. They won't stop to smell the roses; they're busy writing their own story.