Don’t think trading is a critical part of the overall player recruitment strategy? Think again.

And if you are still not convinced, take a look at the 11 premiership players, a premiership captain, six All-Australians, five club champions, three Club Champion runners-up, and a dual Coleman medallist who are members of the Swans "Super-Trade" Club.

These combined achievements, among many others, belong to 14 players traded to the Swans from other clubs since the inception of the AFL Draft in 1986. In alphabetical order they are:

Jason Ball
Nick Davis
Barry Hall
Darren Jolly
Josh Kennedy
Tony Lockett
Martin Mattner
Mitch Morton
Shane Mumford
Ted Richards
Andrew Schauble
Wayne Schwass
Rhyce Shaw
Paul Williams

Ball, Davis, Jolly, Williams and captain Hall were members of the 2005 premiership side, while Kennedy, Mattner, Morton, Mumford, Richards and Shaw were in the 2012 premiership side.

Lockett won the 1996 and 1998 Coleman Medal, and with Hall and Kennedy was a three-time All-Australian. Schwass, Williams and Richards also were All-Australians.

Kennedy is a three-time Club Champion, Williams a two-club Club Champion, and Hall, Schauble and Schwass also won the coveted Bob Skilton Medal, while Mumford, Richards and Shaw were runners-up in the club championship.

Also, Hall and Lockett rank third and fifth on the Swans’ all-time goal-kicking list.

So how might you rank the Swans’ best trades of all-time?

Is it the greatest impact – Tony Lockett?

Or the pure football impact – Josh Kennedy?

The 72-year fairytale – Barry Hall?

Or the trade-in who has played most games – Ted Richards?

Is it the trade that keeps on giving – Rhyce Shaw?

Don't miss Part 2 and Part 3 in Peter Blucher's Trading Places: A red and white history as the 2017 Trade Period draws to a close.

Or the trade that went all the way to the Board room – Jason Ball?

The double pay-back – Paul Williams?

Or the surprise packet – Andrew Schauble?

The man with the golden touch – Darren Jolly?

Or the third-stringer turned premiership star – Shane Mumford?

The fifteen-minute payback – Nick Davis? Or the win/win trade – Wayne Schwass?

The confidence booster – Martin Mattner? Or the free hit – Mitch Morton?

Dermott Brereton and Simon Minton-Connell celebrate the Swans' Round 9 win in 1994.

If there’s a trade unlucky to miss this group of 14 it the 1991 deal which saw Simon Minton-Connell move from Carlton to Sydney. He played 46 games and kicked 169 goals from 1992-94 for the Swans and topped the club goal-kicking each year.

Minton-Connell, who later played for Hawthorn and the Western Bulldogs, kicked seven goals or more in a game seven times for the Swans. His goals-per-game average in red or white of 3.67 compares favourably with Lockett’s 4.74 and Bob Pratt’s 4.31 and is better than Warwick Capper’s 3.52, Lance Franklin’s 3.15 and Barry Hall’s 2.88.

And he cost the Swans’ selection #78 in the 1991 National Draft, which Carlton used it to draft Matt Dickson. He never played an AFL game.

Minton-Connell ranks third in goals for Sydney by trade-in players behind Hall (467) and Lockett (462), and ahead of Ben McGlynn (167), Nick Davis (150), Josh Kennedy (127), Paul Williams (84), Darren Kappler (74), Darren Jolly (59), Craig O’Brien (59) and Wayne Schwass (57).

Among 51 players traded into the Sydney Swans only one is a former Swans player.

Warwick Capper left the Swans the pin-up boy of the competition after five years and 77 games worth of dazzling the fans with his high marking, tight shorts, pink boots and playboy image, and kicking 92 goals in 1986 and 102 goals in 1987.  

He was twice runner-up in the Coleman Medal and an A-list celebrity in Sydney but was lured north by the fledgling Brisbane Bears and the money of tycoon owner Christopher Skase.

But after three years and 34 games at Carrara on the Gold Coast in which he was once dropped from the senior side he returned to the Swans for 13 games in 1991 before retiring at 28.

Details of the Capper move to the Bears are not listed in official AFL trade records, but on top of some private commercial arrangements with Skase a reported contract of $350,000 for three years made the blonde glamor boy the highest paid player in the competition.

And when he returned to the Swans all the club gave up for him in return was selection #68 in the 1990 National Draft. The Bears used it to draft South Barwon utility Peter Whyte, who had previously played 22 games for Geelong from 1986-88. He never played a senior game for the Bears.

Two players were traded to Sydney and later traded by Sydney back to their original club – Jayson Daniels (St.Kilda) and Mark Orchard (Collingwood).

There aren't enough words to describe Warwick Capper.

And who are the only brothers traded to the Swans?  Andrejs and Peter ‘Spida’ Everitt.

Peter Everitt joined Sydney in 2006 after playing at St.Kilda and Hawthorn, winning All-Australian selection at both, while Andrejs Everitt was traded to Sydney in 2010 from the Western Bulldogs before finishing up at Carlton.

For the Swans’ biggest hard luck trade it’s difficult to go past Ben Glynn, who was part of the deal that also secured Josh Kennedy from Hawthorn.  After 44 games at Hawthorn McGlynn played 127 games for the Swans, including the grand final losses of 2014 and 2016.

But in 2012, after playing 21 of 22 home-and-away games plus the qualifying final, McGlynn missed the preliminary final and grand final win with a hamstring complaint.

Other trade oddities?

Mark Seaby played for West Coast against Sydney in the epic grand finals of 2005-06 before being traded to the Swans in 2010, while Craig O’Brien played in a grand final in his first year with the Swans in 1996 after three years at Essendon and three years at St.Kilda.

Tommy Walsh was the only Irishman traded to the Swans. Predictably, he wore the #17 jumper of 197-game Irish favorite Tadhg Kennelly in his five games for the club in 2012-13.

The Donut King? The Sydney Morning Herald cruelly penned this nickname on Paul Chambers, a 32-game Geelong ruckman who was traded to Sydney in 2005. He played the first 12 games of the 2006 season but after going kickless in eight of them he was dropped by coach Paul Roos and never played again at AFL level. He did have nine kicks in his other four Swans games, and 24 handballs  and 122 hit-outs overall.

On a club-by-club basis Collingwood have been Sydney’s most prolific trading partner. The Pies have sent nine players to the SCG, while Hawthorn, St.Kilda and West Coast have each sent five players to Sydney. The Swans have never traded in a player directly from Fremantle, Port Adelaide, Gold Coast or the GWS Giants.

Which has been actually the best trade is a totally subjective thing, but each of the aforementioned 14 members of the Swans SuperTrade Club are worthy of inclusion from a list of 51 players traded into the club since the inception of the AFL Draft in 1986.

Don't miss Part 2 and Part 3 in Peter Blucher's Trading Places: A red and white history as the 2017 Trade Period draws to a close.