In the lead-up to the Swans round 8 home match against Melbourne, which will celebrate the Club’s 30 years in Sydney, sydneyswans.com.au is collating the 30 Defining Moments of the Swans in Sydney in chronological order.

The 30 Defining Moments have been selected by Sydney Swans Chairman, Richard Colless, Deputy Chairman, Andrew McMaster, and Swans Hall of Fame inductee and former Club captain, coach, and director, Rick Quade.

#1 - The first ‘home’ game in Sydney, 1982

After the VFL’s vote to allow South Melbourne to play 11 home games in Sydney as part of the League’s expansion, the Swans played their first official home game at the SCG on March 28, 1982.

The Swans started the game against Melbourne as favourites but had to overcome a determined Demons side in the final term to hold on for a 29-point win in front of a crowd of 15,764 on a Sunday afternoon.

The game was Rick Quade’s debut as Swans coach, while Barry Round - who had captained South for the previous two years - became the club’s first captain in Sydney.

With the game on the line in the final term, Round’s strong marking in defence helped the Swans get over the line, and when reflecting on the occasion, the captain said he was just happy to finally get back on the field after what had been a fractured period for the club.

“In the end it was just a bloody relief to run out and have a game of footy with all the promos and publicity that we’d been trying to get,” Round said.

“We’d had a tumultuous exit from South Melbourne, and it split the players, the club, and the supporters, so the guys who did make the commitment to come up felt it was us against the rest.

“We were a business that was broke and couldn’t keep trading, so the scenarios that were presented to us were merge with St Kilda at Moorabbin, or wind the club up all together, or play our home games in Sydney, so (we thought) we don’t want those other two options, so we said ‘Sydney’s us’.”

"We were pioneers," former Swans forward Tony Morwood said. "So to win the first game, after all the upheaval that we'd endured and would continue to endure for some time to come, was always going to be emotional and fulfilling. And it was.

"There was great excitement and pressure before the game and enormous relief after the siren."

In a twist of fate that would play out year’s later, the Swans first home game in Sydney was also Ron Barassi’s debut as coach of the Melbourne Football Club. Barassi would later take charge of the Swans during the 1993 season.

The Swans glitzy transition from South Melbourne to Sydney, which also included the famed photo shoot on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, was encapsulated by a high-class party which followed the first SCG game, held at the harbourside mansion of socialite Lady Mary Fairfax.

"There were all these red and white balloons floating in the swimming pool, so blokes were just slipping their empty stubbies (of beer) in there," the then 19-year old David Rhys-Jones recalls. "And I don't think Lady Fairfax appreciated us traipsing up and down her luxury carpet.

"But if you invite a football team around, especially in the early '80s, you couldn't expect a whole lot of social grace."

Swans Hall of Fame inductee Morwood recalls the evening being a "bizarre" experience with players mixing with socialites who knew little or nothing about the game or the Swans.

"I'd suggest it was rent-a-crowd," he says. "The chardonnay set was there, along with the hob-knobs from the VFL.

"It was quite comical - Sydney's upper-crust was entertaining the working-class Swans from Melbourne."

The Swans were a genuine chance of making the final five in 1982 with seven consecutive wins from round 13 to 19, but they lost the final three games of the season to finish seventh, two games outside of finals contention.

There was one big triumph for the club in 1982 though, when the Swans defeated North Melbourne by 32 points in the Escort Cup Grand Final - the night series competition - in front of 20,082 fans at Waverley Park.