A 70-year-old Ballarat man, who has been an ardent Swans fan for almost 60 years, went to the football at the MCG with his five-month-old granddaughter for the first time in Round 3, carrying a lifetime football secret that can finally be unveiled.

Mick Fawcus is the man who famously threw an apple at champion Geelong full forward Doug Wade in the dying moments of a crucial South Melbourne game at Kardinia Park in 1970, disrupting a simple shot at goal which helped the Swans break a 25-year finals drought.

With Mick’s approval, the Swans were notified of the story via the ‘Big Footy Forum’, and now the former Swans cheersquad member has told how the famous apple-throwing story unfolded, and even how a Geelong man had previously claimed ownership.

It all went back to his early years growing up in a Bulldogs family in Melbourne.

“I followed Footscray until I was about 10 and my sister started going out with a guy who followed South Melbourne and later became her husband.

“They offered to take me to the games with them, and given a choice between that and listening to Footscray games on the radio, I changed allegiances,” he recalls.

“It took a couple of years to be fully converted, but by 1966 I was a fully-fledged Swan and have been ever since.”

In 1969, Mick joined the Swans cheersquad as a part-timer and from 1970 he was a fully-fledged senior member. He had one of those giant pom-poms and would sit behind the goals waving it frantically at the appropriate time.

South Melbourne hadn’t played finals since 1945, but in 1970, the club’s second year under legendary coach Norm Smith, they found themselves equal with Collingwood at the top of the ladder at Round 15 with an 11-4 record.

But when they lost the next three games suddenly things weren’t looking so good. They shared third spot with St Kilda and Geelong and were only one win ahead of sixth-placed Richmond.

In Round 19, they beat eighth-placed Hawthorn in captain Bob Skilton’s 215^th game, but headed to Geelong in Round 20 understanding their clash with the Cats would be crucial.

South, who hadn’t won at the Cattery in 12 years, lost Skilton to injury and went in clear underdogs against a star-studded Geelong side captained by Billy Goggin.

The home side led 5.3 to 1.4 at quarter-time before South, inspired by 28 possessions and four goals from eventual 1970 Brownlow Medallist Peter Bedford, levelled the scores at halftime.

At three-quarter time it was one point to the Cats, who dominated play early in the last term only to kick poorly. They had six scoring shots for 1.5 – including the controversial but unnoticed apple-affected Wade behind.

“We (the cheersquad) were sitting behind the goals at the end to which Geelong were kicking and I could feel everything slipping away. They weren’t going to keep missing and it seemed to me like if we didn’t win we were going to miss the finals again,” recalled Mick.

As was the tradition back then Mick had gone to the football with a lunch packed by his mother. A drink, a couple of sandwiches and an apple.

“I never really understood why she packed an apple because I didn’t like apples. I’d had a couple of bites but had dropped the rest of it on the ground.

“When Wade lined up a pretty simple shot at goal, for some reason I picked it up and threw it at him. I hadn’t even thought about it – it just happened. I’d never done anything like that and haven’t done anything like that since. But somehow the apple hit the ball just as it hit his foot and disrupted his kick just enough for him to miss.

“Nobody in authority saw it but when the two girls sitting beside me were jumping around wildly I was worried it would draw attention to what I’d done. There was a policeman nearby who was looking at them suspiciously and I was trying to get them to quieten down.

“I learned afterwards that if the officials had seen it he (Wade) would have been given another kick, but I got away with it and we went on to have a win.”

Indeed they did, beating the Cats 11.15 (81) to 10.14 (71) after John Sudholz (four goals), Hayden McAuliffe (26 possessions) and David McLeish (25 possessions) had also played crucial roles with ex-Carlton utility Sid Catlin, who replaced the injured Skilton and had 21 possessions and kicked two goals.

A Round 21 win over Fitzroy guaranteed a finals berth, despite a 96-point loss to minor premiers Collingwood in Round 22, but in the first week of the finals South were beaten by 53 points by St Kilda.

Mick, who worked in insurance in Melbourne before moving to Ballarat with wife Vicki in 1988 and going into retail, left the cheersquad at the end of 1972 when he started working on weekends.

But his passion for the Swans never wavered. He and Vicki, members since 1982, go to every Swans game in Victoria, rarely miss other games on TV, and occasionally make the trip to the SCG.

Identifying Errol Gulden as his favorite player, he says of the club’s relocation to Sydney “it had to happen – otherwise we would have folded”.

Always a big fan of the Big Footy Forum website, Mick lived with his apple-throwing secret for years and was surprised back in 2017 when the Geelong Advertiser ran a story of an Ocean Grove resident who in 2012 had claimed to be the apple-thrower.

He didn’t think much of it again until it was mentioned in a “four generations of Swans” story on the club website last year.

“I knew it wasn’t him because it was me – and it didn’t make sense anyway because why would a Geelong man, who I assume was a Geelong supporter, be trying to put off a Geelong shot at goal?

“I identified myself on the forum and one of my mates who knew somebody at the Swans got in touch with the club and told my story. And here we are.”

It all came together perfectly in Round 3 when Mick and Vicki went to the Swans’ game against Richmond with daughter Paige, another big Swans fan, her husband Tom, and their five-month-old daughter Isla, who enjoyed her first visit to the “G” (pictured below).