This March, my husband and I took our five-year-old son to his first Sydney Swans game at the SCG. It was such an exciting milestone for our family – even my mother wanted to be there. To witness the moment my son caught his first view of the ground, to be with him as he discovered our seats in the stands (in the rain, down near the fence), to hear him cheer when his hero – Buddy – took a mark right in front of his eyes.

For weeks in the lead-up to the big day we read the same book before bedtime about the experience of attending a game, so he knew what to expect: the noise, the crowds, the highs, the lows. Leo fixated on the food: hot chips and donuts were a must.

The Swans have been a huge part of my life for more than ten years now. My husband, Michael, is from Melbourne and went to his first game when he, also, was five. I came to Australian rules football later in life but, once I experienced it, wow!

The tribalism, the ritual, the athleticism, the spectacle. I had never known anything like it and was very quick to embrace the Swans as my own team, being a Sydney girl.

A few years later, I was involved in a devastating plane crash. During my six-month hospitalisation in Perth, one of the very few glimmers of light for me – apart from the devotion of Michael and my family – was the Sydney Swans, who reached out to me in this dark time. The then-coach, Paul Roos, called us up one day in hospital to offer his support, and my close personal connection with the Swans family grew from there. Such is my love for the Sydney Swans, that when my husband and I had our first (and only) child and called him Leo, Club executives assumed we’d named him after the 2005 premiership legend Leo Barry. We were happy for them to believe it.

Back at our Leo’s first game, there were lots of tears when it appeared things were not going so well for the Swans in their round 1 fixture against Port Power. But Leo is an intuitive little fellow, and he quickly decided that the Power was his ‘second team’. So, the day’s result was not a total disappointment for him: as he told us, his second team won.

Don’t worry – we are confident the Port Adelaide dalliance will not last beyond this season. But the Sydney Swans: they will have a central place in the life of our family for many years to come.