Bill Faul and Frank Johnson share a special place in Swans history, each winning the club championship after just 17 games.

Faul was a 179cm defender from Subiaco in Western Australia who played three years and 71 games in the WAFL before joining South Melbourne in 1932.

He was named Club Champion aged 28 in his first season in a side which finished fourth with a 13-5 win/loss record before being eliminated in the first week of the finals.

In the same debut season Faul polled 16 votes to finish equal second to Fitzroy great Haydn Bunton in the Brownlow Medal, despite playing only 16 games.

Having retired in 1938 after 117 games at South, he set out on a long and distinguished stint playing and coaching in the VFA with Prahran, Northcote and Moorabbin.

In a career split by the Second World War he coached 313 VFA/VFL games – a competition record until bettered by Gerald FitzGerald in 2014.

He later coached South Melbourne in 1960-61, appointing Bob Skilton club captain in his second season in charge, and was named at half back in the South Melbourne Sydney Swans Team of the Century.

Johnson was a similar story. A ruckman of 185cm, he joined South Melbourne after a legendary career at Port Melbourne, where he played eight years and eight grand finals during a 157-game career in the old VFA from 1950-57 which, sadly, reaped just one premiership in 1953.

A five-time winner of the Port Melbourne best and fairest, and winner of the Liston Trophy as the VFA’s best player in 1952, he was included in the inaugural All-Australian team after the national carnival in 1953, and, was named All-Australian captain after the 1956 carnival.

Aside from players from the era before the VFL broke away from the VFA in 1897, Johnson was the first VFL player inducted into the AFL Hall of Fame in 2007. And until Ron Todd was similarly recognised in 2017 he was the only inductee who played the majority of his career in the VFA.

Captain of the Port Melbourne Team of the Century, he is further recognised via the awarding of the Frank Johnson Medal to the best VFA player in each representative match.

Even after he left Port Melbourne he resisted recruiting attempts by South, preferring a captain-coach role at South Warrnambool in 1958-59.

But in 1960, finally wearing a Swans jumper in Faul’s first year as coach, Johnson won the club championship in his first season as the South Melbourne finished eighth with a 7-11 win/loss record.

He was also equal 10^th in the Brownlow Medal, which was won by Footscray’s John Schulz, and played 64 games for South before his retirement in 1964.

Faul and Johnson were two of 11 players to be named Swans Club Champion inside 50 career games. They were:

Max Papley (middle, with arm around caretaker coach Tommy Lahiff) ws crowned Club Champion in 1966, smack bang in the middle of Bob Skilton's (far left) incredible run of nine club championships.

An even shorter wait

Only one person has been named Swans Club Champion having played fewer games in red and white than 17-game winners Bill Faul and Frank Johnson – but it’s a man who boasted plenty of football experience.

That was John Murphy, who had played only 16 games for the Swans when he was voted the club’s best player in 1978, after previously playing 214 games from 1967-77 at Fitzroy that yielded five club championships with the Lions.

Named in the centre in the Fitzroy Team of the Century and an inductee to the AFL Hall of Fame, Murphy played only 23 games for South before switching to North Melbourne midway through the 1979 season.

Murphy, Johnson and Faul were three of seven Swans players to be named Club Champion in their first season at the club. The others were Gerard Healy (1986), Tony Lockett (1995), Andrew Schauble (2000) and Paul Williams (2001).

Seventeen players who won the Swans Club Champion having played less than 50 games for the club were: