It is one of football’s forgotten draft stories that Daryn Cresswell’s fantastic career at the Sydney Swans nearly didn’t happen.

Cresswell played 244 games for the Swans from 1992-2003, earning a spot in the club’s Team of the Century among a multitude of football honours, but only after a false start at Geelong.

As a 17-year-old, the Tasmanian midfielder was drafted by the Cats with selection #38 in the 1988 National Draft.

It was a time when the draft was a lot less precise, and there were a lot of misses with early picks and a lot of late picks who made it big. Like Chris Grant. He was drafted with selection #105 in the same draft and played 341 games for the Western Bulldogs.

Cresswell spent three months in the Geelong Reserves in 1989 but was chronically homesick. He admitted, too, his attitude wasn’t good, and he made what he later admitted was “a huge mistake” to go home.

So, having achieved his boyhood dream once only to give it all up, he began all over again as an aspiring AFL hopeful.

A Glenorchy junior, he went back and played with North Hobart in the Tasmanian Football League and three years later earned a second chance in the AFL when taken by the Swans with selection #39 in the 1992 Mid-Season Draft.

He wasn’t the only player to prosper from what was the second-last Mid-Season Draft in League history. Brad Pearce, later to kick four goals in Carlton’s 1995 grand final win, was taken by Brisbane at selection #16.

Remarkably, Cresswell made his AFL debut weeks later on 12 July 1992, when a staggeringly young Swans team coached by Gary Buckenara lost to West Coast by 53 points at Subiaco.

Cresswell had eight disposals and kicked a goal.

Barry Mitchell (163 games) and Mark Bayes (148 games) were the only 100-gamers in a side that had a total experience of 847 games. Average 42.35.

To put that number into perspective, the Swans side that beat Adelaide in the Friday night blockbuster on Friday night in Adelaide had a total experience of 2747 games, with five 200-gamers and 11 100-gamers.

Among his first AFL teammates were 45-gamer Paul Kelly and 13-gamer Andrew Dunkley.

Cresswell played the last eight games of the season – all losses. And after breaking into the side in Round 4 the following year he played 18 of 19 for 17 losses.

In his 18^th game he had his first win. It was 21 games for three wins in 1994 and in his first 50 games he sung the club song just four times.

But from humble beginnings came a special career.

Fast forward to 19 August 2001, 16 years ago today, Cresswell played his 200^th AFL game for the Swans. He was the 16^th player in red and white to reach this milestone when Sydney hosted Melbourne at the SCG in Round 20.

A 20-year-old Tadgh Kennelly played his fifth AFL game and Greg Stafford his second-last game for the Swans before a move to Richmond. Troy Luff played his last game the following week, and Dale Lewis was three games from the end of his career.

The Swans, coached by Rodney Eade and seventh on the ladder with an 11-8 win/loss record, were on a five-game winning streak and were coming off a 107-point win over North Melbourne. The Demons were 13^th at 7-12 under coach Neale Daniher.

Sadly, for the milestone man, the Swans were never in the hunt. They were 33 points down at quarter-time and lost by the same margin despite 20 possessions and a goal from Cresswell.

Daryn Cresswell leads his team down the SCG race after a disappointing milestone match.

“It was a pretty disappointing day,” he recalled. “We couldn’t get our hands on the ball early and nothing really clicked. I was too wound up and didn’t play well.

“But in hindsight it was pretty special when you think I didn’t play my first game until I was 21. For a long time, I never thought I’d play one game let alone 200, so to get there after a lot of hard work was pretty significant for me.

“The club was very good to me. They put together a nice video which I’m thankful for and flew the family up from Tassie. And there was a bit of a function afterwards too.”

As significant as it was, his 200^th game doesn’t rate highly on the Cresswell list of special games.

That is reserved for three “very special” games – the one-point preliminary final win over Essendon in 1996, when Tony Lockett kicked a long-range point after the siren, the 1996 grand final seven days later, and the last game for long-time teammates Paul Kelly and Andrew Dunkley in 2002.

Personally, the 1996 finals series was a massive highlight. Cresswell kicked the winning goal in a six-point qualifying final win over Hawthorn at the SCG, kicked two goals including the one immediately before Lockett’s match-winning point in the preliminary final, and had a game-high 35 possessions in the grand final, which the Swans lost to North Melbourne by 43 points.

His 35 touches is the equal sixth highest in a grand final since statistics were first kept in 1965. Only Brisbane’s Simon Black (39 in 2003), Port Adelaide’s Kane Cornes (37 in 2007), Hawthorn’s Jordan Lewis (37 in 2014), Richmond’s Geoff Raines (36 in 1980) and Port’s Peter Burgoyne (36 in 2007) have had more, while Hawthorn’s Luke Hodge (35 in 2014) matched the Cresswell effort. Sydney’s Josh Kennedy (34 in 2016) is next best.

In the 1996 qualifying final Cresswell jumped over the back of Hawthorn’s Nick Holland to take a big mark and “just managed to sneak it home from the goalsquare” 30 seconds from the final siren.

“The boys gave me plenty … they reckon I got so high I corked his (Holland’s) calf”,” he said in typically self-effacing fashion.

“The preliminary final win to get us into the grand final was just amazing, especially given where we’d come from and all the dark years that had preceded it. And even though things didn’t work out it’s still a day I’ll never forget.

“I remember driving to the ground and seeing a flood of people in red and white walking to the MCG. It was quite surreal. When we ran out it was just deafening. I’d never heard anything like it, and the emotional pressure of the first quarter is something I can never really explain.”

The Swans had beaten North by 79 points at Princes Park in Round 11 their only meeting in the home-and-away season, and led by 18 points at quarter-time before the Roos kicked 16 of the last 23 goals.

Still it was one of the happiest moments of Cresswell’s career, in part because the Swans had flown his proud-as-punch parents Brian and Clare up from Tasmania.

“The night before the game, my old man apparently ducked down to the hotel bar. When they found out he was my dad, they didn't let him pay for a drink,” he recalled.

Sadly, within six weeks Brian Cresswell died in a boating accident.

The third game on his special games list was the last game for long-time mates Kelly and Dunkley in the final round of 2002.

Cresswell with good mate and long-time teammate Paul Kelly.

“I’d played my entire career with Kell and Dunks and we’d done everything together. They were like father-figures to me after my Dad had died in ‘96, and we’d been through so much in the bad years I wanted to make sure we won that last game for them.”

It was 12^th-placed Sydney against 14^th-placed Richmond at Stadium Australia, and, true to his word, Cresswell had a game-high 30 possessions and kicked a goal as the Swans won by 40 points to send the retiring veterans out in style.

There was one other game for which Cresswell is well-remembered, although it was something of a bitter-sweet occasion for the hard-at-it midfielder.

It was the dislocated knee cap game, of which vision of him literally bashing his knee cap back into place to keep playing has become a U-Tube sensation. Coincidentally, it was his 100^th game. And another milestone loss.

Cresswell’s mother had flown over from Tasmania to celebrate his AFL century in Round 7, 1997 against Geelong at Geelong. He was being tagged by Liam Pickering, now a prominent AFL player manager and media commentator.

“We were really going at each other and I was going OK so I let him know all about it,” Cresswell recalled. “The ground was shifting so I was wearing long stops then went to change direction and bang ... trouble.

“My foot planted and stuck but my leg turned and my knee cap popped out. Pickers lent over and said to me ‘sucked in’. It was pretty painful. I gave it a whack and nothing happened, and then I whacked it hard four or five times and it popped back in.”

Cresswell played one more year after the retirement of Kelly and Dunkley despite recurring calf problems and retired after the 2003 preliminary final loss to Brisbane in which, after being just three points down at three-quarter-time, the Swans were overpowered by the eventual premiers on their way to a third consecutive flag.

“I shouldn’t have played that day. On the Wednesday night we’d just finished training and I was doing some extra work with Steve Malaxos and I heard a pop low in my calf. I wasn’t quick anyway but I couldn’t put any power through my leg.”

So ended a wonderful career which still sees Cresswell ranked 10^th on the Swans’ all-time games list at 244, behind only Adam Goodes (372), Jude Bolton (325), Michael O’Loughlin (303), Jarrad McVeigh (296 and counting), Ryan O’Keefe (286), John Rantall (260), Mark Browning (251), Stephen Wright (246) and Mark Bayes (246).

He is ahead of such Swans luminaries as Brett Kirk (241), Bob Skilton (237), Leo Barry (237) and good mate Kelly (234), but has current players Heath Grundy (234) and Kieran Jack (226) within striking distance.

Cresswell won the Bob Skilton Medal as club champion in 1994 and in nine years finished top four eight times, and top three seven times. He was 4^th in 1995, 3^rd in 1996, 2^nd in 1997, ’98 and ‘99, 3^rd in 2000 and 2^nd in 2002.

Cresswell (centre) in charge of the Wodonga Raiders. Picture: The Border Mail.

In August 2003, shortly before his last game, he was named on the interchange bench in the Swans Team of the Century, and in 2004 he made the Tasmanian Team of the Century, sharing a half forward line with captain Darrel Baldock and Royce Hart.

He averaged 22.95 possessions per game, and 44 times had 30 possessions or more, including 29 in three years at his peak in 1997, ’98, and ‘99. He polled in the Brownlow Medal 10 years in a row from 1994, and kicked 208 goals to rank 20^th on the club’s all-time list.

After South Melbourne / Sydney Swans had played just six finals in 50 years from 1945 to ’95, and he’d begun his career with such little success, he played in 10 finals and six finals campaigns.

And, after playing the first three years of his career in jumper #28 he wore the Swans #8 jumper more often in VFL/AFL football than anyone else.

Cresswell says he was “incredibly fortunate” to have been drafted by “such a great club” as the Swans, and to be coached by some of the best ... Ron Barassi, Eade and Paul Roos. And to learn so much about what makes a good team and a good club via “the Bloods Culture”.

Always a keen student of the game, Cresswell went straight from playing into coaching and was an assistant-coach under Mark Thompson at Geelong in 2004 before working under Leigh Matthews at Brisbane in 2005-06.

At the end of 2006, after St Kilda had moved on Grant Thomas, he was flown by the Saints to Melbourne to interview for the coaching position that eventually went to Ross Lyon.

There is an unconfirmed report he had the inside running for the job until an untimely off-field incident prompted him to withdraw, but the fact the he was even in the mix said plenty about his football nous and knowledge.

Realising he needed to coach his own team to further his credentials, he took charge of the Tassie Devils in the VFL in 2007-08 and Manly in the Sydney competition in 2009.

After a self-imposed and well-documented ‘time out’ on life in 2010-11, which included a 10-month stint in jail for fraud on the back of a gambling addiction, he returned to what he knew best. Football.

He coached Palm Beach Currumbin in the Queensland League in 2012, ’13 and ‘14, finishing 2^nd, 1^st and 3^rd. There he gave local products Jesse Joyce, Brad Scheer and Max Spencer their first senior game, and has been delighted to see each break into the Gold Coast Suns side in recent times.

In 2015, he moved south to the Ovens & Murray League, taking over a Wodonga side that had finished second-last in 2014. He has taken much pride in seeing them finish 3^rd in 2015 and 4^th in 2016, and seeing Wodonga boy Sam Murray taken by the Swans in the 2016 rookie draft.

Wodonga presently sit 3^rd on the ladder this year, and he has one year of a contract to run.