Dion Scott, former Swans player and first-round draft pick, is celebrating a 50^th birthday with a massive difference today.

But it is not that there will be none of the normal 50^th birthday celebrations due to the coronavirus pandemic that disappoints the April Fool’s Day baby, or even that he cannot take his 17-year-old son Lachie fishing as planned.

The thing that disappoints him most is that he can’t pick up the phone and send 50^th birthday wishes next Monday to former good mate Sanford Wheeler, who died in the United States on 21 March. He would have turned 50 on 6 April.

“It’s just so sad … he was such a terrific fella,” said Scott, who arrived at the SCG in the same year as Wheeler from entirely different paths.

While Scott grew up in Ulverstone on the Tasmanian north coast and played his football at nearby Ulverstone, Wheeler hails from California, migrated with his Australian father and African-American mother to Sydney at age five and was the first African-American to play in the AFL.

Scott played only six Swans games in 1990 and 1992 due to chronic knee problems before 73 games with Brisbane, but played alongside Wheeler in four of them.

He knew him first as Matthew Wheeler before he changed his Christian name by deed poll to Sanford, attended his wedding and had kept in touch spasmodically.

“He (Wheeler) was living out at Parramatta but that was too far away for him - he spent a lot of time at my apartment closer to the ground,” Scott said of the fun-loving American who often arrived at training on a skateboard.

“He was always getting up to some sort of mischief … just a funny, charismatic, ripping fella.

“I’m kicking myself. I picked up the phone to ring him a couple of months ago and as you do, I got busy and never got around to it. It just shows you’ve got to do those sorts of things.”

Scott, player #1190 on the Swans’ all-time list, is one of five Swans players who are part of the AFL’s April Fool’s Day club.

• Percy Jackson, player #262, was the first. And the only three-club April Fool’s Day baby in AFL history. He played eight games with South in 1914 before seven games with St Kilda in 1915 and one with Carlton in 1918.
• Roy Bence, Swans player #29, played 15 games with South Melbourne in 1922 before 144 games with Fitzroy from 1925-32.
• Stephen McBroom, player #1119 and celebrating his 56^th birthday today, played six games in red and white in 1983-84.
• And Campbell Heath, player #1364, played two Swans games in 2010 before 12 with Port Adelaide in 2013.

Callum Mills was almost an April Fool’s Day baby – he was born 2 April and will be 23 tomorrow.