Sunday 30 April 1995, 25 years ago today, was a red letter day the for Sydney Swans. They kicked 11.9 to 0.1 in a stunning fourth quarter to beat Adelaide by 57 points at the SCG.

Ron Barassi was the Swans coach as Tony Lockett played his third game for the club and Paul Roos his fifth as they posted the club’s third-highest final quarter score in history to come from 27 points down at quarter-time.

The only higher fourth-quarter scores had come in 1919, when Harold Robertson kicked 14 goals and South Melbourne obliterated St Kilda 17.4 (106) to 0.0 (0) at Lake Oval, and in 1987, when they piled on 13.7 to 1.2 against Essendon at the SCG to post what is still the club’s highest score of 36.20 (236).

Yet, as significant as it was at the time, this was the subplot of a day in which football history says the AFL debut of an Indigenous teenager from South Australia was more significant.

Later to become an all-time great of the club and the game, Michael O’Loughlin was 18 years and 69 days old when he kicked three goals from 14 possessions on debut to begin a 14-year journey that would make him the first Swans player to reach 300 games.

Born on 20 February 1977, ‘Mickey O’ was given his mother’s maiden name from her great, great, great grandfather because his parents never married and had a heritage that was a mix of Indigenous Australian, Czech, Irish, English and Jewish.

From the Narangga and Ngarrindjeri areas on the Yorke Peninsula in South Australia, he was the oldest of six children.

As a 2012 episode of the SBS series “Who Do You Think You Are?” revealed, he had a fascinating family history on both his mother’s and father’s side.

It was discovered that the elder Aboriginal man and woman shown on the bottom corner of the Australian $50 note are none other than Michaels own great grandparents.

That his great, great, great grandmother was found to have been the very first Aboriginal person in SA to be legally married to a European, the first to legally own land under the colonial system, and that his great grandfather on his father’s side was a tribal leader and custodian of his people’s culture and traditions who worked tirelessly to document and preserve them before his death.

It was no wonder, then, that O’Loughlin would go on to become such a leader not just in football but in everyday life.

While it is almost disrespectful to isolate football from the overall O’Loughlin legacy it is an undeniable fact that the majestic utility forward/midfielder, a member of the Indigenous Team of the Century, was a giant bonus for the Swans from the 1994 AFL National Draft.

If you’d been told only that the Swans, armed with selections 2, 3, 20 and 21, had come away with four players who would play a total of 255 games for the club you’d think the club was short-changed.

More so if you learned that selection #2 Anthony Rocca would play 22 games for Sydney and 220 games for Collingwood. That selection #3 Shannon Grant would play 58 games for Sydney and 243 games for North Melbourne. And that selection #20 Stuart Mangin did not play at all for the Swans and managed just three games for Adelaide.

And it would be considered inadequate compensation that selection #21 Matthew Nicks, new coach at Adelaide, played 155 games in red and white.

But add O’Loughlin, secured by the club at selection #40, and it’s a different story.

O’Loughlin broke into the Sydney side at a difficult time. They were wooden-spooners in 1992, ’93 and ‘94 with eight wins and a draw from 64 games, and lost their first three games of the 1995 season by 17 points to the Western Bulldogs, then Footscray, at Whitten Oval, by five points to Geelong at the SCG, and by five points to the then Brisbane Bears at the Gabba.

Lockett and Roos had played their first Sydney game in Round 1 as Grant made his debut, while Justin Crawford debuted in Round 3.

In Round 4 Sydney had beaten Fitzroy by 32 points at the SCG as Tim Scott made his debut in what would be Fitzroy’s last game at the SCG before the merger with Brisbane.

Yet Barassi made four changes for Round 5. Out went Crawford, Troy Luff, Scott (who would never play in the AFL again) and Brad Seymour, and in came Neil Brunton, Peter Caven, Dale Lewis and O’Loughlin.

O’Loughlin wore guernsey #38 in his first season before switching to #19, which he would wear a League record 292 times, surpassing the previous best of 269 by Hawthorn great Jason Dunstall.

The Swans side in notional positions for O’Loughlin’s debut was:

B: Neil Brunton, Andrew Dunkley, Peter Caven
HB: Adam Heuskes, Mark Bayes, Darren Kappler
C: Dale Lewis, Paul Kelly (capt), Dean McRae
HF: Michael O’Loughlin, Troy Gray, Derek Kickett
F: Leon Higgins, Tony Lockett, Scott Direen
R: Gavin Rose, Paul Roos, Daryn Cresswell
INT: Simon Garlick, Jayson Daniels, Darren Gaspar.

Three weeks later O’Loughlin had 10 possessions and kicked four goals in a 72-point win over eventual premiers Carlton at the SCG to win a Rising Star nomination.

He played 10 games in a row from debut plus Round 17, and in summary of his first season the 1996 AFL Guide wrote: “Was one of the surprises of the 1995 season because of his great skills and goal-kicking prowess. Had several excellent games …. (and) could be a star half forward with more consistency”.

Indeed he was!

Make sure you keep across the Sydney Swans channels throughout the day to join in #MickyODay.