In the lead-up to the Swans round 8 home match against Melbourne, which will celebrate the Club’s 30 years in Sydney, sydneyswans.com.au is collating the 30 Defining Moments of the Swans in Sydney in chronological order.

The 30 Defining Moments have been selected by Sydney Swans Chairman, Richard Colless, Deputy Chairman, Andrew McMaster, and Swans Hall of Fame inductee and former Club captain, coach, and director, Rick Quade.

#14 - SCG record crowd v Geelong, 1997

After the success of the 1996 season which culminated in an AFL Grand Final appearance, the Sydney Swans enjoyed a significant increase in attendances at home games in 1997.

The 11 SCG games for the season drew 393,999 people through the gates at an average of 35,818 people per game. The aggregate SCG attendance for 1997 smashed the previous best season of 1986 by just under 110,000, and the season still remains as producing the best average AFL crowds the SCG has seen.

After an up-and-down start to the 1997 season, the Swans went into the final home-and-away game against Geelong on the back of hot streak which had seen them win eight of their last 11 games. Regardless of the result, the Swans were assured a place in the finals, but they sat precariously in fifth place on the ladder and could finish as low as seventh if they lost to the Cats.

With so much at stake, and both teams in good form and playing a competitive, high-scoring brand of football, the crowd poured through the SCG turnstiles for the final Swans home game of the season.

The Cats got the early break on the Swans in the first quarter of the game to take a ten-point lead to the first change. An entertaining arm-wrestle ensued over the final three quarters, but the Swans couldn’t breach the early lead Geelong had built and eventually went down to the second-placed Cats by 10 points.

As he so often did, Tony Lockett led the way for the Swans on the scoreboard with five goals, while Michael O’Loughlin was also a standout with three goals from his 22 possessions.

While the result was unsuccessful for the Swans, the final crowd figure of 46,168 was one to savour for the club. It was - and still remains - the biggest crowd ever seen for an AFL match at the SCG, beating the previous record, from the same fixture the year before, by over 2,000 people.

The defeat to Geelong saw the Swans slip to sixth on the ladder, and resulted in the team having to travel to the MCG the following week to take on the Western Bulldogs in a qualifying final. The injury-depleted Swans were bundled out of the finals by the Bulldogs to the tune of 35 points in what was a disappointing end to Rodney Eade’s second season in charge.

Six years later, another crowd benchmark was set when 72,393 people travelled out to Sydney’s Stadium Australia, to watch the sixth-placed Swans host second-placed Collingwood in round 21 of the 2003 season.

Similarly to the Geelong game in 1997, the Swans gave up a first quarter lead they couldn’t reel in as the Magpies went on to win by three goals. The monumental crowd is the largest ever to watch a Sydney Swans home game, and remains as the biggest attendance for an AFL game outside of Melbourne.