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.

#15 - Tony Lockett kicks his 1300th goal, 1999

It was a kick 62 years in the making.

Since the retirement of the great Collingwood full-forward Gordon Coventry in 1937, no player in VFL/AFL history had managed to top his goalkicking record of 1299 goals.

When the 1999 Collingwood side visited the SCG in round 10, champion Swans full-forward Tony Lockett need just two goals to tie the long-standing record and three to move ahead of Coventry as the game’s greatest ever goalkicker.

It didn’t take long for Lockett to tie the record, as he brought up his first two goals in the first quarter as the Swans jumped out of the stalls against the struggling Magpies.

In the dying stages of the first quarter, and with the Swans fittingly kicking towards the Bradman Stand at the SCG, Lockett’s great mate Paul Kelly received a free kick after Collingwood’s Scott Burns soccered the ball over the boundary line on the full. With the clock showing 1.35pm on Sunday, June 6, Kelly pin-pointed a pass to the leading full-forward.

“To get it off Kel, who I hold in the highest regard of almost anyone I've played footy with over the past 17 years, I couldn't have written it any better than that," Lockett said after the game.

The quarter time siren sounded as Lockett lined up the goal, and with the entire footballing world’s eyes focused on the SCG, the great man didn’t disappoint as he etched his name into football folk law with an accurate, wobbly kick that notched his 1300th goal.

Players, security, and thousands of elated fans streamed on to the SCG to gather around Lockett and celebrate the historic moment. It wasn’t until Lockett and the rest of the Swans team were taken down the race long into the quarter time break that the massive throng of fans started to disperse.

“I’m overawed by the situation, I think it will sink in later,” Lockett said. “It’ll be a day I remember for the rest of my life.

“It was a shocking kick, absolutely terrible. It just floated through.

“(But) if you’re going to duff it, you may as well duff it straight,” he said.

When the game finally got back underway, Lockett went on to celebrate in a style befitting the occasion as he finished with nine goals and three Brownlow votes as the best player on the ground in the Swans 51-point win over Collingwood.

Lockett was chaired off the ground by his team mates, before being driven around the boundary of the SCG in front of his adoring fans with his wife and daughters.

The iconic moment was front page news across the country the next day, launched a long line of memorabilia items, and years later was re-created in a famous television advertisement.

Lockett retired from the game at the end of the 1999 season, before making a brief comeback in 2002, to finish his celebrated career with 1360 goals from 281 games - a phenomenal figure that will take some beating in the future.