There was one very big party at Lake Oval 86 years ago today. And they certainly cheered the red and the white in boisterous fashion.

It was Saturday 5 May 1934, and Round 1 of a new season, when the Swans unfurled the 1933 premiership flag as they opened the season against Collingwood.

A reported crowd of 38,000, up from the 1933 average of 22,300, was on hand. And the gate takings of £1005, or approximately $2010, was more than double the average.

And they loved every minute of it as South Melbourne, still under premiership captain-coach Jack Bisset, accounted for Collingwood 19.13 (127) to 13.4 (92).

The great Bob Pratt kicked eight goals for South in a feature showdown at full forward with legendary Collingwood counterpart Gordon Coventry, who kicked eight goals as well.

Ossie Bertram, Peter Reville and Austin Robertson kicked three apiece for the victors as they opened a year in which they finished third on the home-and-away ladder on percentages with a 14-4 record.

They beat Collingwood by three points in the knock-out semi-final, beat Geelong by 60 points in the preliminary final, and lost by 39 points to Richmond in the grand final.

Sixteen of the 19 members of the 1933 premiership side played in the 1934 season-opener.

Robertson, at the peak of his career at 26, returned after playing only the first two games of 1933 under circumstances that would seem inconceivable to modern players.

In addition to being an outstanding footballer Robertson, father of recent AFL Hall of Fame inductee Austin Roberts Jnr, was also a world champion professional sprinter after winning the title in 1930.

So, having played early in the ’33 season he headed to the United States hoping to arrange a match race with archrival Eddie Tolan at the World Fair in Chicago.

Tolan had set world records over 100m and 200m, and was dubbed the world’s fastest human after winning gold medals over both distances at the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles.

But when Robertson arrived in America to finalise arrangements he found Tolan was not even in training and was unable to race. So he missed not only his match race but the 1933 Swans flag.

Also back in the side for Round 1 was Ron Hillis, who had played the first 19 games of the 1933 season before injury kept him out of the preliminary final and grand final. He failed a fitness test on the eve of the premiership.

Alan Welch, who had played eight games in 1933 before missing selection in the finals, also returned to the top side in Round 1 as this trio replaced the premiership trio of Bert Beard, John Bowe and Jack Austin.

Bowe, a member of the famous ‘Foreign Legion’ of 1933, had returned to Western Australia after his one and only season in the then VFL and went on to be a captain and coach with Subiaco and South Fremantle in the WAFL.

Beard, another import from WA who had been 19^th man in the grand final before replacing the injured Hugh McLaughlin in the second quarter, played spasmodically in 1934-35 before switching to Fitzroy mid-way through 1935.

Austin made a late start in ’34 but was a member of the losing grand final sides in 1934, ’35 and ‘36.

Recruited from South Melbourne Districts, Austin went on to play 140 games for the club from 1930-38 and was one of 10 players who played in four consecutive grand finals from 1933-36 and one of 30 who played in at least one grand final across this golden era.

Bisset, who had played 38 games for Richmond in 1928 and 1931 before joining South in 1932, was captain-coach of all four grand final sides and was later named ‘coach’ of the Swans Team of the Century.