Interested in the evolution of football over the last 40 years? You might want to talk to Mark Bayes. 

The former Sydney Swans champion, born in 1967 and now 52, has lived through it.

From a Melbourne teenager who dreamed of playing in the 12-team suburban VFL competition to a 246-game veteran who left an entirely different national AFL competition in 1998 and then retired player who has witnessed the final touches, he’s seen it all.

With every football milestone throughout his glittering career came more change.

By the time Bayes was old enough to play it meant moving to football’s new frontier in Sydney.

By the time he had played 50 games there were teams from Brisbane and Perth in the new-look competition.

He raced past 100 games as the League contemplated changing the competition name from the VFL to the AFL, and by the time he got to 150 games an Adelaide side had emerged.

This completed the national makeover of what Bayes had known growing up as a competition that played six games at 2pm each Saturday at places like Glenferrie Oval, Arden Street, Windy Hill, Victoria Park, Princes Park, Moorabbin and, of course, South Melbourne’s Lake Oval.

As he headed towards 200 games there was a team in each mainland state capital.

Bayes had played for the AFL’s first interstate club in their first games against West Coast and Brisbane in 1987, and their first game against Adelaide in 1991.

It was almost predictable then that on May 7, 1995 – 25 years ago today – Bayes would head interstate to continue his leading role in football’s evolution, as Sydney played their first game against another new team, Fremantle.

But it wasn’t just another ‘first’. It was Bayes 200^th AFL game, cementing his place in the proud history of South Melbourne/Sydney Swans.

The ever-calm utility player with a thumping left-foot kick was the 14^th member of a Swans 200 Club that now numbers 32. And, having reached his double century 54 days beyond his 28^th birthday, he was the second youngest at the time behind only Tony Morwood (27 years, 111 days).

When Bayes retired he was equal third on the Swans’ all-time games list, behind only John Rantall (260) and Mark Browning (251) and level with Stevie Wright.

Now, 22 years later, Bayes is the fifth youngest 200-gamer in Swans history, with only Adam Goodes (27 years, 182 days), Jude Bolton (28 years, 23 days) and Jarrad McVeigh (28 years, 29 days) having slipped in between Morwood and him.

He’s equal 10^th on the Swans games list and holds the club record for most games in guernsey #30 from Lewis Roberts-Thomson (179), Fred Way (81) and David Rhys-Jones (72).

Little wonder, then, that in 2003 Bayes was paid the massive honour when he was selected on the interchange bench in the Swans Team of the Century.

He also won the Bob Skilton Medal as Club Champion in 1989 and in the same year was chosen in the VFL Team of the Year, the forerunner to the All-Australian team. He played in the 1996 grand final, represented Victoria five times and was inducted into the Swans Hall of Fame in 2011.

Even today he is fourth in all-time AFL games played in #30 behind Francis Bourke (300), Matthew Scarlett (283) and Peter Matera (248). And, with 174 goals, he is fifth in goals in #30 behind Jarrad Waite (377), Peter Moore (235), Peter Matera (214) and Tom Fitzmaurice (185).

It was a superstar career that deserved a better 200^th-game.

Sydney, coached by Ron Barassi, were eighth on the ladder after a 2-3 start to the season as they headed west to tackle ninth-placed Fremantle, who had made an identical start under inaugural coach Gerard Neesham.

Ironically, Neesham, a WA football star, had played nine games in the AFL in 1982 with Sydney.

Neesham hadn’t played with any of the players he was now to coach against, but he had been with the Swans when an 18-year-old Paul Roos, playing his 275^th game in Bayes’ 200^th, had played twice for Fitzroy against Sydney in his debut season.

There were also two ex-Swans in the Fremantle side – Andrew McGovern and Scott Watters.

No member of Bayes’ first team was in his 200^th team but Roos had played for Fitzroy against Bayes in his second game in 1985.

In confirmation of how the football wheel turns, with one generation leading into the next, playing his second game for Sydney in Bayes’ 200^th was 18-year-old Michael O’Loughlin. 

Over time, since Vic Belcher had become the Swans’ first 200-gamer in the 1918 grand final, the club had enjoyed a mixed record in 200^th games, with seven of 13 prior to Bayes enjoying a win.

But it wasn’t to be for the 190cm utility from Victoria’s Noble Park. They led by 19 points at halftime but a poor third quarter turned the tables completely and the Dockers ran away with it in the last quarter to win 25.13 (163) to 16.9 (105).

Inaugural Fremantle captain Ben Allan was judged best afield for his side, Winston Abraham kicked six goals for two Brownlow Medal votes, and Scott Chisholm received one vote.

Tony Lockett kicked five goals for the Swans and captain Paul Kelly led the possession count with 20.

But, small compensation as it was, Bayes got a win his 230^th game. That was the day he went past Tony Morwood to become the Swans’ most capped player from Noble Park.

It was a long chase and a more significant honour than it might seem. After all, it is a junior club that did produce two members of the Swans Team of the Century.

Morwood had been Noble Park’s No.1 Swan for a long time. Having debuted in 1978, he played in Bayes’ first game in 1985 and retired after 229 games at the end of 1989, when Bayes had played just 100.

The Swans’ Noble Park Old Boys Club began officially with Glen Parker, who played 32 games from 1964-66, although given that Noble Park FC was formed in 1918 there may have been others who were missed.

Parker was followed by Bob Bell (13 games – 1971-74), Duncan MacGregor (1 game – 1971), Mick Plant (4 games – 1972), Barry Beecroft (71 games – 1973-77 and 1982) and John Blair (27 games – 1975-78).

Blair went on to play at Fitzroy and St Kilda before heading to Queensland, where he built such a career as a player and coach that he  was an inaugural member of the Queensland Football Hall of Fame in 2008 and became the Hall’s 10^th Legend in 2013.

The SNPOBC swelled in numbers when the Morwood family arrived on the scene and Paul, Tony and finally Shane all played for the Swans.

Paul played 95 games for the club in two stints (1977-82 and 1986) in a total career of 170 games, with stints at St Kilda (60 games – 1983-85) and Collingwood (15 games – 1987). And Shane played 17 games with the Swans (1981-82) before 195 games at Collingwood (1983-93).

In between Paul and Tony was Ray Jamieson (5 games – 1977-78). And after Shane came Peter Maloni (1 game – 1983), Patrick Foy (7 games – 1984) and Will Sangster (2 games – 1999). And then there was Bayes.

Bayes landed himself in an alumni that is not out of place against that of any junior club in Australia.

It includes North Melbourne’s Glenn Archer, who heads the SNPOBC games list at 311 from St Kilda 275-gamer Stephen Milne. After Bayes and Morwood, third and fourth on the games list, is North/Geelong defender Tim McGrath (226), Shane Morwood (212) and St Kilda’s Brian Mynott (2010), with Melbourne/North utility Steven Icke (198), Paul Morwood (170) and St Kilda’s Jim O’Dea (170) completing the top 10.

Current players Collingwood’s Adam Treloar (163) and St Kilda’s Shane Savage (163) are next on the list from St Kilda’s James Gwilt (152) and 1940s Richmond premiership player Bill Perkins (148).

Collingwood great Darren Millane, so tragically killed in a motor vehicle accident in 1991, played 147 games after learning his football at Noble Park and completes the Noble Park 100-gamers with Essendon’s Adam Ramanauskas (113), the Western Bulldogs’ Tory Dickson (113) and Hawthorn’s Kris Barlow (102).

Even NFL Superbowl punt kicking champion Darren Bennett, who played 78 games with West Coast and Melbourne, is a Noble Park product.

There are also two VIP members of the SNPOBC who never played AFL football: Australian Test fast bowler Damien Fleming, the first and only player to take a hat-trick on his Test debut, and Doug Ensor, who holds the Guinness World Record for most goals in a game – he kicked 60 of his team’s 69 in a junior match for Noble Park.