The Sydney Swans were in dire straits early in the 1993 season, winless on the bottom of the ladder after defeats by Hawthorn (57 points), St Kilda (38) and Essendon (86). The Swans had not won since defeating the Brisbane Bears by 74 points at the SCG in Round 7 of the previous season.
Following the thrashing by Essendon, coach Gary Buckenara, the scapegoat for the club’s parlous state, had his services dispensed with by the then Board.
The only problem was that we didn’t have a ready-made successor and named former star centreman Brett Scott as stand-in coach.
The Swans had a plan, but it required a lot of clever negotiation to land the biggest fish in the coaching ocean: Ron Barassi.
Happily at the instigation of legendary administrator Ron Joseph, the AFL was also keen for Ron to become coach of the club.
The stars aligned.
Ron had coached Carlton to the 1968 and 1970 flags and North Melbourne to the 1975 and 1977 premierships and, after a stint with Melbourne from 1981-85, he stepped from the public arena.
However, in an interview during the 70s when asked where he’d be in 20 years, ever the visionary he answered “coaching a team in Sydney”.
After the Swans went down to Fitzroy by 93 points in Round 4, Ron agreed to coach the club. The following week, he sat at the back of the old Gardiner Stand at Princes Park to take notes on the Swans’ performance against North Melbourne. The great man must have shuddered through most of the match as North whipped the Swans by 124 points, with the Roos’ Adrian McAdam kicking 10 goals.
Naturally, there was intense media speculation when Ron made his Sydney Swans coaching debut against Carlton at the SCG in Round 7.
The messiah had arrived.
No one expected the Swans to win, or even go close, yet the Swans pressed hard for most of the match before going down by 44 points. It was a credible performance against one of the power sides of the competition, but it also underlined the enormous task facing the 57-year-old super coach.
Would the Swans win a match in 1993? The doubts increased after the second worst team in the competition, the Brisbane Bears, humiliated us by kicking 33 goals to win by 162 points at the Gabba in Ron’s second match in charge. Then followed defeats by Geelong, Richmond, West Coast and Footscray before the Swans faced Melbourne at the SCG in Round 13, on June 27.
By now, we had suffered 26 consecutive defeats, with only a 29-game string of losses over the 1972-73 seasons worse than the 1992-93 run in club history.
However, the black clouds of despair dissipated in the match against the Demons, with the Swans winning by 40 points. All those whose hearts bled for the club rejoiced as if there would be no tomorrow.
The Swans’ hero was Richard Osborne. He kicked 10 goals wearing a helmet, as just a few weeks earlier he was taken from the SCG by ambulance following an accidental collision with teammate Dale Lewis in the match against Geelong.
It was our only win of the 1993 campaign, but we won four the following season and climbed off the bottom with eight wins with a percentage of 100.7 to finish 12th in 1995.
There was real momentum building.
With the value of hindsight it was an extraordinary achievement.
It’s entirely possible if Ron Barassi hadn’t come to Sydney the club would not exist today and the national competition would be a much paler imitation of what we see today.
Ron retired as coach at the end of 1995 and was part of the selection panel that appointed former Hawthorn star Rodney Eade who guided us to the 1996 Grand Final against North Melbourne – our first in 51 years.
Ron then accepted an invitation to join the Swans Board on which he sat for the following seven seasons.
