As the saying goes, seven days can be a long time in football. And so, it was for Eddie Lane and the South Melbourne players of early May 1955.

But it was a very good seven days. So good that they have a place in club history.

In the seven days between Round 4 and Round 5 South Melbourne made the biggest form reversal in club history. A 192-point reversal.

South were beaten in Round 4 by Richmond by 58 points at Punt Road. It was 7.10 (52) to 15.20 (110), with a 19-year-old debutant named Bob Pratt kicking three of his side’s seven goals.

This left South, coached by Herbie Matthews, and captained by Bill Gunn, sitting 10^th on the 12-team ladder with a 1-3 record.

Whatever Matthews said to his players in the wake of their hefty loss and in the lead-up to the following game should have been preserved for the archives.

Because on 14 May, 65 years ago today, South, with pretty much the same side, hammered St Kilda by 134 points at Lake Oval. It was 25.16 (166) to 4.8 (32). The Swans’ percentage jumped from 73.8 at Round 4 to 108.2 at Round 5.

The astonishing 192-point turnaround was the biggest in AFL history at the time, and still ranks equal ninth on an all-time list headed by Hawthorn’s 235-point turnaround when a 75-point loss to St Kilda preceded a 160-point win over Essendon in 1992.

Lane, a 25-year-old 168cm rover in his 77^th game, had a day out to lead the dramatic turnaround.

He kicked a career-best six goals, including his 100^th goal, as South kicked 6.3, 8.5, 4.2 and 7.6 quarter by quarter.

Listed at #711 on the club’s all-time playing list, he was the 30^th South Melbourne player to kick six or more goals in a game. He was the 16^th player on a list of what is now 65 players to 100 goals.

His career-best afternoon in front of the big sticks came amid a two-year period in which he was among the very best goal-kicking rovers in the competition.

A Victorian representative, he topped South’s goal-kicking in 1954 and ‘55, was club champion in 1954, and finished equal third in the 1954 Brownlow Medal, polling 14 votes to finish behind Richmond’s Roy Wright (29) and Collingwood’s Neil Mann (19), and level with Essendon’s John Gill (14) and Footscray’s Harvey Stevens (14).

In 1955, when teammate Fred Goldsmith polled 21 votes to win the medal by a vote from Essendon’s Bill Hutchinson (20) and five from St Kilda’s Neil Roberts (16), Lane polled 15 votes to finish equal fourth with Carlton’s John James (15) and Melbourne’s Denis Cordner (15).

In 1955 he was even eighth in League goal-kicking with a career-best 36.

Christened Esmond James Lane, he would have been the only ‘Esmond’ ever to play in the AFL had he not chosen to adopt the nickname Eddie.

He was a real local celebrity. So much so that on 30 October 1954 the local paper carried a story headed “A Real South Melb Romance” announcing engagement to Miss Margaret Lillian Hudson, who lived across the street from the Lane family home in Sandilands Street, South Melbourne.

It read in part: “All admirers of the plucky little footballer will wish him and Margaret hearty congrats”.

Lane, who died on 28 May 2018 aged 88, will forever be remembered as the player who masterminded the biggest form turnaround in Swans history.

There had been three 100-plus turnarounds prior to the Lane-led blitz in 1955, which for a period held the club record.

In 1898, after losing by 60 points to Collingwood in Round 11, South beat St Kilda by 63 points at Lake Oval in Round 12. Dick Gibson, a member of the first South Melbourne side in 1897, kicked three goals in the 123-point turnaround.

This stood as the record until 1932 when, after losing by just four points to Essendon in Round 16, South hammered Hawthorn by 123 points in Round 17. It was 24.13 (157) to 4.10 (34). Peter Reville kicked six goals and Austin Robertson and Bert Beard four each in a 127-point turnaround.

Then, in 1948, after losing to Footscray by 51 points in Round 18, they closed out the home-and-away season with a 96-point win over Geelong at Lake Oval 21.15 (141) to 6.9 (45).

Allan Miller, father of Greg Miller, later to play for South and serve as the club’s recruiting boss before switching to North Melbourne and recruit Wayne Carey to Arden Street, kicked five goals in just his third game. Ron Clegg kicked four in a 147-point turnaround.