ON Mother’s Day in 1994 the Sydney Swans suffered what might have been their worst loss in history but one that changed things forever.
 
It was a low point for the club. Victorians wanted the northern “experiment” to end and the excitement and glitter of the early days were well and truly passed.
 
That afternoon at the SCG the Swans led by 48 points at the six minute mark of the last quarter of the match against the Saints.
 
And then all hell broke loose.
 
A force of nature called Tony Lockett changed the course of the match, kicking seven goals, breaking Peter Caven’s face and destroying the Swans' defence.
 
The big man even took on the crowd, spearing a ball at the cheer squad, spraying them with obscenities and just for good measure giving everybody an “up yours” gesture on the way off.
 
The great Ron Barassi had been lured out of retirement to coach the Swans that year. After the game at the post match function in the old shed at Moore Park, Ron’s wife Cherryl asked her husband what he was going to do about Lockett.
 
“Sign him up, I guess,” the coach said. And he did.
 
The AFL and the industrious Ron Joseph had lured Barassi to Sydney believing that he was the one man in Australia who could restore the side’s credibility in the eyes of the Victorian-centred competition.
 
In the newly released biography Barassi by Peter Lalor there is a wonderful account of how the super coach and champion player restored the integrity of our great club on and off the field.
 
Barassi spruiked the Swans message wherever he could because he had been the prophet calling for a national league years before anybody dreamed of playing in Sydney.
 
The man who led Carlton to its famous 1970 victory over Collingwood, and then North to its 1977 replay grand final victory over the same side, was well and truly done with football when the Swans came calling in late 1993.
 
He felt, however, a duty to come and help. The club was on its knees after years of neglect from the AFL - there was none of the support the new teams get today. “It was just disgraceful, just disgraceful, a blot on our game … It was what footy was like before the war. They had nothing and they needed help,” Barassi says in the book.
 
He turned everything around in the two short seasons he was there. Players like Tony Lockett and Paul Roos came to town and things began to turn around.
 
Roos says he learned a lot about football from Barassi and used those lessons when coaching. Paul Kelly said he was “an inspiration in what were pretty dark times”.
 
Club chairman Richard Colless said, “I think that without Barassi the whole thing would have collapsed”.
 
Barassi by Peter Lalor traces Barassi’s story from the time he was a five year old and learned his Melbourne premiership playing father had died in the war, through to the present day. Critics have praised it as a great work.
 
We know that when he came to Sydney, the place was a shambles. The season after he left, the Swans played in the 1996 Grand Final.
 
Barassi is a life member of the Swans and three other clubs. His legacy to this Club should never be forgotten.

Peter Lalor’s biography, Barassi, is published by Allen and Unwin, and available at all leading bookstores.