There is nothing in football like the bond between premiership teammates. It’s a lifetime thing.  And reunions are always very special. Which is why Sydney Swans football chief and CEO-elect Tom Harley finds himself in an unusual position Friday night.

With Sydney to play the Cats in Geelong as the run to the 2017 AFL finals hots up, Harley, the 2007 and 2009 Geelong premiership captain, will find himself in the opposition camp to five players with whom he shared one or both of those very special grand final moments.

It will be business as usual for Harley, who recently was confirmed as successor to Swans CEO Andrew Ireland at the end of next year.

But afterwards he might find time for a quick chat with likely Cats players Joel Selwood, Andrew Mackie, Tom Hawkins, Tom Lonergan and Harry Taylor, who are former premiership teammates. And any other familiar faces still at the club which Harley called home for 11 years.

Also, Corey Enright and Matthew Scarlett will be in the Geelong coaching box on Friday night, and there’s every chance Cameron Ling, Cameron Mooney and Jimmy Bartel will be on media duties.

It’s a homecoming that diminishes in number year by year.

The first time Harley visited Kardinia Park wearing the red and white of Sydney in 2015 there were nine of his ex-premiership teammates in the Geelong side – Selwood, Mackie, Enright, Bartel, Taylor, Hawkins, Lonergan, James Kelly and Matthew Stokes.

Last year it was seven – Selwood, Mackie, Enright, Bartel, Taylor, Hawkins and Lonergan.

No matter how long Harley stays in football at the elite level he will run into people with whom he has savoured the unique experience of premiership success. And each time it will be like only yesterday he saw them last.

It’s just like when Buddy Franklin plays against Hawthorn. Quite simply, it’s one of the very special joys of AFL football. There is no breaking the bond.

Harley celebrates on the siren as Geelong defeat Port Adelaide in the 2009 Grand Final.

Harley has a reunion of a much lesser variety every time he walks down the corridor of the Swans offices at the SCG, steps into the coaching department, and bumps into assistant coaches Stuart Dew and Josh Francou.

Remarkably, Dew and Francou were teammates when Harley began his AFL journey in 1998.

It was at the old Football Park in Adelaide when Harley played his one, only and inglorious game for Port Adelaide.

The Adelaide-born teenager, an All-Australian U18 pick in 1996 from Norwood after being a late addition to the South Australian team for the national championships, had been claimed by the Power under the club’s South Australian zone concessions ahead of their 1997 entry to the AFL.

He’d struggled to break into the senior side, but finally got his chance in Round 14, 1998.

Ironically, it was against Geelong. He began on the bench as the Power, coached by SA football legend Jack Cahill, trailed by 19 points at quarter time. And led by five points at half time. And led by three points at three-quarter time.

It was not until Port had the game locked away, two minutes from the end, that Harley finally got a run.

He raced onto the field and was open as teammate Michael Wilson had the ball surging forward.

Ignored on the outside as Wilson kicked long to the goal square, Harley got himself to the drop of the ball and soccered it off the ground for a goal.

Sixty seconds later, without any further involvement, the siren sounded. Port won by 18 points and the statistics sheet showed Harley had one kick and one goal.

He was dropped the week after and at the end of the season was on the open market.

Where to next?

Remarkably, Harley faced one of those sliding doors moments which could have seen him head to Sydney 16 years ahead of when he finally joined the club in 2014.

Tom Harley has become an integral part of the Sydney Swans Football Club's football department since arriving at the Club in 2014.

Even before he played his one game at Port Adelaide he had been on the Swans radar. The club had looked to trade for him at the time of the initial Port list build, and he’d visited the club for the customary meetings, tours and introductions.

But it didn’t work out and instead Harley was traded by Port to Geelong for selection #37 in the 1998 AFL National Draft.

It turned out to be a massive win for the Cats. They got a player pivotal to the club’s next decade and with selection #37 Port picked Victorian key forward Adam Morgan, who played three games for the club in 2002-03 and 14 games for the Western Bulldogs in 2004-06.

Interestingly, before settling on Morgan at #37 in the draft Port overlooked another young Victorian key forward who went to Carlton at #38. Brendan Fevola.

The rest, as they say so gloriously, is football history.

Harley played nine games in Gary Ayres’ final year as coach at Geelong in 1999, when Garry Hocking captained the club in the absence through injury of first-choice skipper Leigh Colbert.

After Mark Thompson took over as coach in 2000, the forward turned defender was a regular fixture in the senior team.  He played 67 games under the captaincy of Ben Graham from 2000-02, and 65 games under Steven King from 2003-06.

At the end of 2006, when Thompson survived a challenge to his coaching position after an exhaustive review of the club’s football operation, Harley was regarded as something of a surprise choice as captain but got the job on the back of a strong Board recommendation.

As the club noted at the time, he was considered “a player who would dig deep and stand up when it counts” and “would improve communication between players, coaches and the Board”.

One of Harley’s first big decisions as Geelong captain was in the 2007 pre-season when Steve Johnson was suspended by the club for the first five matches of the season after he had not been honest with the leadership group in relation to a well-publicised day out on Christmas Eve.

Harley had stamped his leadership mark on the club and the group in no uncertain fashion, and was appropriately rewarded at the end of the season when Johnson won the Norm Smith Medal in the Cats’ record 114-point grand final win over Port Adelaide.

It hadn’t been an entirely smooth first year at the helm. Harley had ruptured a finger tendon in Round 1 and returned from injury in the Reserves. He didn’t get back into the seniors until Round 10.

Yet all this was quickly forgotten four months later when he was the first Geelong captain in 44 years to hold aloft the AFL premiership cup.

In 2008, when Geelong lost the grand final to Hawthorn by 26 points, Harley was named vice-captain of the All-Australian side and won the AFLPA award for Best Captain. And in 2009, after the Cats beat St Kilda by 12 points in the grand final in Harley’s 198^th AFL game, he retired.

Harley had a 49-7 win/loss record as captain and saw the Cats finish 1^st-2^nd-1^st. Little wonder he was described by coach Thompson as “one of the great captains in the history of the Geelong Football Club”.

 
Current CEO Andrew Ireland, Chariman Andrew Pridham and soon-to-be CEO Tom Harley after announcing the succession plan.

Already a member of the Geelong Hall of Fame, the club later established in his honour an annual award for the player who best demonstrates the values of the team and the club, on and off the field.

Soon after his retirement the dual premiership skipper was one of 24 leaders from across the spectrum of Australian sport invited to attend the first Captain’s Forum at Parliament House in Canberra and develop a national response for emerging challenges impacting sport and the broader community.

Clearly Harley was a leader with a bright future. But where to next?

In accepted a part-time role as a project consultant with AFL NSW/ACT and in 2010 he joined the 2010 Channel 7 commentary team.

He had always been a brilliant performer in the football media and was immensely popular among the media fraternity. But one journalist always got preferable treatment – his wife Felicity. The pair, now with two boys, met when she interviewed him for an article for “Cosmopolitan” magazine.

The commerce graduate, now 39, also served as an assistant-coach and mentor with the AFL/AIS Academy and could have gone down the media or coaching path. But instead he chose football administration.

After various roles with AFL NSW/ACT, including that of General Manager, the Swans finally got their man in November 2014 when Harley replaced the long-serving and much-admired Dean Moore as the Swans’ football chief.

In four meetings between Harley’s old club and his new club since then it’s 3-1 to the Swans, including a 37-point triumph in the 2016 preliminary final, and 1-1 at Kardinia Park.

And on Friday night despite so many familiar faces in the Cats’ camp, Harley will be hoping that domination continues.