It was a milestone celebration to end all milestone celebrations.

102 years ago today, on 7 September 1918, South Melbourne great Vic Belcher turned an already historic day in club history into a monumental premiership celebration.

Belcher became the first player to play 200 games for the Swans, and, almost as if he’d written the script himself, played a pivotal role in a magnificent come-from-behind grand final win over Collingwood at the MCG.

The Swans had trailed at every change when coach Herb Howson swung Belcher from defence into the ruck at three-quarter time, and looked on with glee as the 30-year-old strongman steered his team to a 9.8 (62) to 7.15 (57) win and the Swans’ second VFL premiership.

As official AFL records show, Belcher’s dominance in the midfield lifted his teammates, and against all odds they snatched victory in the closing seconds via a Chris Laird soccer goal off the ground.

Writing in the Australasian, John Worrall, a champion footballer and Test cricketer turned journalist, described it as “the most remarkable victory ever witnessed in a grand final”. 

It was all part of a magnificent career for Belcher, who in 1996 was an inaugural inductee to the AFL Hall of Fame, and in 2003 was named in the back pocket in the Swans Team of the Century.

Born at Halls Track, near Launceston in Tasmania, Belcher had lived in Brunswick, which was Fitzroy territory, but had chosen to play for South because he had supported the club in his youth.

He rode his bike to Lake Oval to train and play in a career which spanned 226 games for South from 1907-20 and two games as Victorian captain in 1919.

He captained South from 1913-17 and again in 1920 after he had been stand-in captain in a 1912 semi-final against an Essendon side captained by his older brother Alan.

Not only were they the first brothers to be opposing captains but they were the first brothers to play on each other during the match.

The Belcher brothers played against each other in the 1912 grand final, when Charlie Ricketts returned from injury to lead the Swans.

Not until Hawthorn’s Bradley Hill and Fremantle’s Stephen Hill were opposed in the 2013 grand final did this unlikely event happen again.

Vic Belcher also coached South from 1914-17, and, after serving as a boundary umpire in the 1921 VFL grand final, coached Fitzroy from 1922-24 and 1926-27, including the club’s 1922 premiership.

The unforgettable 1918 grand final win gave Belcher his second premiership after he’d also played a key role in the ruck in the club’s first grand final win in 1909.

This made him South Melbourne’s first dual premiership player – an honour he would hold solo for 94 years until 2012, when Adam Goodes, Jude Bolton, Ryan O’Keefe and Lewis Roberts-Thomson each won their second flag.

South had trailed 2.5 to 4.9 at halftime in the 1918 grand final and 6.6 to 7.12 at the last change but levelled the scores when full forward Gerard Ryan kicked his third goal with little more than a minute to play.

In a frantic finish, Collingwood full forward Dick Lee marked within range of goal but passed to teammate Ern Lumsden directly in front.

As was often done at the time, Lumsden opted to use the place kick. He hit the ball perfectly, but it went just wide.

South swept the ball quickly to the other end and, in a goalsquare scrimmage, Laird somehow got his boot on a loose ball to decide the premiership.

It was almost the perfect season. South lost only one game. And but for unusual circumstances may have gone undefeated.

The club’s only defeat was to St Kilda in Round 4, when they were beaten at Junction Oval by five points. The Saints later finished fourth.

The match was played on Monday 3 June on the King’s Birthday holiday weekend after the players had spent the two previous days enjoying the hospitality of a club patron at his holiday home in the Dandenongs.

Champion South rover Mark Tandy later recalled in the South Melbourne Record that “some of the boys were wobbling at the knes when they walked from the St Kilda tram to the St Kilda oval”.

He added: “Fair dinkum, when some were dressed to go out on the field they had to be headed in the direction of the arena gate and given a shove-off. That they ever saw the game out was a miracle”.

The season had seen the competition return to something like normality, after the intervention of World War 1, and was played by eight teams over 14 rounds.

After South Melbourne, Melbourne, St Kilda, Essendon and Geelong had chosen to sit out the 1916 season due to the war, South and Geelong returned in 1917, and were joined by St Kilda and Essendon in 1918. Only Melbourne remained in recess.

Ironically, Howson, who had played a combined 204 VFA/VFL games for South from 1893-1908 and had been a member of the club’s inaugural VFL side in 1897, replaced Belcher as coach for his return to the red and white.

A member of South Melbourne’s losing grand final side in 1899, Howson had also played first-class cricket for Victoria in 1903.

Henry ‘Sonny’ Elms, a champion of South Melbourne’s VFA years, was appointed assistant coach by Howson, who chose champion wingman Jim Caldwell to replace Belcher as captain. Belcher was vice-captain.

After the unexpected Round 4 loss to St Kilda, South Melbourne rallied strongly in the second half of the season, and thumped the Saints by 50 points in the Round 11 re-match.

They finished three games clear on top of the ladder at the end of the home-and-away season with a 13-1 record, ahead of Collingwood (10-4), Carlton (8-6) and St Kilda (8-6).

Ryan had finished the home-and-away season second on the goal-kicking list with 32, three goals behind Carlton’s Ern Cowley. Laird (26), Ernie Barber (20) and Harold Robertson (18) gave South four in the top 10.

Collingwood eliminated St Kilda by nine points in the first semi-final, and, two weeks later, after heavy rain postponed the second semi-final for a week, South got the better of Carlton by five points due to late goals from Tom O’Halloran and Jack Doherty.

So, it was to be South and Collingwood in the grand final, with South having the right of challenge if they needed it.

South were hot premiership favourites, but were a much younger and less experienced side.

Caldwell, in his 138^th game, and 200-gamer Belcher were the only South players over 30, and the only players with more than 100 VFL games behind them.

They fielded six players who had debuted that year: O’Halloran, Laird, Barber, Jim Graham, Tammy Hynes and Chip Turner. Artie Wood, at 20, was the youngest member of side which boasted in total 879 games of experience and an average age of 25 years 76 days.

The Magpies were coached by the legendary Jock McHale, after whom the medal for the premiership coach was named. He was in the seventh year of what would be a staggering 38 years at the helm, stretching to 1949.

Percy Wilson was captain of the Collingwood side which had 1327 games of experience and was almost two years older in average age than South, with four players over 30 and six 100-gamers in Dick Lee (174), Les Hughes (174), Wilson (152), Jack Green (110), Alec Mitch (109) and Charlie Luxton (105).

Playing his 30^th game for the Magpies was 20-year-old Charlie Pannam, who later coached South from 1923-28 and was a playing coach in the last three years of his 142-game career.

Pannam was the son of Charlie Pannam Snr, a 1996 inductee to the AFL Hall of Fame.

A Greek immigrant who had played 193 games with Collingwood and Richmond from 1897-1908, Pannam Snr was a premiership player with Collingwood in 1902-03, Collingwood captain and VFL leading goal-kicker in 1905, and later the inaugural VFL captain of Richmond in 1907-08 and Richmond coach in 1912.

The family, which also included Collingwood premiership star Alby Pannam, shortened their original surname from Pannamopoulos soon after they arrived in Australia.

Pannam’s 108 games as South Melbourne coach remained a club record until bettered by Ian Stewart in 1981.

The 1918 South Melbourne premiership team was:

B: Jack Graham, Chip Turner, Vic Belcher (vc)
HB: Arthur Rademacher, Alan O’Donoghue, Bill Daly
C: Mark Tandy, Tammy Hynes, Artie Wood
HF: Jim Caldwell (c), Tom O’Halloran, Harold Robertson
F: Ernie Barber, Gerald Ryan, Chris Laird
R: Jack Howell, Phil Skehan, Jack Doherty.

The 1918 grand final was Belcher’s fifth grand final for the Swans. In addition to the 1909 and 1918 premierships he played in losing grand finals in 1907, 1912 and 1914.

Almost a century later that is still a club record he shares with Herbie Matthews and Laurie Nash, who were premiership players in 1933 before four losing grand finals in 1934, ’35, ’36 and ‘45.

But Belcher’s combined 200-game / premiership celebration is going to take some beating.

Among the thousands of AFL players only four others have tasted premiership success in their 200^th game. And remarkably, among this list is Sydney’s 2012 premiership coach John Longmire.

He played in a premiership in his 200^th and last game for North Melbourne in 1999.

Others to share this unique double celebration have been Carlton’s John Nicholls (1968), Hawthorn’s Don Scott (1976) and Essendon’s Garry Foulds (1984).

North Melbourne’s Craig Scholl played in a losing grand final in his 200^th game in 1998, and Brisbane’s Chris Scott, now the Geelong coach, did likewise in 2004.

Interestingly, John Blakely, Sydney’s current assistant coach and a 359-game player with Fitzroy and North Melbourne, played in a winning semi-final in his 200^th game with North and played his 299^th game in the 1999 grand final win alongside Longmire.

None of the AFL’s 82 players who have played 300 or 400 games have celebrated these milestones in a grand final.

St Kilda’s Robert Harvey was on track for a possible 300^th game grand final in 2004 but a qualifying final loss meant his triple century came in a losing preliminary final that year.

Essendon’s Dick Reynolds, like Blakey, played in a grand final win in his 299^th game in 1949, and Essendon’s Tim Watson played in a grand final win in his 298^th game in 1993.

Geelong’s Steve Hocking, the AFL’s General Manager Football Operations, played in a losing grand final in his 199^th and last game in 1994.