Craig Holden is someone who has made an impact both on and off the field at the Sydney Swans.
He arrived at the club from North Melbourne for the 1984 season and went on to play 80 games in red and white over five seasons.
While playing, Craig worked as a development officer and built a wonderful understanding of the game’s grassroots in Sydney and broader New South Wales.
That passion came to fore when Craig returned to the Swans and for many years led the Team Swans community program, connecting Sydney Swans players with schools and grassroots clubs.
For 26 years he was a highly valued member of the football department assisting across numerous areas and was recognised as Life Member in 2006.
AN INTERESTING DRAFT STORY
There is a little known and often forgotten chapter in the history of the AFL Draft that holds a special place in Sydney Swans history – especially for this much-loved Swans man.
In 1981-82, before the draft as it is known today was introduced in 1986, the Swans drafted three future South Australian Football Hall of Famers and another star of the SANFL.
Mark Naley, Peter Motley, Greg Anderson and Phil Brooksby were claimed by club under a system whereby in 1981 and 1982 each of 12 Victorian-based clubs could draft two interstate players.
In 1981, armed with picks #4 and #16, South Melbourne claimed South Adelaide pair Naley and Brooksby. And in 1982, having moved to the Harbour City, Sydney used picks #6 and #18 to claim Sturt’s Motley and Port Adelaide’s Anderson.
It was all for nothing. The star-studded SA foursome did not play a game for the club.
But there was a golden off-shoot to a period that rarely rates a mention in draft history yet indirectly and quite amazingly delivered the Swans a loyal servant of more than 30 years.
In 1981 North Melbourne used pick #5 to draft 24-year-old Craig Holden from WAFL club Swan Districts in a move which, although not exactly a windfall for the Kangaroos, turned into gold for the Swans.
Holden, a 98-game Swan Districts star and WA State representative later chosen in the Swan Districts Team of the Century, played 29 games for North Melbourne from 1982-83 before moving north in 1984 to begin a life-time association with the Sydney Swans.
“I was a bit disenchanted in Melbourne, more with the city itself than the club,” Holden said.
“I was in negotiations with Ron Joseph to extend my contract when Ron left, and I wasn’t quite comfortable with how things sat after that.
“I always loved Sydney so at the end of the season I told (coach) Barry Cable I was going on an east coast road trip. I told him I was going to miss pre-season and he said ‘that’s OK – I trust you’ so off I went.
“When I got to Sydney, I saw an advertisement in The Australian for a development officer with the NSWAFL out at Campbelltown. I didn’t even know where Campbelltown was, but I applied and sent a letter to North saying I wouldn’t be back. I’d retired.
“In January I got a call from John Dugdale at North asking why I wasn’t at training. I told him about the letter I’d sent to the Board of Directors, but because the Board didn’t meet until the end of the month, they hadn’t seen it.
“It was all good and then John told me he’d heard Sydney were interested in recruiting me. I said ‘great, do the deal and get some (transfer) money for me’. Thirty seconds later Greg Miller (Swans recruiting officer) rang and not long after I became a Sydney player.”
Holden would go on to play under five coaches during his time with the Swans – including three different coaches in three weeks in his first season with the club in 1984.
In an odd chain of events that make for a compelling trivia question, he played under Ricky Quade in his last game as Swans coach in Round 13, Tony Franklin in his only game as interim coach in Round 14, and Bob Hammond in the first of his eight games as caretaker coach in Round 15.
It was a time Holden remembers fondly. He picked up his first Brownlow Medal vote in Round 15, when he had a team-high 29 possessions and kicked a goal and added his second and last Brownlow vote in Round 16, when he had a career-best 30 possessions.
In an eventful first season in red and white he also played State of Origin for WA against Victoria in the match in which an up-and-coming Gary Ablett Sr kicked eight goals for the Big V to announce himself as an emerging superstar.
“Originally it looked like I was going to play on him but at the last minute there was a switch and Phil Cronin got Ablett and I took Wayne Johnston,” Holden recalled, with a sound of relief. “Ablett was extraordinary that day.”
Holden played for Australia in the inaugural three-match International Rules series in 1984 against Ireland in Ireland, in a side which included Swans teammate David Ackerly, future Swans teammate Gerard Healy (then playing with Melbourne), and a 20-year-old Motley, then playing with SANFL club Sturt. The Australians won the series 2-1.
It was team chosen on performance at State of Origin level and Australian coach John Todd, who had coached Holden at Swan Districts in Perth, was quick to call him into the side after Carlton’s Wayne Johnston was a late withdrawal.
Holden, who wore the #22 guernsey that is now the property of Nick Blakey, also remembers fondly the 1986-87 campaigns under Tom Hafey, when the high-flying Swans became the high-scoring pin-up team of the competition.
In Round 18, 1987 Holden celebrated his 100th game, when Sydney beat Richmond 31.12 (198) to 15.17 (107) at the SCG after they’d kicked consecutive scores of 200-plus against West Coast and Essendon in Rounds 16-17.
But, ever a team-first man, he remembered more fondly two more traditional wins over heavyweights Carlton and Hawthorn at the SCG in Rounds 6-7. “It was about then we thought we could do something of real significance but unfortunately it didn’t quite happen,” he said.
Holden also was picked in the post-carnival All-Australian side in 1987 with Healy and fellow Sydney teammates Greg Williams and Bernard Toohey, plus Naley, then playing at Carlton.
But after a proposed tour game in Los Angeles was cancelled due to a massive earthquake, the Swans played Melbourne in an off-season match indoor in Vancouver in front of a crowd of 35,000 on Astroturf, which he said felt like matting on concrete.
He admits he was “pretty much cooked” in 1988 and after his last AFL game in Round 20 on his 31st birthday he spent a year and a half travelling around Europe before setting up a clothing company with partner Melissa.
In 1993, the stars aligned when Ron Joseph, who had recruited Holden to North Melbourne in 1981, took over as Sydney Swans CEO. One of the first calls Joseph made was to his young prodigy.
Holden’s first job back at the club was as runner for a Reserves side coached by Dennis Carroll. He graduated to senior runner under Ron Barassi in 1995, and when Kelvin Templeton became CEO in 1996, he appointed Holden the club’s first player welfare manager.
It was a role he filled for 18 months and saw the birth of the much-admired ‘Team Swans’ program.
“Most of the players were part-time footballers back then and we had 8-10 guys like Matthew Nicks, Mick O’Loughlin, Shannon Grant, Troy Cook, Brett Kirk, Simon Arnott, Jared Crouch and Ryan Fitzgerald working 20 hours a week to engage with the community and the local schools,” he explained.
Holden had never forgotten the learnings from his early years in Sydney and was committed to building the same off-field culture, which he found and enjoyed so much when he joined the club.
“There’s a lot said in the modern era about the Bloods culture and that’s got to come from somewhere. The way I was embraced when I joined the club in 1982-83 was outstanding,” he said.
“The playing group back then had all sorts of challenges, but they took on a collective responsibility for the greater good of the club and the game. It was very powerful, and we’ve tried to carry that through.”
Holden later filled a role managing the enormous off-field demands of the players and their responsibilities to other club departments, was heavily involved in opposition analysis and later was appointed Team Manager and took charge of the NEAFL program.
Through it all he and Melissa raised three now adult and career-conscious children who are spread far and wide – one in New York, one in New Zealand and one in Sydney.
With no grandchildren to dote over yet, Holden is helping out with the clothing business called ‘Jiva’ in Paddington while deciding what might command his focus in years ahead.
Whatever he chooses he will forever be remembered as a great Swans man who played a key role in the challenging market of the NSW capital after an unlikely entry to the AFL via what he aptly called “the forgotten drafts”.
