There are countless great rivalries in world sport. Like boxing’s Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, Ferrari and McLaren in Formula One, or the old Ford and Holden battle at Bathurst.
Cricket’s Ashes battle between England and Australia is always special, like golf contests between Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus.
These and countless more have fuelled untold hours of debate among sports fans worldwide for decades.
Ask Sydney Swans fans about rivalries and there is every chance you’ll get a different answer today, to what it might have been 10 years ago.
For 30 years, all of NSW had been the Swans’ turf. They were the only AFL club in the state – the face of the biggest sport in the country in the most populated city.
It all changed nine years ago today, on Saturday, March 24, 2012, when the Sydney Swans and GWS met for the first time in official competition at Stadium Australia.
It was a battle between one of the oldest and proudest clubs in the AFL and the youngest club – and the birth of a genuinely fierce rivalry.
The first match between the Sydney Swans and GWS opened the 2012 season at the old Olympic Stadium – a standalone game five days ahead of the traditional first game between Richmond and Carlton.
The Swans, semi-finalists in 2011 in coach John Longmire’s first season at the helm and led by co-captains Adam Goodes and Jarrad McVeigh, made the trek out to Homebush with a largely settled combination. Harry Cunningham, pick #93 in the rookie draft just 14 weeks earlier, made his debut at 18, as a 32-year-old Goodes played his 301st game and a 41-year-old Longmire coached his 25th game.
The Giants, with 64-year-old Kevin Sheedy in his 635th game as a coach, were led by co-captains Phil Davis and Callan Ward after Luke Power, the third member of the captaincy unit, was ruled unfit. They had 17 AFL debutants.
From the moment Sydney Swans midfielder Kieren Jack scored a major 81 seconds into the first term of the first the Sydney Derby, it was all about us v them.
Sydney won 14.16 (100) to 5.7 (37) in front of a crowd of 38,203, with Josh Kennedy (27 possessions, two goals), Jack (30 possessions, one goal) and Shane Mumford (11 possessions, one goal and 35 hit-outs) picking up the Brownlow Medal votes.
Kennedy also won the inaugural Brett Kirk Medal as best afield on a night of sweet satisfaction for the ‘visitors’ as they stamped their mark on the ground.
After winning the first four meetings between the clubs and eight of the first nine Derbies, the Swans have a 12-7 lead overall in head-to-head results, having won the only battle between the clubs in the COVID season of 2020: 10.6 (66) to 3.7 (25).
Teams for the first Sydney Derby were:
SYDNEY SWANS
B: Nick Smith, Ted Richards, Nick Malceski
HB: Alex Johnson, Heath Grundy, Jarrad McVeigh
C: Lewis Jetta, Josh Kennedy, Dan Hannebery
HF: Jude Bolton, Lewis Roberts-Thomson, Craig Bird
F: Sam Reid, Adam Goodes, Ben McGlynn
R: Shane Mumford, Luke Parker, Kieren Jack
INT: Gary Rohan, Marty Mattner, Harry Cunningham, Andrejs Everitt
GWS
B: Tomas Bugg, Phil Davis, Tim Mohr
HB: Israel Folau, Adam Tomlinson, Jack Hombsch
C: Dylan Shiel, Stephen Coniglio, Rhys Palmer
HF: Will Hoskin-Elliot, Chad Cornes, Devon Smith
F: Toby Greene, Jeremy Cameron, Adam Kennedy
R: Jonathan Giles, Callan Ward, James McDonald
INT: Jacob Townsend, Curtley Hampton, Nathan Wilson, Dom Tyson
Umpires: Matt Stevic, Simon Meredith and Jacob Mollison.
The Sydney Swans also won the first derby played at the SCG on July 14, 2013 by a record 129 points. Craig Bird played his 100th game, Jarrad McVeigh (35), Dan Hanneberry (34) and Nick Malceski (30) led the possession count, Kurt Tippett, Mike Pyke, Jesse White and Tom Mitchell kicked three goals apiece, and the Brownlow votes went to McVeigh (3), Mitchell (2) and Malceski (1).
The Swans held bragging rights for 721 days until the Giants scored their first win over ‘big brother’ by 32 points in Sydney Derby #5 – the first played at the Sydney Showgrounds on March 15, 2014.
On that occasion Luke Parker (23), Rhyce Shaw (22) and Kennedy (22) had most possessions for the Swans, McGlynn was the club’s only multiple goal-kicker with two, and Lance Franklin and Jeremy Laidler played their first game in red and white.
The first Sydney Derby sell-out was the ninth overall at the Showgrounds, when Foxtel reported it was the second-highest rating twilight match of the entire 2016 season.
The first meeting between the clubs in a final was the 2016 qualifying final at Stadium Australia. The Giants won by 36 points.
Sydney’s score of 24.27 (171) in the fourth meeting in Round 16, 2013 remains the highest score in a Sydney Derby, and their 129-point margin in the same game the only triple-figure result.
The GWS derby score last year at the unlikely venue of Perth Stadium is the lowest in games between the clubs. The 2016 finals crowd of 60,222 is the biggest to watch a Sydney Derby live.
Sixteen Swans have never played in a Sydney Derby: trade recruit Tom Hickey, draftees Logan McDonald, Braeden Campbell, Errol Gulden, Marc Sheather and Malachy Carruthers, along with Joel Amartey, Kaiden Brand, Sam Gray, Matthew Ling, Justin McInerney, Hayden McLean, Lewis Taylor, Sam Wicks, Will Gould and Barry O’Connor.
