Finally, Bob Skilton got to hold a premiership flag.

It was Sunday 9 April 2006, 15 years ago today. Skilton was the sentimental face of the Sydney Swans’ unfurling of the drought-breaking 2005 premiership win.

The flag, the prize from the grand final win that ended 72 years of football heartache for Swans fans, was unfurled ahead of the Round 2 clash with Port Adelaide at the SCG.

Skilton, the greatest Swan of all-time, declared it the best day of his football life as he joined a troupe of ex-players and a wide-ranging bunch of Swans people in parading the pennant around the SCG.

Susie Colless, wife of club chairman Richard Colless, followed the time honoured VFL/AFL tradition of unfurling the flag after Colless had thanked the club's new supporters from NSW and the diehards from Melbourne who had waited a lifetime for a premiership.

"This surely is the people's flag," said Colless, speaking 25 years after South Melbourne had moved to the Harbour City and embraced what had been until then an AFL outpost.

It was a day to behold after newly-retired grand final hero Jason Ball brought the premiership cup onto the ground on the back of a ute.

Skilton was positively overjoyed. Having never played in a grand final, this was the next best  thing for the three-time Brownlow Medallist, nine-time Swans club champion, AFL Team of the Century rover and AFL Hall of Fame legend.

He was joined in an Olympic-flag style relay around the SCG by some of the pioneers who had moved with the club to Sydney in 1982 - Barry Round, Dennis Carroll, Mark Browning, Tony Morwood, Ricky Quade and Rod Carter.

Also part of the ceremony was Warwick Capper, the one-time Mulgrave battler in suburban Melbourne who had moved north in the club’s second year in the Harbour City.

After parading the flag around the SCG in the blazing autumn sun Skilton handed it over to be raised on a specially erected flag pole at the top of the Paul Kelly Race.

David Murphy, a Wagga boy who played through the 1980s-90s and was a member of the Swans Team of the Century, said at the time the celebration finally made the premiership real.

"It was very emotional," Murphy said. "I couldn't really believe it had happened, that we had won the premiership. Now I do."

The club also made a point of involving long-term supporters, members and sponsors.

The emotion got the better of two of the club's most loyal, with Andrew McMaster and Geoff Polites shedding a tear as they, too, had a hand in taking the flag around the ground.

Colless said the premiership was a tribute to the "passion, resilience and loyalty of our supporters over the last 72 years".

"The unfurling of the flag on the scared turf of the SCG is a special achievement for you, our Sydney and NSW supporters who are fantastic," he said. "We couldn't have gone on without you, let alone win."

Carter, a 217-game Swan who had joined South Melbourne in 1980 after six years and 76 games at Fitzroy, spoke for the collective player group when he described the premiership as ‘the icing on the cake’.

"We really really did it tough. For the blokes who had faith and didn't leave the club and stuck through the hard times, it's really been fantastic. This is a great day,” he said.

The Swans team on this unforgettable day was as it had been eight days earlier in Round 1, with three changes to the 2005 grand final side. The retired Ball and the injured Paul Bevan and Tadhg Kennelly had been replaced by off-season recruits Ted Richards and Paul Champions plus a young Jarrad McVeigh.

Coming off a 27-point loss to Essendon a week earlier, the Swans kicked the first two goals inside four minutes via Michael O’Loughlin.

They conceded 13 of the next 15 goals and after being 50 points down at three-quarter time they lost 11.14 (80) to 15.16 (106) in what was the 50^th game for Lewis Roberts-Thomson and Amon Buchanan.

But for once it didn’t matter quite so much. The game was secondary.

Happily, coach Paul Roos, co-captains Barry Hall, Brett Kirk and Leo Barry and their men broke through for a win in Round 3 and ultimately made their way back to the big stage for a grand final re-match with West Coast, but at the time none of what followed had really mattered. This was all about the flag and the cup.