Peter Blucher writes this 'On this day' feature, a look back when the South Melbourne side ended a 29 game losing streak on July 7, 1973.

Saturday 7 July was just another day in the 1973 AFL season. It was Round 14 of a year in which Richmond would win the flag in the seniors, reserves and under 19s, the League began a two-year trial of a centre diamond before it was replaced by the centre square, and the game bid farewell to Hawthorn’s Glenferrie Oval as a senior venue.

An 18-year-old Craig Davis, later to end a five-year retirement to play for the Sydney Swans in 1988 at 33 and father 2005 Swans premiership hero Nick Davis, made his debut for Carlton in a loss to a North Melbourne side led by Keith Greig, who would go on to win the 1973-74 Brownlow Medals. Peter McKenna kicked six goals for Collingwood on his way to the Coleman Medal.

At Lake Oval bottom side South Melbourne beat second-bottom Geelong by 45 points in what undeniably was the least appealing of the weekend’s matches.

But if you had been living under a rock for 14 months and walked into the ground after about 4.40pm you could have been excused for thinking something very special had happened.

South coach Graeme John was trying to keep a proverbial lid on things but there was no stopping the celebrations. It was like the Swans had won a flag. Fans of all ages were crying and embracing each other as youngsters Brian Woodman, Ian Thomson, Stewart Gull, Barry Beecroft and Vic Aanensen took centre stage.

The five least experienced members of the South team had played a combined 64 games for the club on route to a collective 376 games in red and white, and if they did such a thing back then they would have been thrust into the middle of the players’ circle for the club song and given the greatest Gatorade shower of all-time.

It wasn’t just another Saturday afternoon at the footy. For Swans fans it was a moment that washed away the demons of 427 days and 29 games without a win.

They had not won since Round 6 1972, when they bettered North Melbourne by 15 points at Waverley on the back of a career-best five goals from Ricky Quade and a four-goal Swans debut from ex-Richmond premiership player Eric Moore.

It was the very first win for the five youngsters. Woodman had gone 0-18 after joining the club from Springvale. Thomson, from East Perth, and Beecroft, from Ormond, were 0-11. Gull, a boxer of some repute from North Ballarat and son of 1949-50 key forward Jim Gull, was 0-10. And Aanensen, a Port Melbourne ruckman later to win a spot in the Port Team of the Century, was 0-9.

If there could have been a special invite to the centre of the circle it would have gone to Norm Goss. He’d won his first game in Round 1 1972 only to lose his next 29 games after missing the Round 6 win in his debut season through injury.

Coach John, a 66-gamer with South Melbourne in the 1960’s and a 1966 All-Australian, was also celebrating his first win at the helm after taking over from the legendary Norm Smith.

South had kicked eight goals to lead by 30 points at quarter-time and were never headed. It was 32 points at halftime and after Geelong cut the deficit to 18 points at the last change the home side piled on 6-4 to 2-1 in the final term to win 18-15 (123) to 12-6 (78).

The stars were many. Jim Prentice kicked an equal career-high five goals, Bedford had 23 possessions and kicked three goals, and Hoffman a game-high 36 possessions and two goals. Greg Lambert had an equal career-high 31 possessions, Ricky Quade 30 and Goss 29. John Pitura (19 possessions two goals), Gull (18 possessions two goals) and Gary Brice (16 possessions two goals) were also important contributors.

But regardless of what the scoreboard or stats sheet said, there were 20 heroes in a win that touched everyone at the club and anyone with even a remote connection to Lake Oval.

It ended the club’s longest losing streak – almost double the previous worst of 14 games in 1938.

And it ended the fifth longest losing streak on an all-time AFL list headed by University, who lost 51 in a row before withdrawing from the League in 1914, and StKilda, who lost their first 48 games from the inauguration of the League in 1897. North Melbourne, new to the competition in 1925, had lost 33 in a row from 1930-32 and 35 in a row from 1933-35.

No less than 52 players had represented the Swans through the toughest of streaks, but there were only nine ‘survivors’ from the previous win in Round 6 1972.

Pitura, a controversial character who played 99 games for South from 1969-74 before being traded to Richmond for Graham Teasdale, Brian Roberts and Francis Jackson, had played 28 of the 29 losses. Reg Gleeson, who went on to play 128 games for the club, had endured 27 of the losses.

Prentice had endured 26 losses in a career that only stretched to 58 games, while Brownlow Medallist Bedford had played 25 of them and David McLeish, a 213-game Victorian representative later inducted into the Swans Hall of Fame, had played 23.

Quade, later to captain and coach the club, and Russell Cook, a 164-game Swan who had won the 1972 Bob Skilton Medal and represented Victoria in cricket, had been through 22 of the 29 losses, while Bruce Davis, who would play only one more game after the drought-breaking win over Geelong, had been part of 21.

The other ‘survivor’ to enjoy a long overdue win was 149-game Swan Steve Hoffman, who had endured 18 losses in a row.

Moore, who had loomed as a lucky charm after a starring role in his first-up win for the Swans, had played 17 more games for the club without another win and played his last game in Round 9 1973.

The 29-game losing streak had included 12 losses at Lake Oval, seven losses by more than 50 points and only two games decided by less than 10 points. The average losing margin through the horror stretch was 39.1 points, with Collingwood inflicting most pain. They were responsible for four losses overall, including two 70-pointers.

The streak included the 100^th games of Bedford, Cook and Haydn McAuliffe and saw no less than 18 Swans debutants, including identical twins Neville and Robert Stibbard and the five first-time winners in the drought-breaker - Woodman, Thomson, Gull, Beecroft and Aanensen.

Other debutants were Mick Plant, Wayne Ewin, Peter Kerr, Max Robertson, Graham Dempster, Greg Miller, Michael Norris, Geoff Craighead, Ted Obudinski, Russ Hodges and Gary Harley.

George Lakes, a 49-gamer at Melbourne, switched to South mid-way through 1972 to become the 1000^th player on the all-time Swans playing list. He retired later the same year after six games without a win.

The streak also saw the end of 14 other Swans careers. The first ‘out’ was Wayne Walsh, a 63-game Swan who quit the club four games into the streak to join Richmond mid-season.

Others to finish that year were Jim Wilkinson (10 games), Jim Haines (19), Garry Robertson (9), Kerr (1), Robert Hay (14), Russell McHenry (17), Plant (4), Trevor Carrodus (3), Lance Morton (12) and 28-gamer Neville Miller, whose son Brad later played 157 games for Richmond and Melbourne. Shane McKew (33) and Keith Baskin (75) followed while the streak was still alive in 1973.

But the streak wasn’t all bad news. Cook polled 10 votes to finish equal 18^th in the 1972 Brownlow Medal, and Bedford (11 votes) and Hoffman (10 votes) finished top 20 in 1973.

Along the way Hoffman posted a fine double of 20 possessions and a career-best six goals, and Bedford, who won the 1973 Skilton Medal, had one game of 31 possessions and five goals and another of 23 and five.

The consistent Goss had six games of 25-plus possessions in which he was also a multiple goal-kicker, and at a time when 30-possession games were rare Pitura had four, plus standout doubles of a 29 possessions and four goals, and 25 and five.

Seven days after the emotion-charged win over Geelong South Melbourne beat Footscray by 62 points at Western Oval by 62 points to get off the bottom of the ladder. Gull kicked five goals and Hoffman dominated with 33 possessions. Bedford had 17 ‘touches’ and kicked three goals, and Prentice, Quade and Lambert each 20+ and two goals.

With Bedford in blistering form they beat North Melbourne in Round 17 and Melbourne in Round 18, but it wasn’t enough to avoid the wooden-spoon after Geelong won three of their last five. Still, it finished a much better season than looked likely two-thirds of the way through.