Dane Swan is an all-time Collingwood fan favourite, and one of the great midfielders of the past 50 years. He won a Brownlow Medal, three Copeland Trophies, five All-Australians, a Premiership and countless other gongs along the way. And he remains one of the game’s great characters: an unconventional footballer who did everything in his own unique way.
Now he’s also become the latest Magpie to be inducted into the Australian Football Hall of Fame.
Swannie’s ascension was announced at the AFL’s annual Hall of Fame dinner on Tuesday night. That announcement marked the culmination of one of football’s most remarkable journeys.
Taken from the Calder Canons at a lowly pick 58 in the 2001 National Draft, Swan was always considered a long shot in terms of being able to sustain a lengthy AFL career. Nobody doubted his ability (his Dad, Billy, had been a legend in the VFA and won the Liston Trophy) but there were serious question marks about his willingness to commit to the demands of being an AFL footballer. He simply enjoyed life away from football too much at times.
There were times when it looked as if the early gloomy predictions about his AFL prospects might prove correct. He played only 30 games in his first four seasons and struggled to have much of an impact. But a couple of things saved him. The first was some tough love and heart-to-heart talks with then coach Mick Malthouse, and later with teammates such as Ben Johnson and Chris Tarrant. And the other was his own innate ability to keep finding the football.
The game has known few more prolific midfielders. Even while he was still finding his feet in the game, he could always find the footy. He was an old-fashioned footballer who just knew how to get the footy, and what to do with it. He never looked pretty, and he was never the classic AFL-system athlete, but boy he was effective.
The key to his game, apart from his footy smarts and knowhow, was his running. He just never stopped. If someone tried to tag him, he would just outrun and outwork them. In contests he was nigh on unstoppable, his combination of barrel-chested strength and speed proving an irresistible force.
His kicking never looked stylish, and had been considered a real weakness before he was drafted. But he was actually an elite user of the ball – it just didn’t look that way. And he was super dangerous around goals.
He was never the Scott Pendlebury type when it came to preparing for games. That just wasn’t Swanny’s way. But he somehow still found a way to deliver the goods every match day. He and Pendles became a kind of ‘odd couple’ in the Magpie midfield, powering the Pies through the glory years around 2010.
This was Swanny at his peak. Between 2009-12 he was arguably the best midfielder in the game. He averaged over 30 possessions a game in those years and never played a bad one. He won just about every award there was to win in the Premiership year of 2010. The only one he missed out on was the Brownlow: he finished third after starting as favourite, and won it the next year anyway.
But even more than the stats and awards and achievements, the lasting memory of Dane Swan – and the thing that elevated his standing with the Magpie Army even further – was his approach to football, and to life. Part of the fabled ‘Rat Pack’, alongside teammates like Johnson, Tarrant, Heath Shaw, Dale Thomas and Alan Didak, Swannie seemed to epitomise an earlier era where it was still possible to play football and enjoy life away from it.
He was a larrikin, no doubt, and he loved the company of his mates. He was also supremely quick with his one-liners, and became hilariously dry and funny media talent. He didn’t seem to take things too seriously, and we loved him for that (even though he took his football performances way more seriously than he let on).
Towards the end of his career, there were signs that he might develop into a dangerous forward. But he shattered his foot in the opening round of 2016, and we never got the chance to find out.
By then he’d already put together a career that must have seemed almost unimaginable to those who had drafted him as a scruffy kid with questionable work ethic back in 2001. Dane Swan did it all, and won it all. And he did it his way.
Career summary (2003 - 2016)
- Games: 258
- Goals: 211
- First game: Round 13, 2003
- Last game: Round 1, 2016
- Average possessions: 26.9 (second highest of all retired players)
- Most possessions in a game: 49 (v Hawthorn 2012), 48 (v Port Adelaide 2009)
- Brownlow votes: 186 (14th highest of all time)
Awards
- Brownlow Medal 2011
- Copeland Trophy 2008, 2009, 2010
- R T Rush Trophy (runner-up) 2011, 20123, 2015
- J J Joyce Trophy (third) 2012
- Best Finals Player 2008, 2010, 2013
- Anzac Day Medal 2012, 2014
- All-Australian 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013
- Leigh Matthews Trophy (AFLPA) 2010
- AFLCA Champion Player 2010
Collingwood’s Australian Football Hall of Fame Members
LEGENDS
Gordon Coventry
Jock McHale
INDUCTEES
Dermott Brereton
Gavin Brown
Nathan Buckley
Albert Collier
Harry Collier
Syd Coventry
Peter Daicos
Len Fitzgerald
Des Fothergill
Brad Hardie
Phone Kyne
Dick Lee
Peter McKenna
Dan Minogue
Peter Moore
Charlie Pannam
Greg Phillips
Jack Regan
Lou Richards
Wayne Richardson
Bob Rose
Tony Shaw
Michael Taylor
Len Thompson
Ron Todd
Des Tuddenham
Murray Weideman
Mark Williams
Coaches
John Cahill
Tom Hafey
Mick Malthouse
Administrators
Bruce Andrew
Jack Hamilton
