An arrest, the Rat Pack and a speech that brought the house down: Swan quips his way into Pies’ hall of fame

3 months ago 22

Dane Swan wasn’t sure he deserved to be in the Collingwood Hall of Fame. He thinks he bullied the Magpies into it with his amusing acceptance speech at the Australian Football Hall of Fame a year ago.

But they can’t take it back now, he said after his induction on Wednesday night. Besides, the Collingwood Hall of Fame meant more to him than the national version, as the club is family and the AFL is, well, the AFL. The club’s hall of fame, he said, was like being told by your parents that they were proud of you.

Dane Swan at his induction into Collingwood’s Hall of Fame on Wednesday night.

“This is the club that gave me a chance – probably gave me a lot of chances – but they did,” said Swan, who was inducted alongside legendary premiership coach Leigh Matthews and Ross “Twiggy” Dunne, who famously kicked the goal that tied the 1977 grand final (the Pies lost the next week).

“I probably bullied them in my AFL speech [last year when he said it was good to be in the Australian Football Hall of Fame given his own club didn’t rate him enough to have him in theirs]. Now, I don’t know if I earned it or not or if they succumbed to peer pressure, but I will take it. They can’t take it back.

“I came along thinking it was all going to be about me and f---in’ Leigh Matthews is in it. I still can’t take a break, I am not even the main event. I will be in Leigh’s shadow tonight which is probably fair enough.”

His warmth for Matthews was evident, saying that he enjoyed his TV commentary when, in 2010, he said Swan had gone past Gary Ablett jnr as the best player in the competition.

The great Leigh Matthews, who was inducted into the Magpies’ hall of fame.

“Which we all know is complete bullshit, was a complete lie – I went past him in about 2008 –but we all knew that was a lie.”

There was a sense of Spike Milligan about Swan on Wednesday night.

Milligan famously accepted a lifetime achievement award at the British Comedy awards by saying, “About bloody time … I’m not going to thank anybody because I did it all on my own.”

Read a letter of praise from Prince Charles he dismissed the now King as “the little grovelling bastard”.

Swan was as gloriously irreverent as Spike. He mentioned his family and kids but added that they don’t get any thanks because they weren’t around when he played. Besides, he loves them, “but I don’t necessarily like them all the time”.

He thanked his teammates, but “they rode on my coat-tails, so I probably don’t need to thank them”.

Swan makes a most entertaining after-dinner speaker and interviewee in football. Self-deprecating and dry, he thanked the fans for their support, “although there are no fans here, we all know it’s just rich people and players” in the room. The rich people and players guffawed loudly.

“The love I received from the fans, and I guess as a ‘Rat Pack’ we did, clearly you made me bigger than what I was or what I am. So I thank you for that,” he said.

Dane Swan and Alan Didak celebrate the club’s 2010 premiership.

And this is the nub of Swan. An outrageously good footballer in his peak years from 2007 or 2008 until his retirement, he was just outrageous in his early years.

He described himself as a kid who was as surprised as anyone to find himself on an AFL list.

“I got dropped halfway through the year I got drafted for having a poor attitude which may shock some people, then I played three good games, and they drafted me off the back of that,” he said.

“I have a got some wonderful memories from those first four years [in the AFL] but none of them have got anything to do with football. They are all hazy now – I was pretty good off the field.

“Obviously, the best thing that happened to me in the AFL was – and it’s not for everyone, but it obviously worked for me – I went out and got arrested.”

Yeah, it’s probably not for everyone. But it was the moment that prompted a new commitment in his career. He did enough at a time when the club was bottoming out and playing kids that meant he was given another chance. Had it not been for his arrest on assault charges in 2003 and changing his ways, his career would have been finished that year.

“I got 50 games I didn’t deserve. Mick [Malthouse] was extremely hard on me; in those team meetings he used to say some pretty mean stuff and say some personal stuff I didn’t even know about myself. I thought, ‘Someone is going to have to tell my parents, I don’t know what’s happened here’.”

The club didn’t need to be bullied to include Swan in the Hall of Fame. His Brownlow Medal, his premiership and his matchwinning ability made certain of his inclusion. Matthews was not far wrong in that for a period, he was among the best in the competition.

“Obviously, the best thing that happened to me in the AFL was – and it’s not for everyone, but it obviously worked for me – I went out and got arrested.”

Dane Swan

But that was not the reason for the warmth for Swan as an inductee. He was the everyman who played unlike the everyman. He was tattooed – he said that helped his mystique – and was not so wound up in the self-importance of the AFL as to be unable to laugh at it, and himself.

His most telling comment was that he never wanted to be the best footballer he could be, he wanted to have the best life he could have. He understood work-life balance in football before it was a thing.

He was also a ringmaster. He was a leader of a group of similarly talented players – Alan Didak, Ben Johnson, Chris Tarrant – with a similar thirst for life after hours.

“I hope one day the Rat Pack get put in here as a group,” he said, to loud laughter. “You’re laughing but I’m serious.

“I certainly wasn’t on the Men For All Seasons calendars, I wasn’t built like that. We’re just normal everyday guys who just happened to play on the MCG, we’re out doing whatever else is doing..”

This relatability is the reason he can upstage even Matthews on this night, a football icon who has homes everywhere and nowhere, having been the player of the century at Hawthorn, coached flags at Collingwood and against them at the Brisbane Lions, but loves them all in different ways.

Collingwood were the perfect fit for Swan.

This is a club of Tony Shaw and Lou Richards. A club where a member of the original Magpie Rat Pack now runs the club. Before there was Swan, Didak, Johnson and Shaw, there was Craig Kelly, Denis Banks, Mick McGuane and, of course, Darren Millane. Kelly is now the CEO.

Dane Swan was a footy character who was beloved by the fans.

The club embraced their past this night by opening a new Hall of Fame section in the rebuilt museum. It includes Millane’s locker from the Victoria Park change rooms. It’s sparseness, sitting alone in the room, adds to the poignancy of recognising the premiership player who died in a car accident in his prime.

Swan isn’t really the person to do regret, but if he did, it would be that his close mate Chris Tarrant never got to win a flag.

“He’s the one, he is one of my best mates. He’s spewing he didn’t get to celebrate a premiership with us. That’s the one regret that I have playing footy.”

Swan also doesn’t dwell on the past, reflect on his medals or plaudits, but retirement and going to the football gives him a fresh perspective on his career.

“It was only when I started going to the footy, and you see 100,000 people going mad at the MCG. You think, ‘F---, I was out there once. A lot people were doing that for me’.”

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