Brisbane Lions CEO Greg Swann opens up on 25-year AFL journey at multiple clubs
Brisbane CEO Greg Swann has seen a lot in his 25 years in the industry. He opens up about telling Eddie McGuire he was leaving the Pies for the Blues, living with two Magpies stars and more.
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Eighteen years after Greg Swann was parachuted in to wind up Fitzroy and help seal its merger with the Brisbane Bears, he was sent north at the behest of the AFL to save the club a second time.
The irony is not lost on the Brisbane Lions CEO, who last month marked 10 years at the club he had a hand in creating way back in 1996 and would later lead out of the doldrums.
Even before he became one of the most powerful men in footy as CEO of Collingwood and then Carlton, Swann’s AFL legacy was written into history when the young chartered accountant helped spearhead the Fitzroy-Brisbane merger.
“I was at Ernst & Young when we were appointed receivers … I ran the club for the last six months,” recalls Swann, as he tucks into a toastie and hot chocolate at a small cafe not far from the Gabba.
“That was sad, to be honest. Being involved in something like that, with a club being wound up.
“One minute we were merging with North Melbourne and a day later that unravels and we’re merging with Brisbane. It’s ironic then that I ended up here.”
The intricacies of that infamous day in July of 1996 have been debated for the better part of three decades.
Ultimately, the North-Fitzroy merger was vetoed by rival clubs, with a cashed-up Brisbane coming late to the party and sealing the deal.
“We had a celebratory drink in the Ernst & Young boardroom with North Melbourne celebrating the merger and then the next morning I get a call to say the merger is off, clubs have voted against it and the Brisbane hierarchy will be around in half an hour.
“I’m not sure the North blokes were that happy about it.
“As a receiver … you have to do the right thing, the best thing by the creditors, and if I remember rightly Brisbane offered more than North had. Either way, you had to take that deal.”
Swann thought then he had washed his hands of Fitzroy and Brisbane. Little did he know the footy gods had other ideas.
But his move north would not come until 2014, and only after the accountant-turned-administrator presided over the two biggest clubs in the land.
His arrival at Collingwood came when the club was at its lowest point. The Magpies were still reeling from a wooden spoon-winning season and Swann was fresh-faced to the AFL world, having previously sat as president of Williamstown and on the Board of Football Victoria.
By the end of his fourth season in charge, the club had contested consecutive grand finals.
“Looking back on it, breaking your teeth at Collingwood was pretty big when you’re a relatively young bloke getting your first job in the AFL.
“We had a great group in those days. Eddie (McGuire) was the president and Mick (Malthouse) was the coach. We started from the bottom and got into those grand finals and just ran into a super team.
“They were the good days. Great days, actually.”
That super team? The Brisbane Lions. The one he helped create only a few years earlier.
Three times the Lions and Magpies have met on the final Saturday in September and on each occasion, Swann has been on the wrong side of history.
One of the only things he is yet to achieve over 25 years in the AFL is a premiership – something he hopes can be rectified next month.
“Obviously the highlights are playing in grand finals. Ironically two with Collingwood when Brisbane beat us and one with Brisbane when Collingwood beat us. That’s a bit weird.”
The Magpies might not have tasted the ultimate success under Swann’s stewardship, but the foundations he set over seven seasons were crucial to the drought-breaking flag in 2010.
In 2004, he helped oversee the move from Victoria Park to Olympic Park and the construction of the Lexus Centre.
At the end of 2005, his family boarded two first-rounders by the names of Scott Pendlebury and Dale Thomas.
It wasn’t the first time the Swanns had opened their home to draftees – but it was almost the last.
“We had a couple of guys early doors who were first round picks but didn’t play many games. So we went off to the draft again and my kids, who were young at the time, said, ‘Can we at least get some good players, dad?’
“So we drafted Daisy Thomas and Scott Pendlebury and when we were talking about where they might live, I said we would take them both: ‘Surely at least one of them will be OK.’
“They were both from Gippsland Power and my wife was from Gippsland, so there were some ties there.
“They were like they are now. (Thomas) didn’t sit down much. He was out there playing basketball and always high energy. Pendles was pretty methodical; well thought out and very respectful.
“They were great. We used to have a little cabana thing out the back so they just lived out there, they had their own space.”
Fair to say, the Swann kids got their wish.
Thomas would go on to play 258 AFL games with Collingwood and Carlton. Incredibly, Pendlebury will run out for game 402 on Saturday at the MCG against Swann’s Lions.
“Daisy once said to me, ‘He could be in a phone box this bloke and you still can’t tackle him. He’s untackle-able.’ This is when they were 18,” says Swann on Pendlebury.
“He was a pro, even as a kid. I think he gets undersold about how competitive he is.
“I went to his 400th game and just sat in the crowd with the punters. What a fantastic achievement. He’s been an ornament to the game.
“It was (Collingwood recruiter) Derek Hine’s first draft. They were two pretty good picks I would say.
“They were early picks but even at the time Pendles … not everyone had him as high as No. 5, so when we picked him there was a bit of, ‘Oh, but he’s a basketballer’.
“For his (Hine’s) first draft, I’d say that was a pretty good pick.”
Pendlebury and Thomas would go on to lift the premiership cup in 2010. By then, Swann was persona non grata at Collingwood.
Well, not quite. But his shock defection to Carlton in 2007 was about as sacrilegious as they came.
Having watched him restore Collingwood as an AFL powerhouse, Carlton came calling asking Swann if he could do the same.
“Seven years at Collingwood … it was probably the right time for a new challenge. (Then-Carlton president) Richard Pratt rang me and said, ‘Do you think you could do it again?’ And off I went.”
Of all the anecdotes over two-and-a-half decades in the game, the memory that stays with Swann the most is of the day he flew to the Channel 9 offices in Sydney to tell McGuire he was jumping ship to the Blues.
“I got to his office … he was on the phone. I’d sort of rehearsed what I was going to say and how I would broach it, but he seemed to be on the phone for half an hour. It was a robust discussion.
“Anyway he finally finished and came around his desk. He said, ‘Don’t tell me, someone has been done for drugs’ and I just sort of blurted out, ‘No it’s worse than that, I’m going to Carlton’.
“And if you know Ed, you know he genuinely hates Carlton.”
He and McGuire can laugh about it now but at the time, Swann wasn’t sure what the fallout would be.
“We had a good chat about the reasons why. It was really just about the challenge. We were going pretty well at Collingwood then, pretty solid on and off the field and Carlton wasn’t doing great.
“We had a bit of a hug at the end.
“So I got in the cab and was heading back to the airport when Ed rang. At the time Daisy Thomas was still at my house. ‘What are we going to do about Thomas? He has to get out of your house’. I said, ‘Ed, I’m not going to poison him. Eventually he’ll have to go somewhere else, but we’ll sort it out’.
“He got a bit fired up about that, but we were good. We’re still great mates now. We probably had a year or two there where we were a bit stand-offish, but we’re OK now.”
In March 2007, Swann replaced Michael Malouf as Carlton CEO.
The Blues had finished bottom of the table in consecutive seasons, winning seven of 44 games.
The fix wasn’t immediate. They won just four games in his first season at the helm. But the Blues steadily improved year-on-year and would go on to break a seven-year finals drought in 2009.
It was the first of four September forays over Swann’s seven seasons in charge.
During that period the club bolstered its membership base, redeveloped its training facility at Princes Park, brought in a swath of major stakeholders and a certain superstar player by the name of Chris Judd.
If nothing else, Swann’s Carlton legacy will forever be his hand in getting Judd to the Blues.
In a four-way race between Carlton, Collingwood, Essendon and Melbourne, Swann was one of the key architects in Judd’s arrival at Princes Park.
Still in just his first season in charge, the Carlton CEO turned up to Judd’s home one Sunday morning and convinced the superstar Eagle to forgo the pomp and circumstance at Collingwood for the Blues’ rebuild.
Twelve months earlier he had been pitching it in reverse for the Magpies only this time, the message stuck.
“He was easily the best player in the comp. The week he signed we ended up with 10,000 new members, it was huge,” Swann recalls.
“People will talk about the trade forever. Yeah, we did lose Josh Kennedy, who lasted longer than Juddy. But at the time he really made a huge difference to the standing of the club. For him to come gave us the credibility we hadn’t had for a while.
“I remember playing a final against Richmond, 96,000 there, and I think we were 28 points down at halftime. Juddy put on a clinic. How do you put a value on that? He won the game off his own boot in the second half. It was probably one of the more amazing days I’ve had at the footy.
“He was great in attracting new sponsors as well. We’d roll him out to meet people at Mars and all that sort of stuff. He paid his way for sure.”
Swann stepped down in June of 2014, at the same time as president Stephen Kernahan. Just 32 days later, he was unveiled as Brisbane CEO.
Swings and roundabouts.
“The CEO job at the VRC (Victorian Racing Club) came up and I was a bit keen on that. But it got delayed and delayed,” Swann said.
“Gil (McLachlan) had just taken over as AFL CEO. He rang me, told me to bring half-a-dozen stubbies and come around for a chat. He said, ‘I want you to go to Brisbane’.
“Anyway, the rest is history. I came up and I’ve loved it. I’ve lasted 10 years.”
He had dragged the two biggest clubs in the country out of their darkest depths but nothing could prepare Swann for what awaited him in Brisbane.
“The first night I started working here I put the radio on and there was nothing. No footy,” he recalled.
“The club was struggling on and off but I did say to the staff, I remembered coming up here when it was the ‘Gabbatoir’, when I was at Collingwood. I had seen this place when it was rocking, when it was packed and the crowd was loud.
“We were at a pretty low ebb but that was the messaging. We can get back there, we just have to make some good decisions and get some good people involved.”
Having spent seven years at Collingwood and another seven at Carlton, he never anticipated outdoing both stints in Brisbane – at least not initially.
“I’ll give my wife Leonie credit for that. When we came up she was adamant we would do it properly. She thought if we kept our house in Melbourne it would be too easy to go home. So we sold everything and bought up here – it was probably an indicator that we weren’t just here for the short term, that we were all-in.”
Like at Collingwood and Carlton, the Brisbane revival began as a slow burn. It wasn’t until his sixth season in charge – 2019 – that the Lions returned to finals footy, where they have remained a feature ever since.
Along the way there was the sacking of Justin Leppitsch, which Swann had previously labelled one of the toughest decisions he had been party to but preferred not to discuss this time around.
From the ashes of that 2016 season came the signing of Chris Fagan, who Swann proudly says is among the best decisions he has been involved in.
“When I rang Fages I didn’t really know him – we didn’t know each other well.
“Before I’d even asked the question he said, ‘I’m a coach you know’ and I said, ‘Glad to hear that, because that’s what I’m ringing you for. Would you like to apply for the job?’
“What he’s done for this footy club is amazing.”
Under their steadying hand the Lions went from perennial underperformers to premiership contenders. Since 2019, no team has won more games than the boys in maroon, blue and gold.
“You don’t do that by fluke,” says Swann.
“He’s a great bloke, he’s a fantastic coach, and he has great relationships with players. The ability for us to attract players is because of him.
“Dom Ambrosio has done a fantastic job in getting people interested, but it’s always Fages who comes in to finish it off, whether it’s Lachie Neale, Lincoln McCarthy, Joe Daniher, Luke Hodge, Charlie Cameron – all those blokes came to Brisbane because of Chris Fagan.
“There was no panic about our start (to the 2024 season). We knew we had to correct a few things and off we would go – and we have.
“There were people saying Fages wasn’t the right person to move us forward. That creates a bit of outside noise, but internally we were fine. He has been unbelievable for the footy club and we knew he could get us out of it, and he has.”
Swann cannot take credit for the Lions’ acquisition of Neale, but the future dual-Brownlow Medallist’s arrival in 2019 will go down as one of the biggest off-field wins in club history.
“I think it was Juddy who said the trick to being a good footballer is doing the right thing when no one is looking.
“Nathan Buckley, Chris Judd, Lachie Neale, Scott Pendlebury … all of those guys have that attribute.
“Lachie’s period here has been enormous. He came to us as a good player and now he’s in the elite and as good a player as there is in the comp.
“He’s our captain, he’s great for the young blokes; he’s everything we could have asked for.”
Like death and taxes, Swann has made a certainty of turning struggling clubs around in his time in the AFL.
So when rumours circulated that the Brisbane Broncos had reached out in 2020 to see if he was interested in taking over as CEO, the idea wasn’t too farfetched.
Except “that never happened,” Swann ruled.
“It got written up for about a month but in the end, the Broncos chairman rang our chairman and said, ‘We’re not talking to him’ and I’d already said I wasn’t talking to them. I don’t know where that came from.”
Swann’s focus instead remained on the Lions, and growing the club’s membership base from 28,500 at the start of 2020 to the 62,000-plus of today.
Last weekend’s capacity crowd against the Giants was the club’s seventh sellout of the season.
When Swann first walked through the door at Brisbane, that fixture was lucky to attract more than 10,000.
“(Former Brisbane ruckman) Stefan Martin said to me when I started: ‘You’ll know if you’ve done a good job when we come out to play and don’t get booed at our home ground’,” Swann joked.
“I saw him three or four months ago and I said, ‘We don’t need opposition supporters, we fill it on our own now.’
“That’s down to a lot of great work by a lot of people.
“Outside of Leigh’s (Matthews) tenure, this is the most successful period in the history of our club. Our league position, our finances, our facilities – the past six or seven years has been as good as any other period in the club, bar that three-peat.
“It’s a great footy club, our AFLW program is the best in the competition as well. Our facilities are the best, our people are the best. I’m proud of the work that everyone has put in to get us to where we are, but we’re not going to rest on our laurels that’s for sure.”
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