By Greg Baum
Before Dustin Martin, there was Dane Swan.
As of Tuesday night, he’s in the Australian Football Hall of Fame, but he was already a legend in the unofficial Hall of Tattooed Fame, alongside Martin, former teammate Dayne Beams, and long preceded by Fitzroy grandee Kevin Murray and Footscray and Richmond hard man Robbie McGhie.
Dane Swan addresses the room.Credit: AFL Photos
Acclaiming Swan on Tuesday night, you could say words painted a thousand pictures. But initially, those tattoos hid a formidable footballer. An indifferent attitude and scrapes with the law almost led to his sacking by Collingwood. In his first four seasons, he played merely 30 games.
When the penny dropped, a different sort of archetype emerged: outwardly casual, inwardly so driven that he would win a Brownlow Medal, a Leigh Matthews Trophy, five All-Australian guernseys in a row and play a central role in a cherished premiership.
With his gait, which might be described as a dynamic shuffle, that beard and those tattoos, the insouciant act was easy to pull.
But the times suited him; they were dominated by mass-possession midfielders frequently rotated via unlimited interchange. Swan averaged nearly 27 a game, second only to Greg Williams, and in some games it was nearly 50 as the crowd counted them out loud. At his best, he was as compelling a figure as any in the game.
Landmark day: Dane Swan on Anzac Day in 2014.Credit: Getty Images
He was also the first footballer I heard complain about getting stuck in a game, far from the pitstop of the bench.
Swan marched to the beat of a different drum, and still does. He was honest to what a football club would consider a fault. As the reigning Brownlow medallist, he broke a club alcohol ban in 2012, incurring a suspension. That same year, he tweeted this: “Off to bed with a bucket of KFC. Yummy.”
Swan would say he knew what he could and couldn’t do to succeed, and did them. He’s 40 now, but revels still in public as a kind of celebrity provocateur. He’s as picturesque as ever.
If Swan’s footy journey made a halting beginning, Kelvin Templeton’s subsided to a premature end. Injuries saw to that. That’s probably why it’s taken nearly 40 years since his last game to enter the hall of fame.
Templeton began prodigiously. His parents had to drive up from the Latrobe Valley to take him to his first game, against Collingwood at Victoria Park. He was 17. He kicked six goals.
At 20, he played for Victoria. At 21, he kicked 15.9 in a game against St Kilda, including eight in the last quarter. He kicked 100 that season, and 91 the next year despite suffering a collapsed lung while in Scotland between seasons.
A strong mark, agile and distinctive with his often long sleeves, Templeton simply was a gun. When coach Royce Hart moved him to centre half-forward in 1980, he rejoiced in the freedom and won the Brownlow.
He was just 24, but already injuries were hobbling him. In the last six years of his career – two for the Dogs, three for Melbourne after a big-money, high-profile move – he played just 54 games.
Kelvin Templeton on Brownlow night in 1980.Credit: Archives
Unquestionably, fame is harder won in the lower reaches. Templeton’s career has been somewhat obscured because he played for two unfashionable clubs in lean times. In his century year, the Dogs finished second last. In his Brownlow year, they were last. He only played in one final.
This is the cruelty of team sport. The late, great Robbie Flower, a contemporary, played in none until his last season.
Templeton later spent seven years as CEO of Sydney Swans.
Two South Australians who also might be called dual citizens were inducted on Tuesday night. Chris McDermott played 12 seasons for Glenelg, overlapping six for the Crows – the first four as the club’s first captain. The victory over Hawthorn in Adelaide’s inaugural game is one he will never forget.
Affectionately known as “Bone”, he looked like a footballer and played like one, well enough to win three All-Australian guernseys. There was uproar in Adelaide when incoming coach Malcolm Blight moved on McDermott in 1996 – until the Crows won their first premiership the next year.
Michael Graham, aka “The Flash”, played footy the year round, for Sturt in the winter and St Mary’s in Darwin in the wet. It makes his game count rubbery, but he did win a slew of premierships and medals, and is in the Indigenous Team of the Century.
Ray Schofield won West Perth’s best and fairest five times in the immediate post-war years – from full-back. His 10-year duel with South Fremantle’s Bernie Naylor is still talked about. Schofield’s 22 state games included three wins in a row over Victoria.
English-born Ralph Robertson played 14 games for St Kilda around the turn of the 20th century before he moved to Sydney for work and became a founding father of the indigenous game there, appearing 40 times for NSW.
Who knows how many more it might have been if the warplane he was piloting hadn’t collided with another on his side in Egypt in 1917, killing him at 34.
Robertson played in only one win for St Kilda, but it was the Saints’ first win in the VFL and their only win in the first four years of the competition. Whether that qualifies him for the hall of fame, it’s indisputably memorable.
As previously announced, prodigious Hawthorn goal-kicker Jason Dunstall was formally elevated to Legend on Tuesday night.
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