By Jon Pierik
When it comes to picking either Sydney or Brisbane to win Saturday’s AFL grand final, Warwick Capper’s allegiance is with the Swans.
“I had eight years with the Swans [including under 19s], but nothing good with Brisbane,” Capper, nursing a torn bicep and awaiting specialist treatment at Box Hill Hospital, said while relaxing at his home in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs on Tuesday.
Two camps: Flamboyant former forward Warwick Capper in his Capper Cave on Tuesday. He was a star of the VFL with Sydney and Brisbane.Credit: Justin McManus
“I reckon it’s Sydney by a couple of goals. If we lose, I’ll be spewing because we would have lost our last four [grand finals]. We are a bit more prepared – had the week off before the preliminary final.
“I do go to Brisbane’s functions, but I had eight years with the Swans.”
Capper, the boy from Oakleigh District Football Club who became one of the game’s most flamboyant stars, played 124 VFL-AFL games, split between two stints with the Swans (1983-87, 1991, 90 games) and an ill-fated move to the Brisbane Bears (1988-90, 34 games), who would later become the Brisbane Lions.
Now 61, Capper – in fine form while regaling tales of yesteryear while chatting on his backyard patio – said he remained in regular contact with Isaac Heeney, the Swans’ pin-up boy to a new generation.
“I always ring him. I said: ‘Poor man’s Warwick Capper, trying to take mark of the century in the finals,’” Capper joked, referring to Heeney’s spectacular mark in the qualifying final against Greater Western Sydney.
Capper, who said he is still chasing a ticket for Saturday, enjoys the modern game, but laments the days of the century goalkickers are long gone, having battled the likes of Jason Dunstall and Tony Lockett to reach three figures in his heyday.
“It’s a bit weaker now, but it’s better for forwards now, more free kicks. Back then, I got one free kick in the first 13 wet rounds,” Capper said.
He and the Swans are on good terms, but it hasn’t always been the case.
Highlight: Warwick Capper flies high over Chris Langford in the 1987 finals.Credit: Ray Kennedy
The man warmly referred to as The Wiz missed selection in the Swans Team of the Century named in 2003, the forward line filled by goalkicking legends Lockett and Bob Pratt, and Paul Kelly, the club’s longest-serving captain.
He also missed one of seven interchange spots.
“That’s what I said … I could have got on the bench. After all, there’s only one Wizard Capper,” he said, breaking out into song.
He was inducted in the club hall of fame in 2011, and he and the club have since been good to each other.
Capper will have a busy week, estimating his links to each of the grand finalists will mean he makes more than two dozen appearances or interviews.
He has made such headlines from his colourful and outlandish ways post retirement that it is easy to forget how good he was in his pomp, particularly with the Swans in 1986 and ’87 when they were led by legendary coach Tom Hafey and boasted star power including Greg Williams, Gerard Healy and the late Merv Neagle.
Capper, complete with his tight, actually, excruciatingly tight shorts – a great marketing ploy, he now says – white or pink boots, bleached blond hair, and spectacular marks, gave the recently relocated Swans the human highlight reel they needed to have an imprint in rugby league heartland.
Those were heady days, Capper launching his 1985 single I Only Take What’s Mine, the music video of which features his pink sports car and the helicopter of colourful former Swans owner Dr Geoffrey Edelstein. He also appeared in an episode of Neighbours, of which he still receives a $280 royalty cheque per year.
However, what’s easily forgotten is that Capper booted 92 goals from full forward in ’86, and finished second in the Coleman Medal with 103 the following year, when he also took that famous horizontal mark over Chris Langford at Waverley. The Swans finished second on the ladder in ’86, and third the next, but bombed out of the finals in straight sets each year, some players still blaming over-training for the result.
His refined kicking style meant he was a deadeye in front of goal, although long distances were more difficult, except when he all but ended Robert Walls’ career as Carlton coach in 1989 with a long bomb on a soggy Princes Park.
Then came a move he, at times, regrets to this day, when he accepted a $350,000 a year contract – making him the VFL’s highest-paid player – to join the Bears, an underfunded expansion and privatised club then run by the late and disgraced businessman Christopher Skase. Capper was soon banished to the reserves, falling out with coaches and teammates, some of whom were jealous of his contract.
Bearing it: Capper during his short stint with Brisbane.Credit: Getty Images
Capper had been a star on the smaller SCG when the likes of Williams, Healy and Barry Mitchell fed him on the lead, but a bigger Carrara field, and teammates not always with his best interests at heart, meant life became a battle.
He returned to the Swans for a year, but, by age 28, his time was up.
“Yeah, I wish I had stayed with the Swans. It cost me three years, but I made a couple of million dollars in endorsements, so it didn’t really matter,” Capper said.
He revealed Carlton and Footscray had expressed interest in him ahead of the ’92 season, but his then wife Joanne wanted to return to Queensland.
“She hated Sydney. That’s why I really went there in ’88, everyone knows that,” he said.
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