Greg Swann reveals the hardest decision he had to make at Lions
He helped see to the end of Fitzroy and is now leading the revival of the Brisbane Lions. But one decision a few years ago was the hardest he had to make at the club. Read his full interview with Greg Davis here.
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BEING one of the chief architects of Brisbane’s remarkable rise up the AFL ranks is just one achievement on the resume of Lions CEO Greg Swann.
Ahead of Brisbane’s sold-out home final against Richmond tonight, Swann talks to Greg Davis about his never-dull football journey, which has included the last hurrah at Fitzroy, working with footy royalty at Collingwood, the blockbuster trade that got Chris Judd to Carlton, and how a real-life lion called ‘Brutus’ was almost the star of pre-match entertainment at the Gabba.
GD: It’s funny how footy works, you’ve been part of the revival of the Brisbane Lions but you also worked for the receivers who wound up the Fitzroy Lions.
GS: In 1996 I was at Ernst and Young and a guy called Michael Brennan was appointed receiver, but I effectively ran the club for the last six months. We had to just keep it alive for the last six months of its existence. It was actually the island of Nauru that called in their debt which put Fitzroy into receivership. I’m not sure why Nauru lent the club money, but it was something like a couple of million.
Brisbane isn’t the first expansion club you’ve been with. You spent a bit of time in Sydney with the Swans too?
As a young fella going to uni and playing a bit in the South Melbourne reserves and under-19s, we used to get paid to go up there and do clinics and those sorts of things. I grew up in Williamstown, which was South Melbourne’s zone. That was the period when South Melbourne moved to Sydney so all of us were happy to do it as it gave us an income.
And you played in the WAFL too?
Yeah, I played for Perth. Mal Brown was the coach and Barry Cable was his assistant, so it was a high-powered coaching panel. But it didn’t do us much good. We didn’t do very well and the Demons haven’t done well since that time.
Was it the AFL that tapped you on the shoulder to head to Brisbane?
Initially it was Bob Sharpless (former Lions chairman) and Leigh Matthews who I spoke to, and then I spoke to Gil (McLachlan, AFL CEO) who said it would be good if I went there. I’d just finished at Carlton, had a couple of months off and then the process started. I’d only been to Brisbane briefly when we played the Lions. We’d fly in, stay at the Stamford Plaza, play, and fly home. I didn’t know anything about the city but my wife was really strong on it. We sold our house in Melbourne to make sure we were committed to Brisbane. When we came here we were invested in what was going on.
Has there been a time in the past five years when you thought turning the club around was all a bit too hard?
There were a few darker moments, no doubt. There were periods where we weren’t going well on the field and financially we were struggling as well. We had to keep going to the AFL to get additional funding. But we always had a good core of kids which is the benefit of not being very good – you get high draft picks. We picked well then we slowly turned it around by adding more experienced blokes.
So the rise up the ladder itself hasn’t surprised you, just the speed of it?
We were hoping at the start of this year that 10 wins was going to be a pass mark. We reassessed that at the bye when we were 8-3. We thought that this sort of period where we are now might have happened next year, or the year after. Guys like Lachie Neale, Jarryd Lyons, Linc McCarthy and Marcus Adams – and Charlie Cameron and Luke Hodge who came the year before – that group has made a huge difference.
What was the moment this year when you thought this team was the real deal?
It was the Port Adelaide game in Round 17, down there. They came out and tried to bash us after coming off a big win in the Showdown. They were up and about. We travelled the week before and beat GWS in Sydney. We really stood up. It was a big win.
What has been the toughest call and what has been the easiest call since you’ve been here?
The toughest, easily, is when you move to replace the coach (Justin Leppitsch). That’s always tough. But the best call was – as part of a panel – appointing Fages (senior coach Chris Fagan).
What made Chris Fagan such a standout to take over as senior coach?
His experience, the care and empathy, his people skills. There was nothing in the game that he hadn’t encountered. From being a player, coach, footy manager, welfare manager, director of coaching and assistant coaching, there wasn’t a job he hadn’t done. He brought that calmness to the club. He had a plan and he stuck with it and it’s worked.
How do you survive and thrive as Collingwood CEO in an environment with so many big personalities like Eddie McGuire, Mick Malthouse and Nathan Buckley?
I liked it because I could just go about my work in the background. I didn’t need to be front-and-centre because we had those three megastars who did that job and did all the promotion and media. It was a really good environment and I really enjoyed my time there.
Except for when the Pies lost the 2002 and 2003 grand finals to Brisbane?
We were good in ’02 and just got pipped, but in ’03 we went in as favourites after we beat them earlier in the finals and we thought we wouldn’t see them again, but they came back on the other side and belted us in the grand final. They were a really good side. But I got there in 1999 and we were on the bottom of the ladder, so to get to two grand finals was a credit, to mainly Mick and Bucks.
Your time as Carlton CEO is probably best remembered for the blockbuster trade to get Chris Judd from West Coast to the Blues. How did it happen?
I started talking to Paul Connors (Judd’s manager) when I was at Collingwood but then I went to Carlton and rung again. He met with Carlton, then Melbourne because he barracked for them as a kid, then Essendon, and then Collingwood. Paul said it was going to come down to Carlton and Collingwood. I managed to get hold of his address and I turned up at his house on a Sunday morning and I just went through what would happen at Collingwood compared to Carlton. He was keen just to play and not be the saviour of wherever he went. I said at Collingwood, you’ll be on The Footy Show and that sort of stuff but at Carlton, you’ll be part of a rebuild. I remember I was in a cow paddock at a dairy farm in Maffra (eastern Victoria) with bad phone reception when I got the call to say he was coming.
How close did you get to having a real-life lion for pre-match entertainment at the Gabba?
We actually did try. We had a guy from the Darling Downs Zoo who had a lion called Brutus who would lap it up. He was an old stager, Brutus. People did misunderstand, he was going to be in a cage, on the back of a truck, he wasn’t going to be on a lead. Then we got animal rights people involved who clogged our phones and emails and began ringing our sponsors. We pulled the pin on it then. But we were going to feed it a fake magpie because we were playing Collingwood.
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