AFL 2025: Luke Parker opens up on end of Sydney career and North Melbourne move
Luke Parker thought his VFL stint was just about getting match fitness. Then after a few weeks, it dawned that his Swans career might be coming to an end. Parker tells JON RALPH how he ended up at North Melbourne.
AFL
Don't miss out on the headlines from AFL. Followed categories will be added to My News.
Luke Parker doesn’t go in for kismet or destiny or the sense of a career being controlled by a higher power.
What he does not know is that the most turbulent season of his AFL career has led him to the North Melbourne football club for all the right reasons.
As Parker told the Herald Sun on Thursday overlooking a sunbaked Arden Street oval, he hasn’t jumped ship to take a pay check or pad a games tally that has hit 293 career contests.
He had expected he might retire next season with a second Swans premiership medal before he and wife Kate moved on with their lives in her home town of Sydney.
Instead on a cold May night in Frankston last year, the former Langwarrin local was picking up the pieces again.
A bump gone horribly wrong saw him iron out a VFL opponent.
Already ignored at selection for over a month by coach John Longmire as the Swans game-breaker recovered from a broken arm, he was a very long way from that premiership dream.
“If you told me at the start of the year I would have got suspended for six games at Frankston on a Friday night, I would have been like, ‘Well, how is this year going to unfold?’ That would be pretty incredible,” Parker said this week.
“It was almost like, not laughable, but it was just like, ‘Far out, what else could go wrong?’
“But that’s just the life of a footballer and sometimes you don’t know which direction it’s going to go in. I have a lot of pride in backing myself that the journey will take the path it’s meant to take.
“It all had to happen for me to be here. If I didn’t break my arm last year I probably would have played out there year and with one more year on my contract that might have been in, maybe playing a smaller role. I have a big belief that what occurred last year was the right journey for me to find myself at Arden St.”
Arden St has been a breath of fresh air for 32-year-old Parker, who has settled in Brighton with wife Kate.
He loves the weather but is already hating the traffic which if anything is worse than the Sydney snarl.
Welcome back to Melbourne, Luke.
“It is refreshing after 14 years. Seeing a new environment, a new place and new people. I really feel rejuvenated having that change-up,” Parker says.
But to understand why Sydney royalty found himself so desperate for change it is necessary to revisit that extraordinary 2024 season.
Speaking in detail for the first time about the events that challenged him like rarely before, Parker is proud of the manner in which he responded.
Parker’s season of living dangerously started with a broken arm suffered in a pre-season clash against Greater Western Sydney.
He had reason to believe having kept running through his recovery, fresh from a fourth-placing in the 2023 best-and-fairest, he would be an automatic selection when ready.
He was wrong.
“In my mind I would have thought that it would be fine to get a bit of touch in the VFL for a week or two, come back, slot back in and away we go. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case,” he said.
“I think it’s always hard when for so many years you have been a person who has been one of the first names to go up on the board, so it’s always a bit of a hit to the ego.
“It was frustration and anger and all that, but I also tried to go back to knowing that it is a long year so I can still play a major role at some stage, and I know my chance will come.”
Parker knew he might have to bide his time given the Swans were on fire in a season where they started 13-1 with a 10-match winning streak.
One game became two as the Swans declined to recall him against a hot GWS side, then three.
“Probably by that third week it starts to become a bit more reality that hits you in the face. Like, ‘Oh, this is not just to get some fitness, maybe it’s more of the team heading in a bit of a different direction’. So I sensed things weren’t working in my favour and there were honest conversations the whole way?” he said.
How honest, given the perception that he and Longmire were not seeing eye-to-eye over his demotion?
“We left on good terms. He’s been my only coach for 14 years and for 13 of them I was up on the board every week. We have had some incredible highs and lows together and he’s got a job to do to fight for what is best for the club. So there are always going to be bits of tension during those moments, there’s always going to be a bit of a strain on the relationship.
The Swans needed a goal and Luke Parker stepped up 🙌#AFLSwansSunspic.twitter.com/qNQc8VUDcB
— AFL (@AFL) May 7, 2022
He’s telling me I am not playing, I am going to tell him I think I deserve to play. So that’s where you are butting heads. But at the end of the day when I told him I had an opportunity to come here he had nothing but best wishes for me and we finished on a good note.”
Parker’s fifth straight VFL game came against Frankston on a May Friday night, and yet he entered that contest building impressive form.
The Langwarrin boy was even happy to be heading back to the suburbs in front of old mates.
“It was the whole mindset of embracing the journey, getting back to my roots and playing in front of mates. I had two good games leading up to that, and the incident was something I have naturally done hundreds of times in football,” Parker recalled.
In a split-second incident Parker went past the ball to block, with the head clash hospitalising opponent Josh Smith with concussion and facial fractures.
Despite only a single suspension in his 300-game career a potential four-match ban became six games at the VFL tribunal.
“Unfortunately there was a head clash involved through a block and the suspension was always going to be more outcome based,” he said.
“It was a pretty serious injury but in terms of mindset I wasn’t going out there frustrated or aggressive or angry or malicious. It was just an accident that occurred on the night.
“We looked at it and thought we might get four weeks and then out of nowhere it was six weeks.”
Longmire told him to take a week off and refresh as he started what was effectively the third pre-season of his campaign.
Wife Kate was a constant – picking him up each time he was overlooked, recommending the kind of self-help books that kept him optimistic despite his plight.
Finally he caught a break upon his return – Sydney had lost a pair of clashes, Isaac Heeney was suspended and he was in against North Melbourne with only six weeks left to September’s riches.
“I sat down with Horse and said, “Look, what have I got to do to get back into the team, I feel like I can play a big role”. We talked through that pretty honestly about where my head was at and where his head was at, and I found a spot and my mindset was like, “I’m going to do everything in my power not to give up that spot and actually just find the love for football again.”
“And I remember my return game against North Melbourne, funnily enough, was actually probably one of my most memorable games in football. I came on in the third quarter, we probably had about 30,000 people there, and I think most of them stood up when I ran on the ground. It was actually quite an emotional game to return to, to know how much I mean to the club.
“Fortunately enough I was able to play the rest of the year, but knowing deep down that the future probably wasn’t there. I wasn’t overly confident in what the next year looked like, or going forward was, and knew I still had a lot of belief in the football I could play. So I probably thought it was best to seek somewhere else.”
As it happened coach Alastair Clarkson foreshadowed the Roos’ interest in Parker in a radio interview before he knew they were interested, with the Swans star having already sat down with his manager to plot out the clubs who might be keen.
He had a Zoom meeting with Clarkson late in the home-and-away season, thrilled the premiership coach still had belief in his football skills as well his leadership.
“From then on I was quite optimistic I was headed that way. And then I put it aside and wanted to enjoy my last five or six or seven weeks at the Swans, probably 90 per cent knowing it was potentially my last time playing in the red and white.
“The plan was to go out in a fairytale. Go out on top. But for me it’s not about what you achieve grand final wise, or with best and fairests, it’s what my day to day is like.”
This Roos squad reminds Parker of the young Sydney side of 2020 – full of talent but just needing to eradicate the one poor quarter or manage a game’s last moments better.
“The thing I have always said is I am not here to milk my career for another couple of years.
“It was a hard decision. Kate is from Sydney, her family is there, we were quite settled there. I am not moving here to get paid for three extra years. I actually had a genuine thought this team could go places in the time that I am here.
“And I am already seeing that during training. As soon as we have a meeting about something and nut it out, in the next session it’s ten times better. That gives me confidence that this team can turn things around quite quickly. And winning and losing are as contagious as each other. So hopefully we can get on a roll, we will be hard to stop.”
Originally published as AFL 2025: Luke Parker opens up on end of Sydney career and North Melbourne move
AFL star’s injury ruins leaves club in ruins
The AFL has a full-blown crisis on its hands after a trio of superstar players were struck down and will miss the start of the season.
Secret behind Charlie Curnow’s return
His laid-back persona makes him one of the most elusive players in the AFL. Here, Charlie Curnow reveals the pre-match dinners that are fuelling Carlton’s premiership push.