AFL Hall of Fame inductees 2024 – MASHAHER

Collingwood cult hero Dane Swan was immortalised on Tuesday night as he was inducted into the AFL’s Hall of Fame.

Swan won the 2011 Brownlow Medal and has three Copeland Trophies to his name, along with five All-Australian blazers.

He delivered one of the all-time great Australian Football Hall of Fame acceptance speeches.

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Taken with pick 58 in the 2001 National Draft, Swan went on to play 258 games in the black and white across a 15-year career.

The prolific midfielder had an uncanny ability to hit the scoreboard and won two ANZAC Day Medals throughout his career.

Swan will be forever entrenched into Collingwood folklore, a fan favourite with his laid-back nature, he certainly thrived on the big stage.

Check out the full transcript on Swan’s acceptance speech below:

GERARD WHATELEY: If memory serves probably all of your interactions with the AFL hierarchy haven’t been quite as cordial as that?

DANE SWAN: No they haven’t always been great!

GW: What did you think when the chairman called you?

DS: I sh*t myself to be honest! A number I didn’t know called and I don’t answer numbers I don’t know because they’re not usually good news. He text me saying ‘I’m Richard Goyder from the AFL’ and I thought ‘what have I done?’. I didn’t ring him back, I rang my manager straight away and I was like, why on earth are the AFL calling me? It was nice for ‘Pickers’ (manager Liam Pickering) to have any faith in me, he was like ‘I’ve got no idea but if you were in real deep sh*t it wouldn’t be him calling you, so I think you’re alright!’ I called him back and obviously this was it; it was the nicest call I’ve ever had from the AFL that’s for sure.

GW: It’s the biggest entourage I’m told we’ve ever had with who you’ve brought, table 23, the whole rat pack is here?

DS: I’ve got about 35 here. With everything, what’s the point in having these things if you can’t enjoy them with the people you love and the people you care about the most. If I was here on my own it wouldn’t be anywhere near as fun, and I wouldn’t enjoy it as much. Everyone involved here tonight, I didn’t really ask them to come here to watch me get this, it’s more about, we’ve all got children now, we all have busy lives, but the one thing I love probably just underneath my family and my children is getting all the people I love in this world together and having a good night, so that’s what we plan on doing. Chris (McDermott) if ‘Sticks’ (Stephen Kernahan) can’t get you to 6am, I know a party that probably will be able to get you there, let me know later.

GW: Dad was a VFA great, it didn’t carry a whole lot of weight with young Dane did it?

DS: No, well hopefully one day I’m in the crowd watching him get up here. It didn’t, I was a bit of a sh*thead I guess as a young kid, Dad was never one to rant or rave or to come into quarter time when I was under 14s, under 16s and grab me and go ‘don’t worry about what the coach is saying and focus on yourself’, he just sort of let the coaches coach but one day, I probably wasn’t the most ferocious footballer, I was pretty lazy, Dad was yelling at me from the boundary in West Meadows and I’d had enough of it while the game was going on, so I decided to sit down and cross my legs and stick my fingers in my ears for a couple of minutes while the game was going on around me. That’s the kind of stupid mentality I had but that was how I was as a kid unfortunately, but Dad has had the biggest influence on my career and like I said, hopefully one day, for what he did in the VFA, I can be sitting down there watching him come up here.

GW: When’s the fork in the road? Was it the end of the second year at Collingwood?

DS: Yeah when I got arrested. That was fun.

GW: What’s that meeting like, why does it break through?

DS: Why’d we get arrested? That’s probably one for my manager! Yeah, nah that was, absolutely. I got drafted straight out of home, moved in with my mate. I thought playing AFL was all about getting drink cards on Saturday night. I’d give no effort, actually I’d give a lot of effort it was all on Saturday nights, but there was no effort during the day. I didn’t deserve to be on an AFL list, then obviously got in a blue and got in trouble. I thought I was going to be sacked. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone, it’s very cliché but it rang true for me. Dad sat me down, he’s a man of few words and said ‘mate, don’t continue to be on the list if you don’t want to be. Just because it’s what you think we want you to do, if you don’t want to play AFL, don’t’. I got there and all the heavy hitters of the footy club were sitting around, and all told me what they thought of me. I mustn’t have had very good humour back then because there weren’t too many positive connotations coming back my way and then it got to Mick (Malthouse) and he said ‘mate, we’re not going to ruin your career off the back of one stuff up, so prove to me that you belong here and start showing some faith, repaying some of the faith we are showing in you’. I wouldn’t say I got put on the right path; I was probably put on a righter path than what I was on. Mick saved it and two of the boys that are here today, Benny Johnson and Chris Tarrant, helped me train and lift weights with them and show me the work ethic that was needed. Without any of those three there’s absolutely no chance that I would be up here accepting this tonight.

GW: Once the penny had dropped and you committed to the work, why did it lead you there? I think the easiest thing to miss is how much game day meant to you.

DS: Yeah, that’s all it was, I love playing footy. This was happening in 2002/03 and I didn’t really get going until probably 07/08, so it took a while. I was just very, very lucky. There were so many players that came in that were better, harder workers, faster, fitter, stronger all those kinds of things, I’ve just got no idea why they kept me, I was like a cockroach, they just couldn’t kill me! Mick obviously seen something in me at the footy club, I could get it, I couldn’t do much with it, so I had to get it a lot to have half an impact. My old man said I got better every single year from the age of 14, 15. I gradually developed up until the age of 27, 28 and just got better and got more games when I probably shouldn’t have. I slowly got better and more confident and my body got bigger and stronger and fitter, Mick threw me into the midfield, I think he was sick of people kicking goals on me down back because I kept trying to kick goals from half back and then threw me into the midfield and away we went.

GW: That explosiveness that Mick spoke of in the advent of rotation, was that the core of it?

DS: Yeah, absolutely and I guess I should probably apologise to the AFL for ruining the game because I was the most rotated person for three years and apparently, they hate the aesthetics of people rotating on and off the ground. That was me, I apologise for that. Mick came to us, he went and watched the Ice Hockey and how the blokes stay on for two or three minutes and use that power. That was my strength, I wasn’t great aerobically so thankfully they sort of figured out the game plan for me. You go into that pre-season thinking, whether midfielders think it or not, but we all think it, ‘why would I want to be off the ground?’. You want to be All-Australian; you want to win best and fairests, Brownlow votes, ‘why would I want to spend half an hour on the bench?’. You have to trust the people that put you in those positions, so I did. I realised that the way I play and the way I recover from the anaerobic stuff, that suited me. You could break a tag and run just as hard late in the game as I could early. I thought that’s me and the way I could get the best out of myself, I was lucky that I was at a club that allowed me to do something like that.

GW: How good were those years between 2009-11?

DS: They were amazing. Everyone says children are the best things you have in your life, and I’ve got some now, my family are here tonight so I have to say they are, but they’re a different kind of love. It’s a different kind of fulfilment. Those three or four years though where you’re with your best mates like the rat pack who are here tonight, it felt like it went for six months. You play at the biggest club in the country, had one of the bigger profiles, I was going ok, we played hard, we partied hard, we just had a great time, it felt like it went for six months, we barely lost. Those are the moments that you wish you could have back, unfortunately we can’t because we’re all a bit too old now, but those moments, probably more off the field, the locker room laughs, the carry on, blood, sweat and tears, the fun, the footy trips, those things are what you play footy for. I cherish those memories more than the wins and personal achievements.

GW: Did you win the wrong Brownlow?

DS: Yeah, I shouldn’t have won 2010 or 2011, I played in the Granny so it was wasted on me, I couldn’t celebrate it, so it was just a waste of time. But obviously Juddy’s (Chris Judd) is a tremendous player, he probably stole mine in 2010 but I probably stole his in 2011 so we’re all square, we’ll call it even.

GW: What does the first Saturday of every December mean to you?

DS: The first Saturday in December is the premiership reunion we have; we have a catch up every year. One it’s a free hit because the missus can’t argue about it, you can go out and get on the drink with the boys. But that’s why I think winning premierships is important. Footy moves so fast at the top level that when you win the flag, you sort of go away, drink for a week and celebrate then you go away wherever you go in the world then you come back day one of pre-season expecting a BBQ and some beers but everyone yells at you and tells you to work harder and you just won the flag. Footy moves so fast, you don’t get to enjoy it while you’re playing AFL but winning a premiership, I think, is so important for that reason. To catch up, we catch up once a year, people have gone different routes in their life, we all have kids, things have moved on, but we all come back together in that first Saturday in December. It’s great to see everyone. The same jokes get told; the same people get picked on; we’re much better players now than we were back then. You leave at lunch a day or two later and you think how lucky am I to have won a premiership? If the ball bounces the other way and St Kilda win it, we’re part of the Colliwobbles I guess! It’s awesome, a couple of people from the footy club in that era are here tonight to watch me accept this, that’s why I think winning premierships is important. It’s the mateship. To be honest, I could give all this back, all the individual awards, I’d give ‘em all back if that meant I couldn’t have the relationships with the five or six boys I’ve got here tonight – that means more than anything. We’ll celebrate tonight.

First of all, congratulations to all the past, previous and future members of the Hall of Fame or inductees, it’s a wonderful achievement. To Jason (Dunstall) who’s going to become a Legend, it’s a wonderful and incredible achievement so well done to you. To the fans, being such a powerful club like Collingwood, it’s amazing. They made me and I wouldn’t have the life I have today without them. Even the other ones, I love the cheers as much as I love the boo’s, if we all barracked for the same side, footy would be boring. I love the fact that we can have banter and take the p*ss out of each other’s sides and players, it’s what makes footy so great. Thank you to everyone who contributed to watching me play, whether it was abusing me or cheering me on, I loved it all, so thank you very much. To all the players I played with, thank you for putting up with me. For helping me on game day and letting me run around offensively and chasing my man around for a little bit so I didn’t have to work too hard defensively. I really loved my time at the footy club. To Collingwood, I know I’m not in your Hall of Fame so obviously you don’t rate me as highly as the AFL! They know I can be bribed and bought really easily, they bought a table for my mates tonight so we’re square, so thank you. Whether you hate Collingwood or not, you have to understand, I was so fortunate to be drafted to a club like Collingwood, they give you such a head start. If you perform well at Collingwood, you’ve got such a head start in life because of the network and the amount of people that follow you and help you do your thing, I loved my time there and hopefully the Pies can go back-to-back. Thank you very much to my teammates. Last but not least, my friends and my family, especially those that are here tonight. It’s not about me accepting this award, it’s about getting everyone I love together and having a good night, whether it’s here or whether it’s doing whatever.

The thing I miss most is being able to spend every Saturday and every day together with all the boys and their partners and have a laugh and go out for a drink. If me happening to win this thing gets us all here tonight, then I’m happy to do it. Finally, to my family, my parents, sister, my immediate family for supporting me throughout the years. When I was good, they probably felt it a bit more and when sh*t hit the fan they probably felt it a bit worse, they rode the bumps and the ups and downs a little bit harder than what I did. Whether I was going well or not or if I made a blue off the field, I could never do anything wrong which was incredible, their support has been awesome and I certainly wouldn’t be up today without them, I love you all from the bottom of my heart. Hopefully this means a lot to you because I certainly wouldn’t be here without you. Last but not least, my family. My three children, I was going to thank them, but they’re all three years and under so they had absolutely nothing to do with my football career, so they’re not getting thanked. I do love them, it’s a different type of fulfilment, the enjoyment you get out of seeing them smile or laugh, that’s a feeling you can’t replicate in life. I love them, but they’re not getting thanked. My manager, he told me to thank him, I didn’t write anything down, my manager, ‘Pickers’, thank you for being with me for more than 20 years. Through all the ups and downs, the controversy and all the ins and outs that I’ve done, I thought about it and I was like ‘well, I’ve actually stuck with you through all the ups and downs you’ve had!’. The five or six changes in management companies you’ve had and the court cases and you’re still taking a clip off me, so I reckon we’re square. To my partner, Taylor. You arrived from the US in 2008 and that was my first best and fairest and All-Australian, so you clearly had a positive impact on me and my life. You’re the mother of our three children, I’m not a cunning linguist, lucky I got that out, that could’ve been dangerous. I’ve tried to think of some words quickly but there’s not words that could do what you do for our family justice. You’ve been incredible, me and the kids love you more than anything. Without you I don’t know where I’d be. You’ve been the most important person in my life in the last 17 years. I love you so much, please remember these kind words when I’m refusing to come to bed in about ten hours when they’re kicking everyone out of the after party!