'He gave one of his best - that was up there. The 1993 premiership player puts it down with the 1990 grand final loss to Collingwood as the two worst moments of his 243-game career.Īs Sydney celebrated - past players were nursing beers on the SCG turf at 4am - Essendon coach Kevin Sheedy gave a post-game 'spray' that has also gone down in folklore. His hands are clasped across the back of his head like he was a prisoner of war - and feeling about as bleak. There in the foreground is O'Donnell, lying face-down on the SCG turf. I think they hopped straight back in the car and drove home - that would have been a sorry trip,' O'Donnell lamented.Ī famous photo shows a group of Sydney players piled on top of Lockett immediately after the final siren. 'My father and two of his mates had driven up from Melbourne that day. His booming kick after the final siren went wide, but it was straight enough. Sydney levelled the scores and then Lockett took a mark about 50m out, with seconds left. 'But we didn't get a stop play, as in an uncontested mark, in that last two minutes. 'To not be able to save a game like that was disappointing. They were on the nose in a city that loved its league and dismissed the transplanted 'Mexicans' with their odd footy. Sydney nearly went under and finished last in 1992-94.

'The rugby league was on, but they turned it over to the Swans and every pub was bouncing and jumping and really rocking with the game, and then the result.'įourteen years earlier, the moribund Swans had moved from South Melbourne and it had been a tumultuous relocation. 'Sydney is very much a town where they'll watch the footy in the pub. 'It was probably the night, or the game, that got the Swans acceptance in Sydney, as one of their own,' Eade told AAP.

One of the greatest games in club history is remembered for many reasons - Plugger's point, Sheeds' spray, the Swans making their first grand final since 1945, the Dunkley court injunction, and Lloyd's ruptured spleen.īut Rodney Eade, then enjoying a remarkable senior coaching debut season at Sydney, points to a much greater significance. Saturday's Sydney-Collingwood clash will be the first AFL preliminary final at the SCG since that wild night, when the Swans beat Essendon by a point in a ferocious match.

Silent clock australia