A few months ago, the mother of my son’s friend asked if he would be free on 24 September for a birthday sleepover. I hesitated.
The Sydney Swans had won six out of 11 games at that stage, and some might have thought it fanciful they would make the grand final. Maybe top eight. But it was a risk I was not prepared to take. You never discount the Swans, a team respected throughout the football community for putting in maximum effort every week, for never bottoming out in quest of higher draft picks, for always being competitive.
Thankfully, the mother moved the sleepover, because here we are in the grand final again, for the fourth time in 11 years.
Still, I can hardly believe it. Last weekend my son spent the frenetic final five minutes of the preliminary final at the SCG hiding under his seat amid the unbearable tension – I’ve never heard the ground roar like it did that night, the noise even louder than at Buddy’s 1,000th – and I confess I wanted to join him. My heart was pounding furiously; I couldn’t watch. When the final siren sounded, I still dared not believe – not until I stood up from my wheelchair and peered over the shoulders of delirious fans in front of me and saw our players celebrating.
Tears trickled down my face, as they frequently do at Swans games. My eyes were moist on the way to the game too, when we turned into Oxford Street, my red and white scarf flapping outside the car window. I also teared up a few weeks ago watching the Swans women’s team run out for their first ever practice match against GWS on Moore Park’s Lakeside Oval (finally!).
The Swans are wrapped up in my identity. I feel a connection to the club that transcends the game
Why is it the Swans stir such powerful feeling? Why does the smell of SCG turf make me, if only for an instant, believe all is right in the world? Why does the burst of music after each goal make me want to dance in my prosthetic legs (especially when the eponymous Australian Crawl song plays after our brilliant small forward Errol Gulden scores)? Football makes no demands of you, except for loyalty, and that seems a small ask when the rewards are so great. Is that it?
I never followed AFL growing up in Sydney. My husband, being from Melbourne, got me into the game, and I chose the Swans as my team. Now my life is planned around football. How did this happen?
It isn’t just that the Swans as a club are highly professional, with emotionally intelligent people, a selfless brand of football, and a commitment to supporters based on the principle of inclusivity. It isn’t just that attending games at the SCG is a joyous experience, full of music and community and superstar athletes. Or that the Swans have come to embody Sydney, the city. That, more than accepted, they are beloved, they are us.
The fact is, the Swans are wrapped up in my identity. I feel a connection to the club that transcends the game, the players and people of the day.
I cry because the Swans played a fundamental role in the remaking of myself, after a plane crash 15 years ago. You lose yourself when something so devastating happens and look around for how to piece your life back together again. Occasionally, unexpectedly, people offer you some of what they have, which is what the Swans did.
Here, have a leather ball, a blade of grass, a white feather, would any of this help?
Yes, I think that will, actually, thank you.
That’s how the Swans became a part of the new fabric of me.
I have known two Swans coaches, both incredibly compassionate people.
Paul Roos, who coached the team to a flag in 2005, organised a surprise birthday lunch for me while I was an inpatient at the rehabilitation hospital in Perth, where I had treatment for burns. It was the first time we met – Adam Goodes, Brett Kirk and Craig Bolton were there too.
John Longmire, a premiership coach himself in 2012, called me a couple of days after my coin toss at the SCG in 2019, when a media commentator’s remarks flattened me. Longmire asked if my husband and I would come into the club and have lunch with the players, so that they could “put their arms around me”.
Humility is the word that comes to mind when I think of what unites Swans people, on and off the field.
I believe in the Swans because they say they want everyone who comes to a game to feel they belong, and they do meaningful things to make that real. I am a member of the Swans’ diversity action plan committee. This year, under the disability empowerment pillar (the others being LGBTIQ pride, multicultural inclusion and advancement of women), the Swans partnered with Down Syndrome NSW and are creating employment opportunities for people with the genetic condition.
I’ll be at the MCG with my family on Saturday. It’s a tough ask to think the Swans will beat the Cats, who finished top of the ladder (though we beat them in round two). But you’d never discount them. I know I won’t.
• Cynthia Banham is a Sydney Swans Ambassador
