Halfway through his 10th and likely final season at Sydney, Lance Franklin’s legacy is secure. But has his decade in Sydney stacked up to his Hawthorn heroics? DANIEL CHERNY investigates.
“I wanted to come to a club that was going to win more premierships.”
That was Lance Franklin in October 2013, explaining why he had chosen to join Sydney rather than Greater Western Sydney when he left Hawthorn as a free agent.
The Giants have not won a flag in that time, but of course, neither have the Swans.
With Franklin, 36, almost certainly in his final season in the AFL, and Sydney only just hanging in the race for the top eight, the prospect of Franklin – who is finally showing his age – crowning his time at the Swans with a premiership is slim at best.
For those who think of football in binary terms, it makes Franklin’s decade in the nation’s biggest city a failure.
That would be to oversimplify things, says Sydney chairman Andrew Pridham.
Asked if he would have taken the decade as it has unfolded when Franklin famously signed his nine-year deal, Pridham is unequivocal.
“Yep,” Pridham says, ahead of the Swans’ Indigenous Round home game against Carlton, due to be Franklin’s 349th game.
Because for all that Franklin and the Swans have craved and would love a premiership medallion, a decade of largely winning seasons and happy memories colour reflections of Franklin’s stint in red and white.
While Franklin has been unable to add to his two premiership medals as a Hawk, on just about every other metric he has matched his feats in brown and gold.
Franklin was a four-time All-Australian at Hawthorn, and he’s made the side four times in Sydney too. He won two Coleman Medals at the Hawks, and two as a Swan.
He kicked 580 goals from 182 games at Hawthorn, while at Sydney it’s been 477 from 166. Allowing for what has been a general decline in scoring since his century of goals in 2008, he has maintained his standard.
“I think he’s been magnificent. What he’s delivered to the club on-field has been very, very significant,” Pridham says.
“I’ve lost count of how many games over the 10 years that we’ve won that if he wasn’t playing for us, we probably wouldn’t have won.
“It’s been one of my great privileges that I’ve had as chairman for the whole time he’s played for us, pretty much watched him live every game he played and just what a superstar he is, and that he does things that no other player does.
“People forget very quickly just how good superstars are once they pass their peak.”
It is not as though the Swans have been a mile off a flag either. Three grand final defeats: 2014, 2016 and 2022 shows a team that has been able to contend, albeit two of those losses were hidings. It is the middle of that trio – a 22-point defeat to the Western Bulldogs – that stands out as the one that got away, especially given the consensus that the Dogs received a generous run with umpires that day.
“Obviously he hasn’t got a premiership,” says Liam Pickering, Franklin’s former agent who negotiated the deal to get the superstar to Sydney.
“Only one team wins a flag every year and they’ve come up against a few good ones
“But what he’s been able to bring, me looking from the outside in now, what he’s brought to the club has been enormous.”
What Franklin has delivered to Sydney transcends goals. The Swans averaged home crowds of more than 31,000 in each of their first six seasons with Franklin, a streak ended only in the Covid-19 marred 2020 season. Sydney attendances had already been around that mark for the best part of two decades since the club’s 1996 grand final run, but Franklin helped maintain the buzz around the Swans.
“Off-field, I think he’s bought a lot to the club. He’s (been) in our leadership group for a number of years. The players look up to him. You don’t make the leadership group of the Sydney Swans if you’re not doing something right, and I think he worked really hard to get into the leadership group, it was important to him,” Pridham said.
“He wasn’t voted in because he was such a good player, he was voted in because he’s a leader. He’s very proud of that, he should be.
“If you walk around any of our games you’ll see more kids and people wearing 23 on the back of their jumper than any other number. He’s been really good for the turnstiles, very good for our brand.
“He’s been exemplary in his behaviour off-field. I don’t think you could find fault in what he’s brought to the club, it’s been magnificent.”
Since their early years in Sydney, the Swans have had a long run of magnetic spearheads: from Warwick Capper to Tony Lockett, to Barry Hall and then Franklin.
Pridham doesn’t think the club needs such a figure like it once did, but that doesn’t mean another Franklin would go astray.
Along with Lockett’s 1300th goal and his behind to put the Swans into the 1996 grand final, Franklin’s 1000th goal last March and the ensuing pandemonium are the most iconic SCG football moments since the club headed to NSW more than four decades ago.
“The importance of Plugger (Lockett), and in a different way Goodesy (Adam Goodes), and in a different way Barry Hall, different way Buddy … they’ve brought different things to the club. Plugger was very much about awareness.
“I don’t think we need (that sort of player) in the same way as when Plugger came. I think the club really was in desperate need of anything to get greater awareness.
“The club today, we’ve got over two million supporters, we’re the most supported sporting club in Australia.
“But having said … having a marquee superstar like a Buddy is clearly very desirable.”
The other easily forgotten element is Franklin’s wellbeing. By the end of 2013 he was sick of life in the Melbourne footy bubble. In Sydney, Franklin has been able to enjoy the best of both worlds.
“He was keen to get out of Melbourne at the time. He just wanted to get up there,” Pickering says.
“He’s what the Swans needed at the time, and I think he’s delivered in spades.”
