THEIR ‘spiritual leader’ is a Buddhist and the coach is famous for meditating and whistling a ditty during a game.
It is not exactly what one expects from a football club but this has been the unlikely face of the Sydney Swans for the past seven years, mysteriously Zen, a profile so wonderfully alien to a male sports team that it is a constant source of conjecture for media commentators.
Even the coach has found himself in hot water for jokes that have been dubbed inappropriate, or at least not in the spirit of the fire-and-brimstone breathing hot gospellers who once ruled the roost of football clubs.
This is the club Jarrad McVeigh was born into and this is all he knows as an AFL player.
It is not exactly what one expects from a football club but this has been the unlikely face of the Sydney Swans for the past seven years, mysteriously Zen, a profile so wonderfully alien to a male sports team that it is a constant source of conjecture for media commentators.
Even the coach has found himself in hot water for jokes that have been dubbed inappropriate, or at least not in the spirit of the fire-and-brimstone breathing hot gospellers who once ruled the roost of football clubs.
This is the club Jarrad McVeigh was born into and this is all he knows as an AFL player.
McVeigh arrived at the Swans at the end of the 2002 season and made his debut in 2004. The timing coincided with Paul Roos taking the reins, coaching the last 10 matches in 2002 and officially being appointed for the 2003 season.
What McVeigh then witnessed as a young player was nothing short of extraordinary.
Roos and co-captain Brett Kirk transformed the club into a perfect 21st century enigma.
The pair slowly but surely transformed the club’s off-field personality into that of a wise, vegan monk, two deep breaths away from soaring into nirvana.
But the club’s on-field persona is the antithesis of this: an unrelenting, blood-starved warrior, so driven by a thirst for the contest, and desperate tackling, that a few years ago it was condemned for playing “ugly” football.
In addition to these two contrasting faces, Roos and Kirk brought back to life the club’s other moniker, the Bloods; and this is also especially befitting because the alternate name is, again, so entirely in contrast to the official moniker of the calm, white swan gliding on the water.
The Sydney Swans are in many ways hippy outside and soldier inside; they are free spirits who live by routine and structure, they are war and peace, the bloodied but graceful, the yin and yang.
So it is completely appropriate that Kirk has been a leader because, according to records, he has to his credit more tackles than any other footballer in the history of the game. (Kirk passed Western Bulldog Tony Liberatore this year - no doubt, a peculiar record for a Buddhist to hold).
Now, prima facie, McVeigh’s world is about to drastically change.
Although there has been much talk about the regeneration of the Swans this year, next season the change will be complete. John Longmire takes over the senior coaching position from Roos, and Kirk will be gone, having announced his retirement several weeks ago.
Read the fully story in the round 13 edition of the AFL Record, available at all grounds.
