His papers were stamped at the time, but in the wake of the 186-point loss to Geelong in round 19 of that year, it was coach Dean Bailey who was instead given his marching orders.
Schwab was as polarising a figure at the club then as he reportedly was until now. It was felt then that to replace the coach and the chief executive in one fell swoop – at a time when club president Jimmy Stynes was critically ill – was too drastic a step to take.
But the Demons might have been better served to have made all the difficult changes at once and got on with the critical rebuild of the club.
The 2013 season is barely a fortnight old and the club's administration is again in a holding pattern while the football side searches for the magic potion to make itself competitive on the field once more.
As coach Mark Neeld put it late last Saturday night, the rebuild of a rebuild is now taking place.
These are grim times for a football club that has known more than most over the last half a century.
We will call the events of Tuesday Schwab's 'resignation' out of deference for Schwab, a football lifer, who walked out the door in a classy fashion before it was slammed shut behind him.
As he said several times on Tuesday, he understands how the game works and after two defeats to open the season by a combined margin of 227 points, which leaves the club with a percentage of 28, Melbourne supporters are again demanding heads on a platter and that changes be made.
The club had little choice but to accede.
You have to be truly inside a football club to gauge its temperature, and for all we know Demons president Don McLardy may have made the right call when he sat down with Schwab for a chat about his future on Tuesday morning.
But what is also abundantly clear is that while the team called Melbourne stinks, the business of Melbourne is fundamentally sound. While it was the dynamic and beloved Stynes who was out there rattling the tins, it was Schwab who oversaw the restructure of the club and the elimination of its multi-million dollar debt.
Foe the first time in a long time, the club is now in the black.
The knock on Schwab as a CEO was always that he was a football bloke who spent too much time immersing himself in the affairs of the team at the expense of the affairs of the club. How many other club CEOs were known to use the back of the coach's box as their preferred match day locale?
But after previous stints in charge of Richmond, Melbourne and Fremantle, his second incarnation at the Demons was marked by a determination to lead the club as a whole and to make the business side of the club his main priority. Hence the appointment of old mates Chris Connolly to lead the football operation and Todd Viney back to work in player development.
He had much on his plate, including the relocation of the football department from the dilapidated Junction Oval to the gleaming AAMI Park.
There was debt to clear and a club to re-badge. He made a good fist of those, but then Stynes became ill and life at Melbourne became a grind, with the Tom Scully defection, Liam Jurrah's off-field issues, the Geelong thrashing and its aftermath, and finally, the tanking investigation.
Melbourne's search for a replacement for Schwab will take on a matter of urgency. The position may well be advertised, but expect the AFL, which has in recent days enunciated its concerns about the welfare of the club, to take a keen interest in the hiring process.
The League might yet even install one of its own in the job, a move that would seem humbling for the oldest football club in Australia, but perhaps, quite necessary.
Ashley Browne is an AFL senior writer. @afl_hashbrowne
