CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | Contact
With two Grand Final losses in three years – and a NSW fanbase demanding returns on their decision to switch-codes, the Sydney Swans are in crisis today.
This comes after the Wallabies launched what looks to be a Rugby Union renaissance with one of their most glorious wins over England at Twickenham.
After 85 minutes of champagne football, where everyone seemed to know their place, replacement Max Jorgensen went over for a spectacular try to snatch victory from the hands of 80,000 pommy losers in the stands.
Not even their lame singalongs could stop the momentum that the Wallabies have found under their new coach Joe Schmidt.
It’s good news for the Australian rugby’s true believers, and embarrassing for the old guard of rugby union elites who took issue with the national side being coached by a kiwi.
However, Schmidt’s boys in gold fought all the way to the end, finishing with a thoroughly deserved 42-37 win at Twickenham of all places.
And it might not just be English Rugby that they are defeating, Australian Rules Football is also a potential casualty.
This has sent shockwaves through the AFL establishment, as it is commonly acknowledged that the vast majority of NSW-based Aussie Rules fans are in fact rugby union-refugees.
While a small number of these disillusioned fans seamlessly jumped ship to the Sydney Roosters, the NRL converts have always kept an eye on both codes of rugby.
But after two decades of misery for the Wallabies, the fanbase gradually went looking elsewhere for a sporting franchise that seemed to chalk up enough wins, and played within walking distance of a Paddington pub crawl.
They found just this in the Sydney Swans. An historic Aussie Rules club that had relocated from Victoria in the eighties and gave young urban professionals from Sydney a bit of trendy Melbourne edge.
The first wave of Sydney rugby union fans crossed over to the swans in 2004, the year after Johnny Wilkinson delivered heartbreak to Australian rugby in the final minutes of the Rugby World Cup final.
A 2005 AFL Premiership for the Swans kept them there. More followed suit in the lead up to 2012, as Rugby Australia kept racking up losses in the back-end of the Robbie Deans era.
But all of those painful memories appear to have been soothed today, because the Wallabies beat England by playing the type of football that wins watches at an international level. The red scarves are at great risk of being put into cardboard boxes and slid under the bed.
