There’s serious business to attend to for the Sydney Swans on Sunday. But their bid for a top-two spot on the AFL ladder will unfold against a backdrop of high emotion, heavy nostalgia and pure, uncomplicated love.
In the final round of 2019, as the Swans were facing their first season without finals football in a decade, they met St Kilda at the SCG. It was Lance Franklin’s 300th game and the last hurrah for four retiring club greats, Jarrad McVeigh, Kieren Jack, Heath Grundy and Nick Smith.
Wearing opposition colours didn’t stop Dan Hannebery (far left) from being involved in a great moment in Swans history three years ago.Credit:Getty
It was an afternoon those present will never forget. Sydney won, McVeigh and Jack kicked goals in the last quarter that brought the house down, and when the quartet were being celebrated near the Swans’ race after the final siren, Dan Hannebery stepped up to help chair them off – wearing the opposition colours. It was a real-life footy fairytale.
The game hasn’t quite seen the like of it since. Until this weekend, perhaps.
Now Hannebery is retiring and, as fate would have it, his final game is against his old team. The favour is almost certain to be returned at Marvel Stadium on Sunday.
“There’d be no one not welcome that opportunity to chair off Hanners,” Sydney co-captain Luke Parker said. “The mark that he left on the Swans is something that won’t be forgotten.”
The Swans need to win by roughly nine goals to claim second spot and a home qualifying final. But that’s not the reason why former players such as Jack have been scurrying to organise flights, hotels and tickets in Melbourne. It’s because of Hanners.
St Kilda’s Dan Hannebery has announced his retirement.Credit:Getty
“It was ironic that our careers ended facing Dan, because the club, and everyone associated with the club, just love him,” Jack said. “When he came over and he was involved with it [in 2019], it was just so, so special. I feel like everyone in the grandstand kind of felt that, too.
“He’s a champion, the ultimate teammate. That’s why I’m going down there, because you just want to support guys like that, especially what he’s been through the last few years.
“There’s a few things to Dan: he’s highly energetic, super driven and so competitive. At times we had to tell him to just settle down because he was so hellbent on winding himself up and getting himself ready to play his best game, and he did that every week. Some players were so put off by him pre-game they had to go and spend time away from him, because he was just super, super hyperactive and manic to perform – that was him, and he’d do it under duress, time and time again.
“You mix all that up into a personality, you get Dan Hannebery.”
Dan Hannebery was never the same player again after his knee injury in the 2016 grand final.Credit:Getty
Selected with pick 30 in the 2008 draft, Hannebery was a 17-year-old schoolboy when he walked into the Swans, and he wasted little time in stitching himself into the fabric of the club and integrating himself into a changing room full of big names who had just won the flag three years earlier.
“The way that he did it was through hard work on the field, but then just wanting to be a part of everything off the field with the playing group as well,” Jack said. “You just kind of love people like that because it’s just so genuine.”
The AFL Rising Star winner in 2010, he was the youngest and fastest Swan in history to reach 200 games. Ask anyone who worked with him at Sydney, and they say the same thing: Hannebery was one of, if not the best two-way midfield runner they’d ever seen, and a player who would happily put his body on the line to help the team, no matter the personal cost. Every time, he’d get back up and keep working.
“By his mid-20s, I put him up there as the most influential player in the game at that point in time,” Jack said. “When we were all talking about what two-way midfielders look like, he was the epitome of it. He became the complete player and the complete package at a very young age.”
There were textbook examples of this tendency to put himself in harm’s way for the greater good in the two grand finals he played for Sydney. He helped set the tone in the 2012 decider against Hawthorn late in the opening term by contorting his body to mark between David Hale, Shane Mumford and Sam Reid – three big, bustling key-position players whose impact left him in a crumpled heap. Of course, he played on.
However, four years later, Hannebery twisted his knee late in their grand final loss to the Western Bulldogs in a contest with Easton Wood. It looked bad, and it was – he did his medial ligament, but strapped it up and played out the game under clear duress.
He was never quite the same, though. From that point onwards, Hannebery’s banged-up body began to fail him. He left the Swans after a stop-start 2017 as part of a draft pick swap with the Saints, and played just 17 more games at the top level, continually hobbled by soft-tissue injuries.
In another life, had things gone a little differently, Hannebery might still be playing for the Swans. But the outpouring of sentiment from ex-teammates, coaches and Sydney fans this week since his retirement announcement shows that he left an indelible mark on his former employers, and will forever hold a special place in Swans history.
“He’s a beauty,” coach John Longmire told 3AW this week.
“I’ve got some great memories of some of the biggest games and him playing so well. Unfortunately, no matter what he’s put into it – which would have been an enormous amount, knowing Dan – his body hasn’t given him the chance to kick on. I hope he doesn’t play too well this week against us, but he’s had an amazing career, particularly at the Swans.”
