When the Swans arrived at the 2022 Grand Final it felt like defying the laws of football gravity. After losing the Grand Final in 2016 then finishing fifth in 2017 and seventh in 2018, Sydney seemed to be on a downward trajectory and undergoing the dreaded ‘r’ word. Win a Ziggy BBQ for Grand Final day, thanks to Barbeques Galore! Enter Here.
Yet the Swans took just two years to bounce from bottom four to back into September football. In that time, Sydney had access to picks 5, 26, 36 and 39 in the 2019 draft and picks 4, 5, and 32 in 2020 and they managed to bring in the likes of Errol Gulden, Logan McDonald and Chad Warner. Not a bad haul and this rebuild-on-the-run allowed them to bounce back into finals contention without seemingly anyone noticing that they were ever in the bottom four.
However, as Sydney limped over Collingwood by a point in the 2022 prelim, only to be humbled in an 81-point thrashing by Geelong, there was a feeling amongst many in the football public that this Swans side may have peaked too early. More AFL Simply put, premierships are difficult to win and teams that fall short often struggle to get there again, be it drive or the salary cap pressures of keeping so many champions on the park all at once. You only have to look to the recent examples of Adelaide and GWS to see teams that have made the Grand Final and then gone on to miss finals the following year.
And, in early 2023, the Swans seemed to be going down a predictable path. That year, they .