Money couldn’t buy what Buddy Franklin gave the Swans – and Sydney

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And just like that, in typical understated Lance Franklin style, it’s all over. One minute, there’s feverish speculation that he’s thinking about playing on for yet another year. The next, he’s done his calf and the look on his face gives him away.

Then he’s at Sydney Swans HQ telling his teammates he’s played his last game, then driving home to his wife and kids, to his new life as an ex-footballer, without so much as fronting a press conference to confirm it.

Lance Franklin’s exit from the AFL and the Swans was understated, like the man himself.Credit: Phil Hillyard

To be forced by injury to give it up is a tragic way to go for one of the AFL’s all-time greats, who leaves the Swans and the city he’s called home for the past decade in the same way he arrived: very suddenly.

Nobody saw his nine-year, $10-million deal coming. Certainly not the GWS Giants, who broke the news to an unsuspecting world with this immortal tweet on October 1, 2013: “The GIANTS have withdrawn their offer to Buddy Franklin based on advice that he will accept an offer from the Swans”. Boom – out of nowhere, like a Buddy snap from an impossible angle.

Some may argue that because the Swans didn’t win a premiership in Franklin’s 172 games in red and white that the move was a bust. They are wrong. What he gave them, money couldn’t buy: a certain magnetism that only generational superstars like him can provide, a permanent relevance that helped them cut through Sydney’s crowded sporting market and stave off any hint of building apathy. If Buddy was playing, you had to keep at least one eye on the SCG, if you couldn’t go along in person.

The Swans were already becoming cool, but when he landed in 2014, he made them cooler. On the field, he made the players around him better. In the stands, he was the source of so many eternal memories, and the reason why more and more people came, then stayed.

Lance Franklin celebrates one of his five goals against Port Adelaide at the SCG in 2014.Credit: Anthony Johnson

Countless bags of three, four and five goals. Sometimes more. Sometimes a lot more. Freakish acts that became routine. The ability to hold his nerve in key moments, when the team needed him.

And then, of course, there was Buddy’s 1000th goal, a night that will live forever. What started as a game of football between two teams became a joyous celebration of one bloke, who was absolutely determined to get it done in that game because his family flew in from interstate for it. There were a million brilliant little stories in the chaos that ensued – Chad Warner and Ollie Florent on Driver Avenue, Dane Rampe crashing someone’s picnic and eating a pie, the fan who scattered his nan’s ashes on the wing, the guy who caught the ball and ran for the hills – and none of it would have were it not for him.

There was no parting message from Franklin. The only two words that can be officially attributed to him on Monday were relayed by the club in a press release, which said that he had told his teammates that it had been an “unbelievable journey”. Putting it mildly there, Bud.

It’s possible we could never hear from him again as he moves away to the Queensland sunshine with Jesinta, Tullulah and Rocky, as the family has foreshadowed. We don’t know what he’ll do next; whatever he does, he’ll do it quietly.

Lance Franklin celebrates his big moment with thousands of fans.Credit: AFL Photos

Buddy never liked the spotlight, and he definitely never liked talking to the media. If there is one criticism or hanging question over his time in Sydney, it’s whether the club got enough mileage out of him in that department.

He would go weeks upon months without fronting the cameras. Towards the end of his career, the club was lucky if they were able to convince him to do it once per season. Even rarer were one-on-one chats, proper opportunities to understand what it is that makes this enigmatic superstar tick. Could more of this have made the Swans even bigger, AFL even stronger in Sydney? We’ll never know.

Then again, when he did have a microphone in front of him, Franklin didn’t have much real insight to offer. In a way, his reluctance added to his mystique.

His football did the talking for him, and it always had so much to say.

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