Swans players linked arms in the bowels of the MCG after a professional but workmanlike victory over a struggling Essendon.
“Cheer, cheer the red and the white,” they sang.
“Honour the name by day and by night.”
With the club bound for finals, and on trajectory to seriously contest for the 2026 premiership cup, coach Dean Cox was on a high.
However, within hours the private choices of key members of the group – including star players Isaac Heeney and Chad Warner – would drag their 152-year-old club’s name through the mud for the next three months and heap pressure on the chairmanship of millionaire investment banker Andrew Pridham and his rookie chief executive Matthew Pavlich.
Cox, a former West Coast premiership ruckman, decided to give his men the night off to celebrate, telling them to enjoy themselves, within reason.
The players and staff were not set to fly home until the next morning, thanks to Sydney Airport’s 11pm curfew and the players seven-day break before their last home and away match.
The short story is that beers at the MCG, turned into dinner, which became a pre-dawn August 17 party with three strippers at the Pullman East Melbourne and the now infamous group of Isaac Heeney, Chad Warner, Nick Blakey, James Jordon and Riley Bice, former teammate Taylor Adams and a mystery seventh man.
Swans players (from left) Chad Warner, James Jordon, Isaac Heeney, Riley Bice and Nick Blakey have been suspended for the rest of the season. Artwork: Marija Ercegovac A distressed woman, a call to police and suddenly the group were part of one of the biggest scandals in AFL history.
Four of the Swans players were informed on Friday they had been cleared over the incident, while Riley Bice, Taylor Adams and the unknown man, had already been told by police they were only being treated as witnesses.
The club is now amid what can only be described as a period of profound reckoning.
The famous “Bloods Culture”, shaped in the early 2000s under then-coach Paul Roos around high standards, a team-first mentality and accountability has come under intense public and internal scrutiny.
Sydney’s pain was compounded last week by the foolish actions of star forward Tom Papley, who was busted driving with a suspended licence and subsequently failed a roadside drug test for methamphetamine. Results from a second test are still pending.
Season 2026 will be one for the Swans and their fans to remember
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