Greg Swann (OW1980) was recently awarded AFL Life Membership for a lifetime of service to football. He received the prestigious award at the AFL Season Launch in Sydney after 25 years as CEO of three AFL clubs – Collingwood, Carlton and Brisbane – and a pivotal role in the re-birth of the Brisbane Lions.
Having taken over the club in July 2014 during tough times on and off the field, Greg has overseen a program to restore the club to off-field profitability and rebuilt on-field performance to such a level that they have won more games in the last five years than any opposition. Greg admitted he was ‘pretty chuffed’ when told of the honour about a month ago, while Lions' coach Chris Fagan lauded him as ‘one of football’s great administrators’.
A Chartered Accountant by profession, in 1996, Greg worked with the administrator appointed to wind up the Fitzroy Football Club. He effectively ran the club for the last six months of their stand-alone existence – the irony that he now heads up the Brisbane Lions is lost on no-one. The ever-personable Lions’ boss, well known and respected across the entire competition, was always a football man. He played 100 games for Williamstown in the VFA throughout the 1980s and described himself as ‘a good ordinary player or an ordinary good player – take your pick.’
A fullback, he was runner-up in the Williamstown ‘Best & Fairest’ to Terry Wheeler, a 157-game Western Bulldog player from 1974-1983 and 91-game coach from 1990-1994 and, living in Melbourne in what at the time was the South Melbourne recruiting zone, spent time on the Swans list and played at U19 and Reserves level.
Williamstown, VFA Premiers under Wheeler in 1986 and grand finalists in 1985-1988, was a big VFA club at the time. Greg was invited to do preseason training with Hawthorn ahead of the 1986 season, but at age 23, he packed up and headed overseas to see Europe in a combi van. He returned to Perth in 1987, playing with Perth FC in the WAFL before heading home to Melbourne. After deciding ‘football was more fun than accounting,’ Greg found himself President at Williamstown and on the Board of Football Victoria at just 28 years of age.
He was in charge at Williamstown in 1995 when the VSFL attempted to force the club into a merger with Werribee and, staying until 1998, started to display excellent credentials as a sports administrator. Greg was CEO at Collingwood from 2000-2007 when they lost the 2002-2003 grand finals to Brisbane during the great Leigh Matthews era, and CEO at Carlton from 2007-2014 in what was a rebuilding phase for the club, before being sent to Brisbane by the AFL. He was named Queensland Sports Administrator of the Year in 2019 and was sounded out by the Broncos in June 2020 for their CEO vacancy.
In this his 25th season as an AFL club CEO, Greg can take great satisfaction from the fact that the Lions are in a sound financial position with a record membership as they chase the last piece in the puzzle – the club’s first flag since 2003.
