Lions chief executive Greg Swann was rewarded tonight for a lifetime of service to football with Life Membership of the AFL.

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 Lions..

Having taken over the club in July 2014 during tough times on and off the field, Swann has overseen a program to restore the club to off-field profitability in a magnificent new home at Springfield and rebuilt on-field performance to such a level that they have won more games in the last five years than any opposition.

Swann was recognised in this fashion with former Adelaide and Melbourne coach Neil Craig, ex-Richmond president Peggy O’Neal and AFL game development guru Kevin Sheehan, and six players who qualified automatically via total service of 300 games – Luke Breust, Dustin Martin, Luke Power, Isaac Smith, Callan Ward and Jack Ziebell.

Swann admitted tonight 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’.

“He (Swann) has stood the test of time at two of the big Melbourne clubs before coming up here to help get the Lions back on their feet,” he said.

“What stands him apart from most is that he understands the game and he understands the business, and he marries the two together,” said Fagan, who was plucked from football administration at Hawthorn by Swann to coach Brisbane in 2017.

“As a coach, he’s always helpful when help is needed but he doesn’t interfere. He knows how to work with the Board, he manages up really well, and he keeps everyone calm when calmness is required. It’s a fitting recognition.”

It is one of football’s great ironies that Swann was awarded one of the game’s highest honors as Brisbane Lions CEO 29 years after he had unwittingly played role in the ultimate demise of Fitzroy and the formation of the Brisbane Lions via a merger between Fitzroy and the Brisbane Bears.

A product of Wesley College in Melbourne and a Chartered Accountant by profession, he had worked in 1996 with the administrator appointed to effectively wind up the Fitzroy Football Club after the Nauru Insurance Corporation had  taken action to recoup a debt of $1.25m.

He effectively ran Fitzroy for the last six months of their stand-alone existence.

The ever-personable Lions boss, well known and respected across the entire competition, He was always a football man. He’d played 100 games for Williamstown in the VFA through 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 B&F to Terry Wheeler, a 157-game Western Bulldogs player from 1974-83 and 91-game coach from 1990-94, 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 1985-88, was a big VFA club at the time. He was invited to do pre-season training with Hawthorn ahead of the 1986 season but at 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”, found himself president at Williamstown and on the Board of Football Victoria at age 28.

He was in charge at Williamstown in 1995, when the VSFL attempted to force the club into a merger with Werribee, and, staying through until 1998, started to establish excellent credentials as a sports administrator.

He was CEO at Collingwood from 2000-07, losing the 2002-03 grand finals to Brisbane during the great Leigh Matthews era, and CEO at Carlton from 2007-14 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 a recent interview with The Courier-Mail Swann identified the sacking of Justin Leppitsch as Brisbane coach in 2016 as his toughest decision with the club, and he said the best call “easily” was the appointment of Fagan as his replacement.

Why? “His experience, the care and empathy, his people skills. There was nothing in the game that he hadn’t encountered. From being a player, coach, footy manager, welfare manager, director of coaching and assistant coaching, there wasn’t a job he hadn’t done. He brought that calmness to the club. He had a plan and he stuck with it and it’s worked,” Swann said of Fagan.

Heading into his 25^th season as an AFL club CEO, Swann can take great satisfaction from the fact that the Lions will begin their 2024 campaign on a sound financial position with a record membership as they chase the last piece in the puzzle – the club’s first flag since 2003.