Stephen Wright

1979-1992
246 games
247 goals
Best & Fairest 1985, 1990
Swans Team of the Century

Bio 

Incredibly, Stephen Wright began his football career as a five-year-old with the Oakleigh Districts Under 13s. While a regular at training, under the watchful eye of his father, John, he only played once he was big enough to mix it with the older kids.

Throughout his youth, coaches constantly told him he was too small to play at the highest level. Standing at 171 cm and lightly framed, they said he'd get hurt. He didn't listen.

Still playing with his local side, as a 16-year-old in 1977, he was invited to play a reserves match with the Swans. It went well, and he was due to play again the following week, but the game was cancelled. At the time, that was as far as he progressed.

By 1979, he was training with Oakleigh, Sandringham, and Port Melbourne, looking for an opportunity to show his wares in the second-tier VFA. The dream of top-flight football still flickered when his older brother Michael, who was then playing for South, suggested Stephen come along and make up the numbers for an intra-club practice match.

“They said that I could come along and sit on the bench, and if they needed me, I might get a run. One thing turned it all around,” Wright recalled.

“They'd just recruited Len Thompson, Brownlow Medalist from Collingwood, and I’d just got on to the ground when he picked the ball up, and the only thing standing between him and the goals was me.”

Len Thompson was not only an immensely talented footballer, having won the Magpies’ best and fairest award five times, but also a hulking ruckman. He towered over Wright and charged straight towards the diminutive youngster as he gathered raging momentum.

Wright vividly remembers the moment that potentially changed the course of his career. “He was six-foot-six and tried to run straight over the top of me. I tackled him to the ground, won a free-kick, and things turned around for me after that moment.”

Despite the pre-season being well advanced, South asked him to stay. That tackle personified the tackler, and in the years to come, he would require every ounce of that grit to deal with the hardships and heartbreak that came with being a South Melbourne player of the era.

In 1981, at the time of the members’ relocation vote, Wright found himself in a precarious position. “I was working at the club doing junior clinics and school visits, so I certainly knew the situation that the club was in (financially). I wanted to go to Sydney, and I knew if we didn’t go, we wouldn’t survive, but it put me in a difficult situation as I had mates there who didn't want us to go.”

“Because I worked for the footy club, I was instructed to go to people’s houses and collect proxy votes from the members who might have been afraid to attend the meeting. Again, that was really difficult having to go and do those things, probably above my pay rate too.”

Eventually, the Swans migrated north, with the early days in Sydney proving incredibly challenging and sometimes unsettling. Widespread uncertainty soon gripped the players, staff and their families, as promises were not delivered upon. Wright famously said, “We were promised the world and delivered an atlas.”

After playing home games in Sydney on a fly-in, fly-out basis in 1982, the Swans relocated for the '83 season. In December '82, Wright married his wife, Kerrie, in Melbourne on a Friday. They left for the Harbour City on the Sunday.

“We flew up and got ourselves a cab to the Swans’ office. When we arrived, we were handed a set of car keys, a street directory, and the Sunday paper and told to go find somewhere to live. I’d never driven in Sydney, didn't know any of the areas either.”

Despite the incredibly challenging circumstances, Wright — a tenacious and speedy rover — proved to be one of the team’s best and most consistent performers. Following a knee reconstruction in 1983, Wright returned to dominate in the midfield, winning his first Swans best and fairest award in 1985.

Private ownership brought with it a parade of prized recruits and publicity. For Wright and the other players who moved to Sydney, pioneering the national competition we know today, it also brought an unfamiliar focus on the team and its performance.

And they thrived. The Swans finished second to Hawthorn in 1986, but with all VFL finals played in Melbourne, they narrowly lost two finals. In 1987, Sydney was again one of the top contenders, with an intimidating presence at the SCG in particular. In a club-record win against West Coast, Wright kicked eight goals. But, again, the finals didn’t go to plan, and they bowed out with heavy losses to Hawthorn and Melbourne.

Beneath an impressive surface lay an underlying current of shortsightedness, and after the 1987 Black Monday stock market crash, the cash ran out.

“Things really started going bad when they sold Warwick (Capper). That took the sting out of the place. Then, we just missed the finals in ‘88, and they got rid of Tommy Hafey. That was probably the start of the end,” Wright recalled.

The ensuing years were among the worst in the club’s history. A range of debilitating issues contributed, but a senior core of players remained, determined to turn things around.

Amid the turmoil — including players being ordered to take significant pay cuts — Wright performed outstandingly, winning the Swans’ 1990 best and fairest. He describes that year as his best in footy, with the team still boasting outstanding midfielders, including Greg Williams, Gerard Healy, David Murphy and Barry Mitchell.

With the club barely surviving, Wright focused on guiding the younger players coming through the club. His professionalism and perseverance contributed significantly to developing the next generation of Swans. In fact, as a NSW development officer for most of his playing career, he engaged thousands across the state.

An outstanding contribution to the code, and the club was rewarded with selection in the Swans’ Team of the Century in 2003. It’s a night that Wright remembers fondly.

“When you look at the players who missed out, it certainly surprised me that I made the team. Mine was the last name called out, and I never expected it. My wife Kerrie and I were just happy to get a free dinner, but it was very exciting and a nice reward for the sacrifices you and your family make, too.”

After such a distinguished career, Wright, forever modest, looks back proudly on what he and his teammates achieved in laying the foundations for the modern-day Australian Football League.

“I'm still proud of how we contributed to the way the competition is now. Look at how the game has grown Australia-wide, with so many supporters, and we were the pioneers. We started all that.”