The Sydney Swans Club Champion award, the Bob Skilton medal, is one of the club’s oldest and most significant individual honours.
On Wednesday October 13, 1926, after missing out on playing finals by percentage only, South Melbourne players and officials gathered at Café Francais in Flinders Lane, Melbourne, decked out in red and white for a club dinner event.
Club secretary Like McBrien delivered a speech praising the conduct and sportsmanship of the team both on and off the field and told stories of comradeship between coach Charlie Pannam and captain Paddy Scanlan, with the two responding with their hopes that that same spirit would always exist.
Having passed away in April the same year, the legacy of South Melbourne businessman and sporting enthusiast Philip John Steele was preserved in the form of an award for the most consistent player in the team. Voted by teammates each week, the award was valued at 30 guineas.
Club president and former mayor of South Melbourne Robert Melville Cuthbertson presented the award to ruckman Roy Cazaly in the form of a silver tea and coffee service, reportedly saying that ‘on his best day no player showed more brains than the same old Roy Cazaly’.
Cazaly (pictured above) would go on to coach the team in 1937-38 and has been honoured in the Sydney Swans Hall of Fame, the AFL Hall of Fame, AFL Tasmania Hall of Fame, Sports Australia Hall of Fame as well as being immortalised in the 1979 football anthem Up There Cazaly by Mike Brady.
While it wasn’t officially named as such, the club now recognises this as the first best and fairest award.
During the 1950s and 1960s, the award’s history became closely tied to Bob Skilton, who won it nine times between 1958 and 1968, the most in club history. His dominance coincided with his three Brownlow Medals in 1959, 1963, 1968. Widely regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of the club, the award was named in his honour in 1995.
From a silver tea set in 1926 to the medal that bears Bloods Legend Bob Skilton’s name, the Club Champion endures as a symbol of honour bestowed on players who uphold the team standards of excellence and team spirit.
At the end of the 2026 season, we will once again host the 2026 Bob Skilton Medal, with the glittering event taking place on the evening of October 1, at the Sydney Town Hall.
Tickets will become available soon.
