Among his 152 games at the highest level, Derek Kickett played 63 games for the Sydney Swans, after 77 at Essendon and 12 with North Melbourne.

During his career, Kickett endured something quite extraordinary in AFL football.

After playing 57 games in a row for Essendon from Round 16 of 1991 to the preliminary final of 1993, he was dropped for the grand final.

He’d kicked a career-best eight goals in the penultimate game of the home-and-away season but still coach Kevin Sheedy could not find a place for him in a side that won the premiership decider to Carlton.

The flamboyant Indigenous utility player was predictably shattered.  Only 12 days ago, on 19 May, did he return to the club for the first time after a 25-year absence. And only this week did he make peace with Sheedy, who on Tuesday night became the 28^th Legend in the AFL Hall of Fame.

So where do the Swans fit in? The club was Plan C of Kickett’s wonderful AFL career, and allowed him to eventually leave the game without his last memory being that of his bitter selection axing.

As the Swans prepare to wear a new Indigenous jumper against Carlton at the SCG on Friday night, and the focus turns to the club’s Indigenous players, the club recalled Kickett’s three very good years and 63 games in red and white from 1994-96.

It all came about via Kevin Egan, a 1965 Essendon premiership player and long-time Bombers team manager who, fortuitously, moved to Sydney to take over as Swans team manager in 1994.

Egan, who had four years at the Swans, played a key role in brokering a deal which saw Kickett join the club via the 1994 Pre-Season Draft. He was selection #21 in the same draft that saw Dermott Brereton, Peter Filandia and Andrew Bomford  join the club.

It remains one of Sydney’s more beneficial picks in the Pre-Season Draft, with only Stuart Maxfield (200 games), Craig Bolton (170), Paul Roos (87) and John Stevens (78) having played more often for the club after being secured in this fashion.

After a late start to the season Kickett made a belated debut in the #24 Swans jumper in Round 5, 1994 and thereafter played 63 of a possible 66 games, including all 25 in 1996, when the Swans played North Melbourne in the grand final.

It wasn’t the fairytale exit he would have hoped for as the Swans lost by 43 points.

Kickett, now producing the popular Marngrook Footy Show in Melbourne, had begun his senior career at West Perth in 1984, and moved to Claremont in 1987. There, in his first season, he was a key member of a side that won 21 games in a row on its way to a flag and polled a staggering 46 votes in the Sandover Medal. He would have won the medal by 16 votes had he not been ineligible.

Kickett played with Central Districts in the SANFL in 1988 before one year at North Melbourne (1989) and four years at Essendon (1990-93) before his move to Sydney in 1994.

Aged 31 years and 199 days when first he wore the Swans jumper in Round 5, 1994 against Fitzroy at Western Oval, he was the 18^th oldest debutant among 1414 Swans players, and third oldest among those who played 50 games for the club.

He was in very good company – the only two Swans 50-gamers older on debut for the club were 1933 premiership captain-coach and Team of the Century coach Jack Bissett (31/242 in 1932) and 2005 premiership coach Paul Roos (31/279 in 1995).

Kickett’s arrival at the SCG set up a wonderfully heart-warming story written by Jessica Halloran in the Sydney Morning Herald in August 2002.

The story, which underlines the special bond between the AFL’s Indigenous players, told how 14 years earlier Kickett, then playing with Central Districts in the SANFL after moving from Perth, opened the door of his home to find two young Indigenous boys asking if he would have a kick with them.

His surprise visitors were two young players from Centrals: Michael and Ricky O’Loughlin – a future 300-game champion with the Swans, and his brother, who later played nine AFL games with Adelaide from 2000-01. Kickett happily obliged.

The story also told of how Michael O’Loughlin, after being drafted by the Swans in 1994, had walked up to Kickett and re-introduced himself on the first day he arrived at the club.

"He remembered me, and from there he looked after me," O'Loughlin said many years later.

Kickett’s link to the Sydney Swans is not just via his playing career, or his special bond with O’Loughlin. He is also the uncle of current day Indigenous superstar Lance Franklin.

Kickett, O’Loughlin and Franklin are three of 17 Indigenous players to have played for the Sydney Swans since Elkin Reilly, South’s ruckman from 1962-67, became the first Indigenous player to pull on the red and white jumper. 

Reuben Cooper (2 games in 1969) and Kevin Taylor (14 games in 1981) completed the Indigenous players at South Melbourne.

Brian Stanislaus played one game for Sydney in 1991 before Jamie Lawson debuted later that year. Lawson played 61 games from 1991-94 before a broken leg, which later led to compartment syndrome, forced him into retirement.

Alan Thorpe played three games with the Swans in 1992 before 12 games with Footscray in 1993-94, and Matthew AhMat, who had played six games with the Brisbane Bears in 1991-92, played two games for the Swans early in 1994 before Kickett’s debut.

O’Loughlin’s phenomenal 303-games started in 1995 before Troy Cook followed in 1997. He played 43 games for the Swans from 1997-99 before 150 games with Fremantle from 2000-07.

Robbie AhMat played 42 games with the Swans from 1998-2001 after 25 games with Collingwood from 1995-97, and Fred Campbell, drafted with Adam Goodes in 1998, joined Goodes in taking the Swans’ Indigenous family to 14 in ’99.

Then came Lewis Jetta, who played 127 games for the Swans from 2010-15 before heading to West Coast, and one-gamer Byron Summer in 2011.

Tony Armstrong played 15 games with the Swans from 2012-13 after 14 games with Adelaide in 2010-11 and before six games with Collingwood from 2014-15, and Lance Franklin completed the current list in 2014.

All time list of Swans Indigenous Players (to have played at least one senior match)