In the lead-up to the Swans round 8 home match against Melbourne, which will celebrate the Club’s 30 years in Sydney, sydneyswans.com.au is collating the 30 Defining Moments of the Swans in Sydney in chronological order.

The 30 Defining Moments have been selected by Sydney Swans Chairman, Richard Colless, Deputy Chairman, Andrew McMaster, and Swans Hall of Fame inductee and former Club captain, coach, and director, Rick Quade.

#22 - Last quarter of preliminary final v St Kilda, 2005

After the elation of the last gasp semi-final victory over Geelong at the SCG, the Swans travelled to the MCG to face St Kilda who were coming off a week’s break following their qualifying final win over Adelaide at AAMI Stadium.

The Saints were favourites ahead of the Friday night game, but the Swans carried on where they had left off the previous week with five first quarter goals to St Kilda’s three to take a 12-point lead to the first change.

However, the Swans' avenues to goal dried up over the next two quarters as they could only kick three goals to St Kilda’s six, and at one stage trailed by 15 points late in the third quarter. A late goal to Barry Hall reduced the margin further and the Swans went to the final break only trailing by seven points.

Moments before the start of the final term, inspirational midfielder Brett Kirk, who was wearing a helmet after earlier leaving the ground with blood pouring from his head, implored his team mates to lift in the final term and they duly answered the call in spectacular fashion.

With just over 16 minutes remaining in the match, St Kilda had added another point to their three-quarter-time tally and held an eight-point lead before a Ryan O’Keefe kick to the top of the Swans' goalsquare caused all sorts of chaos and changed the face of the game. With bodies flying everywhere, Michael O’Loughlin tackled Robert Harvey, spilling the ball free. Goal-sneak Adam Schneider pounced on the loose ball and snapped truly from 15 metres out.

Within a minute, Schneider again got to the base of a contest involving O’Loughlin and snapped another goal - this time with his non-preferred right foot - to put the Swans in front by four points.

St Kilda looked as though they would respond when their captain Nick Riewoldt handed off to Stephen Powell who went inside 50 looking for reigning back-to-back Coleman medallist, Fraser Gehrig. Powell’s kick fell just short of Gehrig, who was put under enormous pressure by a sliding Tadhg Kennelly, and the Swans’ star Irishman was able to gather the ball from the contest and build another Swans attack. That attack ended with O’Loughlin taking advantage of a mistake from Saints defenders Austinn Jones and Max Hudghton and check-siding through his first goal of the contest.

Following a show of strength from Hall on his direct opponent Matt Maguire - who he had earlier been reported for striking - the Swans forward kicked a brilliant goal on the run from just inside 50 and the Swans were running rampant.

Set-shot goals from O’Loughlin and O’Keefe, who was named as the Swans' best player with 24 touches and two majors, followed in quick succession and in the blink of an eye the Swans had built an unassailable 27-point lead with less than ten minutes remaining on the clock.

From the restart of play, Leo Barry found Schneider who had given his opponent Leigh Montagna the slip, and the man who had started the last quarter onslaught burst inside 50 to kick his third goal of the quarter and put an exclamation mark on an irresistible seven minutes of finals football where the Swans kicked seven goals straight to steamroll the Saints.

“And the Swans are into the Grand Final,” Channel Ten commentator Tim Lane called as Schneider’s third goal sailed over the goal umpires head.

The Swans went on to record a 31-point win over St Kilda and book a place in their first Grand Final since the 1996 loss to North Melbourne. Their focus after the match immediately switched to the decider, and the following day it was confirmed they would face West Coast who defeated Adelaide by 16 points in the other preliminary final.