Ahead of tomorrow's official launch of Micky O, sydneyswans.com.au has an excerpt from the book's foreword...

My second major football achievement occurred on 24 September 2005, when I played in the Swans’ first premiership side for 72 years. The club had won its last premiership in 1933 when it was known as South Melbourne, before it had moved to Sydney in 1982 and become known as the Sydney Swans.

Despite the move, it was the same club, with players wearing the same red and white guernseys — even if South Melbourne’s white with a red vee had changed to white with a red outline of the Sydney Opera House and a red back. The club’s history had continued and it was still desperate for success.

Many people agree the 2005 Grand Final was one of the toughest, and numerous commentators at the time described it as the most exciting since St Kilda pipped Collingwood by one point in 1966. If the last minutes were agonising for fans, imagine how the players felt.

The Swans were leading the West Coast Eagles by four points when I glanced at the game clock on the city-end scoreboard. The Eagles were kicking to that end and it seemed to me they had the ball down there for an eternity. Surely they would goal. But there was nothing I could do about it as I needed to stay close to our goal. I just had to have faith our defenders would hang on during those gut-wrenching final minutes. Tick. Tick. Tick! The seconds seemed like minutes, the minutes like hours.

Hanging on by our fingernails, we cleared the ball only for Eagles’ ruckman Dean Cox to take a mark about 65 metres from goal on the members’ wing. He went back for his kick and all I could see was a huge pack forming about 20 metres from the Eagles’ goal. A West Coast mark would almost certainly cost us the premiership as it would have resulted in an easy, almost gimme shot for goal. But, in the corner of one eye, I saw Swans’ fullback Leo Barry run in from the right of the pack. I swear he was wearing a red and blue Superman cloak as he flew for the ball and marked it cleanly in both hands. I didn’t know it at the time, but when I watched the replay (many, many times) over the next couple of weeks I heard Channel 10 commentator Stephen Quartermain scream: ‘Leo Barry, you star!’ Barry fell to the ground and, with the ball safely in his two big mitts, the final siren blared just seconds later. It was the sweetest sound I had ever heard.

As team-mate Tadhg Kennelly leaped on top of Barry to celebrate, I was pushing my way to the wing. I ran into teammates Barry Hall and Ryan O’Keefe and we jumped around, arms locked together, for what seemed an eternity. We then raced to our other team-mates. We had so many people to embrace, so many to thank, so many to acknowledge. I looked around at the sea of people decked in red and white and it was impossible not to be moved by the tears, the raw emotion and the almost painful sense of relief that the 72-year drought was over.

It is almost impossible to explain the emotions which swept through the 22 players who represented the Swans that afternoon. And, in some ways, I still cannot get over the enormity of what we had achieved. Any premiership player will declare that winning a grand final is almost overwhelming in its bliss, but for the Swans in 2005 it was even more gratifying. For decades the Swans had been the easy team to beat and the butt of football jokes, yet there we were — about to receive our premiership medallions.

The Monday after the game I saw a cartoon in the Melbourne Herald Sun by the award-winning Mark Knight that reinforced all those feelings of relief and joy. It featured 1933 South premiership player Laurie Nash taking a drink from the 2005 premiership cup and, surrounded by members of the 2005 side, he quipped: ‘It’s been a long time between drinks.’

It certainly had been.

On a personal level, the grand final win was particularly sweet as I was the only member of the team to have played in the 1996 Grand Final loss to North Melbourne. I was just 19 years of age at the time and in only my second AFL season when the Roos thumped us by 43 points. I was devastated but, to my
shame, perhaps not as much as older players like Paul Roos, Tony Lockett, Mark Bayes and others. They were heading towards the end of their playing careers and would never get another crack at winning a flag. On the other hand, I convinced myself that, because of my youth, I certainly would get other chances. Easypeasy! But football does not work out that way and I had to wait another nine years to taste premiership success. I would not swap my 2005 premiership medallion for all the diamonds in Africa.

Ask any footballer — at any level — whether he would like individual or team honours, and the answer invariably would be the same. They want premierships, not medals. Former South Melbourne champion Bob Skilton, regarded as the Swans’ greatest player, often has said he would swap his three Brownlow Medals for one premiership medallion. Skilton played 237 games for the Swans from 1956-71, but only one final: a losing first semi-final against St Kilda in 1970. And he was one of the first to embrace me after the 2005 Grand Final win. No one could ever imagine how special that made me feel. I had achieved the ultimate for any footballer. This, coupled with being named in the Indigenous Team of the Century, reinforced what my mother had always drummed into me — that dreams really can come true … if you work hard enough.

Edited extract from MICKY O. Determination. Hard work. And a little bit of magic. By Michael O’Loughlin with Jim Main. Published by ABC Books, August 2012.

To celebrate the release of his biography, Micky O is going to Shearer's Bookshop Leichhardt from 7pm on Monday August 6 to discuss the game and how he made it big: determination, hard work and a little bit of magic.

Tickets: $10 adults, $7.50 for children under 16

Bookings are essential for this event. You can purchase your tickets in store, or by calling Shearer's on (02) 9572 7766.