THE ULTIMATE SHOWMAN
340 games, 1047 goals … and one box left to tick with the Swans
THE best “Buddy” stories stem from his humour. It can be as booming as his left foot from inside the centre square. “‘Shawry’, I reckon you owe me a beer,” Lance Franklin told Greater Western Sydney recruit Heath Shaw before Franklin’s first match for Sydney.
Franklin had spurned the Giants’ $7m contract offer to instead defect to the Swans, which freed up more cash for GWS to splash on Shaw.
So when Franklin marched to the goalsquare at Giants Stadium at the start of the 2014 season he let Shaw know.
“Obviously my contract got a few more zeros on the end of it, so I said, ‘I reckon I owe you a bit more than a beer, mate’,” Shaw told the Herald Sun.
During Franklin’s golden 2008 campaign, when he kicked 113 goals for
Hawthorn, he once stood dejected in the rooms before a game at Marvel Stadium.
It was disingenuous. Franklin was cheekily waiting for someone to ask him what was wrong.
“He said something like, ‘I just don’t want to do this to a brother’ … with a smile on his face,” Hawks premiership teammate Xavier Ellis said.
“He was alluding to what he was about to do to Paddy Ryder, and he wandered out and kicked nine on him.”
Franklin bagged 9.5 that night against Essendon. Matthew Lloyd finished the game in the backline.
Later that season Franklin met Jarryd Roughead, Jordan
Lewis and Campbell Brown for breakfast.
It was the morning of their qualifying final against Western Bulldogs and Dale Morris had appeared on the back page of the Herald Sun wearing a black hoodie.
The headline read: “Hey Buddy, get ready to … MEET YOUR MARKER.”
Morris looked menacing. But his quotes were far from provocative. Yet a merciless Franklin declared to his teammates over a latte: “I’ll drop eight on him tonight.”
Franklin did drop eight – five on Morris in the first half and three on Brian Lake in the second, igniting the Hawks’ charge to his first premiership.
Days before that ’08 grand final Franklin almost pinged a hamstring taking pot shots from 60-70m to impress swooning fans at Hawthorn’s open training session.
At 21 he was the ultimate showman. And at 35 he still is.
This week Franklin quietly agreed to his “one more year” contract extension.
But co-captain Callum Mills said on AFL360 he found out only on Monday night, in grand final week, when Sydney’s cryptic Michael Jordan-esque social media post and the Herald Sun broke the story at 8pm.
It was fitting given the secrecy around Franklin’s monster, nine-year, $10m deal signed in 2013.
Want further proof of just how much that contract
blindsided the football world? Look no further than Shaw’s off-season meeting with Giants officials. Their pitch to Shaw was based on Franklin.
“They were saying Buddy was coming to Sydney, he’s going to live in Bondi and then he’ll make his way out to training,” Shaw said.
NINE YEARS
“We’ll have Buddy, we’ll have you … and we’ll build to finals. But I walked out of that meeting and had a mate saying, ‘Buddy’s signed with Sydney for nine years’.
“I’m thinking, ‘These guys are either lying to me or they didn’t know’, and I found out they didn’t know either.”
Swans assistant coach Henry Playfair was similarly surprised. “I was the newly appointed forwards coach and we had Kurt Tippett and Franklin bob up,” he said.
“I couldn’t do much wrong. I could probably do more harm than good in that role.”
Privately, Playfair doubted whether Franklin would fire in his first season as a Swan.
“He was a bit injured that pre-season and didn’t train much so I was wondering what we were going to get for the year,” Playfair said.
“But he came out and won the Coleman (Medal). I was very surprised at that and in awe of his ability to do it.”
It turned into a theme. Niggles never worry the champ.
“If he missed a few training sessions during the week he’d cross the line and just compete,” Playfair said.
“You’ve always got concerns about players for one reason or another and how they’ll perform, but even if you had those concerns he’d just turn up and usually have nine shots on goal.
“He’s extraordinary.” Playfair marvelled at Franklin’s evolution from running forward to power forward when his home ground shrank from the MCG to the SCG.
“He’s got multiple ways to get you, not just his athleticism. He can stand and deliver as well,” Playfair said.
“And he saved his best stuff for the game, he just managed to lift. He might’ve had a quiet training session here and there and then you wonder what are we going to get?
“But over the course of time you stop wondering because it was so good what he was able to deliver.”
How do you coach arguably the greatest of all time? Former Australian cricket coach Justin Langer once declared: “I don’t coach Steve Smith, he coaches himself.”
That resonated with Playfair. “It’s sort of similar to what Langer was saying,” he said. “You’ve just got to keep them happy. That was my thing, just get him to the game and let him do his thing. That brought out the best in him.”
Playfair remembers Franklin booting 10 against Carlton in the last round of 2017.
He entered round 23 trailing West Coast’s
Josh Kennedy by five goals … and won his fourth Coleman Medal by four.
But even for Playfair, Franklin’s unforgettable 13.4 against North Melbourne in Launceston in 2012 shone brightest.
That haul was immortalised by commentator Anthony Hudson exclaiming: “Thirteeeen! Thirteeeen!”
Kangaroos coach Brad Scott’s post-match comments were similarly entertaining.
“We ran three different opponents on Franklin and we went from six defenders to seven defenders to eight defenders,” Scott said. “We reached into the kit bag for all the answers and, somewhat amazingly, we turned the clearance area around.
“But we were so intent on shoring up our defence we couldn’t kick it to anyone, because we didn’t have anyone there.”
Yep, a barren forward line and a loaded backline still could not stop Franklin. When Nick Maxwell played on Franklin he polled a bestand-fairest vote, and Collingwood’s game review showed Maxwell did most things right. He played in front and cut the angles … yet Franklin kicked 8.6 “Obviously Buddy is a freak, so I would dive and get a fingernail in and spoil it, and as you’re getting up on your feet he’s snapping it across your shoulder from 50m straight through,” Maxwell said. “Some of the goals that night were ridiculous.”
Hawthorn’s runner came out early and told every other forward to go up the ground, leaving Maxwell and Franklin alone in the goalsquare.
“I sort of looked at Buddy and smiled and was like, ‘f---’,” Maxwell said. “He’s bigger than me, stronger than me, faster than me and fitter than me.”
Former Magpies coach Nathan Buckley once gave Shaw a shot at Franklin, despite giving away 16cm and 19kg.
“He’d kicked so many goals on everyone else that Bucks said, ‘Heath, you might as well have a crack at it for a half. You can’t do any worse’,” Shaw said. “I thought I might as well give away a free kick, I don’t want him to mark it. I’ll make him earn it.”
The rockstar images of Franklin crowd surfing the SCG after he kicked his 1000th goal this year are etched in football history.
And the stories from that famous night are still flowing.
Chad Warner and Oliver Florent were in their footy boots walking down Driver Ave outside the SCG and Dane Rampe was scoffing down a meat pie on the turf.
Luke Parker was tackled to the ground in the invasion while fans tried to rip off Dylan Stephens’ jumper.
Two siblings sprinted to the centre square to scatter their nan’s ashes.
Longmire conducted a headcount to check he hadn’t lost any players. As part of the AFL’s security plan, Franklin was afforded a rare carpark under the stadium so he could safely get out of the ground.
It’s believed Franklin is still parking there, making him the only Swan with a spot.
The 1000th-goal Sherrin spends time in Franklin’s home cinema and his kids’ bedrooms.
EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE
The father of two to son Rocky and daughter Tallulah is larger than life in Sydney.
“Sometimes you have to pinch yourself to realise that he is not a celebrity, but he has that constant attention,” Rampe said this week.
“And constant what I can imagine would be emotional baggage attached to him. It was pretty tough for him the first couple of months he got to the club in terms of being followed around from social pages and all that stuff.
“But his ability to put that to one side and just really compete is something I’ve never witnessed before.
“I think that sums him up. I feel like he almost sees it as an obligation that he really relishes, and that’s something I’m most taken aback by, his ability to compartmentalise and really want to serve the club for what can be chaos outside of it.”
He is a giant figure publicly and a good teammate privately.
In 2016 and 2018 Franklin received Sydney’s Paul Kelly Players’ Player Award, while his simple words helped an 18year-old Justin McInerney settle in his AFL debut.
“In my first game I got to run out with him. It wasn’t my best game, but it was quartertime and I don’t think I’d touched the ball yet,” McInerney said.
“But he said to me at the huddle, ‘Geez, how good’s this? We’re playing AFL’ and that has just stood with me for the rest of my career.”
Franklin has also fed advice to photographers.
“He’s good to do a photo shoot with because he doesn’t take too many photos,” GWS co-captain Toby Greene said.
“He just tells them, ‘Mate, you’ve got about five minutes here, get this done’.”
Fortunately, Franklin is locked in for an encore edition of his intoxicating career in 2023. Good news, Toby. That means another photo shoot or two.