From the Pocket: Sydney Swans’ cultural exceptionalism has been exposed as a myth

Jonathan Horn Wed 19 Aug 2026 02.40 EDT Last modified on Wed 19 Aug 2026 02.41 EDT Share Prefer the Guardian on Google S ydney is a football club that has been lauded for, and indeed traded off, its magnificent culture. The trademarks of the “Bloods Culture” were written on butcher’s paper. On the field, it was about blue-collar football, selflessness and embracing the grind. Whenever they played the flashier West Coast, they called it a clash of the Cortinas and the Ferraris. Significant people at the club dispute that there was ever a “no dickheads” policy. But off the field, premiership player Luke Ablett wrote in 2014, the culture was “the character traits that you aspire to. That might be training standards, recovery standards or what you do and where you go on a Saturday night.”