Ross Oakley

There's some difference about what date happens.

Alan Schwab, who is the 2IC at the AFL behind Ross Oakley, he gets an invitation to speak at a Port Adelaide function, which he thinks, yes, I'll go ahead and do that Port Adelaide function.

That's interesting.

very soon literally i think in the in the maybe the half an hour or the hour after that invitation lobs there is a third party follow-up the conversation happens we can't we don't know who this third party is but there's an intermediary that says port adelaide want to talk And when we say Port Adelaide want to talk, they want to talk about joining the AFL.

So that is a significant shift and where the AFL has kind of snookered the SA NFL to say, well, you're going to have to think about this now.

So, but...

Given that the AFL has been doing everything with Port Adelaide, as Ross Oakley just said in the clip then, they still want Port Adelaide to be the club.

There's loyalty to Port Adelaide.

Do we keep the Swans and give them some more money or do we allow Carlton to take them over? There was a second option in there too, and it was to merge Brisbane and Sydney and called them the East Coast Bears or perhaps the Northern Bears.

Now, I don't think the league were that serious about that, or this is what Ross Oakley says these days, but at the time, the Swans people said that right up until the vote happened where Sydney was saved, that the AFL commission were trying to get the Swans to accept the Brisbane merger deal because they were worried that there would be no Sydney presence whatsoever.

So the idea was that they would play half their home games in Sydney Half in Brisbane, but they would wear the Swans colours.

So it's a really interesting thing at the time that they would even consider this and think that it's feasible to have a merged club playing in two cities.

He does come back and play all right, but his career pretty much peters out from that point in time.

Another St Kilda player of the year, Ross Oakley.

Ross the boss.

Did his knee in the 1965 second semifinal.

They'll never play an away game.

So this is where Ross Oakley, love him or hate him, has actually played some political brinksmanship here.

So they get to the meeting where the clubs are effectively voting the Swans out of existence.

And as I said, the newspapers say it is all over.

The players move off the field.

As it happens, the boss of the AFL, Ross Oakley, is at the game, which is very handy or not handy, depending on how you turn this.

And he goes up to the commentary box.

And at this stage, there is still some lights in the commentary box.

and the Commission will meet to decide exactly what the consequences of that will be.

All right, so salutes on a whole lot of fronts here.

For Blighty being able to host, salute to Ross Oakley.

This is one of the biggest things that's happened on his watch.

Some preferred it to be in Joondalup.

But ultimately, we get to the end of 1993 and the AFL CEO, Ross Oakley, makes the announcement that this is actually happening.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, I think this is a...

It's a very exciting day for Australian football in Western Australia.

We're delighted to announce that the AFL Commission has approved the entry of a second team from Western Australia into the AFL competition in 1995.

We agree with the Western Australian Football Commission that the preference is that this side is a Fremantle-based team.

And Ross Oakley's announcement there is one of our questions coming through, Shan.

Were they always going to be the Dockers? Well, I'm glad you asked, sir, because Ashley Brown's piece reads, the AFL will finally gain its long-hoped-for 16th team in 1995 when a second Western Australian team joins the competition.

Very strong on it.

In inside football, he goes on this long rant, which includes a live broadcast of the league deciding how many teams they really like in the finals, which I think Ross Oakley ends by saying 16 teams I'd like in the finals.

And he writes, oh dear, it was just a few short weeks ago that visions of the eight only occurred in bad dreams.

You know, those ones where it all seems so real, yet when you wake up and think it through, the scenario was totally impossible.

It reads, between fantasies of glorious revival, this week I pondered the celebration that might have been occurring down Geelong way, Che McIntyre, as in at Ken McIntyre's place because he was from Geelong.

Can't you see it? Jeff Slattery in the kitchen, gleefully preparing the food for a congratulatory dinner party for eight people at eight o'clock.

In the drawing room, Ross Oakley, Ian Collins, and the other four Victorians who agreed with them on the eight were toasting each other with 88 French champagne.

Octogenarian Ken McIntyre rollerbladed around the room, figures of eight, of course, before delighting those present by swinging champagne bottle in one hand from a chandelier.

When it was the true 100th anniversary, you would think, yes.

Would Ross Oakley have stayed on another year to be involved in the centenary season? Yes.

How many times would the lights have gone out in 96 if there was an extra 20 to 30 games played at Waverley? There's lots of stuff we could talk about.

how that may have played out.