AFL champion Lance Franklin calls end to career - The Age

Lance Franklin’s decorated AFL career is over with the Sydney Swans superstar retiring, effective immediately, having “exhausted every last inch out of his mind and body”.

Franklin, 36, told teammates on Monday his career of 354 matches and 1066 goals has come to an end. The champion goalkicker injured his calf and was subbed out of Saturday night’s game against Essendon at Marvel Stadium. It was an inauspicious finish for such a great player.

Swans chief executive Tom Harley and coach John Longmire confirmed the news in a press conference on Monday, which the star forward opted not to attend. He confirmed the news himself on Instagram a short while before then, posting: “What a journey. Thanks to everyone who has been on this crazy ride with me.”

Longmire heaped praise on his spearhead, who rang the coach on Sunday night to tell him he planned to retire after being told his calf injury would take six to eight weeks to recover. Longmire visited the player’s house on Monday morning where Franklin reiterated his decision.

“I was going to ring him, but I was on a plane to come back to Sydney [on Sunday night],” Longmire said. “He rang me when I was sitting on the plane and he was pretty emotional and devastated that could be the way it finished. It certainly sounded like he’d made the call there and then.

“I went to his place this morning, he had a good night’s sleep and he said the last time he had a calf injury like that in the same spot he missed 10 to 12 weeks. The best way to do it was to call it now.

Done: Lance Franklin has announced his retirement from the AFL.Credit: Getty

“He’s probably one of the most competitive people I’ve ever met. He’s extraordinary. He’s one of the all-time greats of Australian football.”

Franklin’s first AFL coach, Alastair Clarkson who coached him at Hawthorn whe he was part of the 2008 and 2013 premiership sides, said it was a testament to Franklin’s loyalty that over his nearly 20 year career he had only had two coaches.

“He retires an icon of the game, and a hero of two clubs that he helped make great in his time at each,” Clarkson said.

“His feats as a player are extraordinary, and this has run parallel to his emergence as a great husband, father and mate. He is selfless, humble, loyal and proud.

“He has set a current day watermark that I believe will be unsurpassed, and the game will miss his theatre and drawing power.

“I feel privileged to share some of his journey. I know his Hawks teammates feel exactly the same.”

Harley also said Franklin is “an icon of the AFL” who “will go down as one of the greatest players to ever play this game”.

“He really has been the player of his generation and transcended the game,” Harley said. “He will be enormously missed, but he goes knowing he’s exhausted every last inch of his mind and body.

“You can probably all appreciate how quickly this has moved. Lance’s immediate focus has been on his family first. We will all hear from Lance at the right time. He certainly knows the impact he’s had on not only Swans fans, but AFL fans and sports fans in general.”

Franklin will leave the Swans as one of the most decorated players in the history of the game, as one of only six players to kick more than 1000 goals in the VFL/AFL.

He is also the most recent player to kick more than 100 goals in a season; a feat he achieved at Hawthorn in the premiership year of 2008. He won two flags with the Hawks, and overall has eight All-Australian blazers, four Coleman medals, a Hawthorn best and fairest, and 12 club leading goalkicker trophies.

Franklin’s defection to the Swans as a free agent after the 2013 season stunned the AFL, given the expectation had been that he was joining the fledgling Greater Western Sydney.

In a move that led to the axing of the controversial cost of living allowance (COLA), Franklin signed a whopping nine-year, $10 million deal to join the 2012 premiers.

The COLA allowance gave the Giants and Swans an extra $1 million in their salary cap, this – in theory – helping the lower-paid players at the clubs deal with Sydney’s cost of living.

However, it became apparent to then AFL chairman Mike Fitzpatrick that the money was allegedly being used for other purposes.

“I was quite disappointed (Franklin chose the Swans),” Fitzpatrick told the ABC in 2016.

“I reckon at the time I was the last defender of COLA because I felt expansion in the north was really important. And the basic argument was about whether COLA was used to get elite players or whether it was used for subsiding the difficulties the players further down the line had in terms of rent and cost of living.

“And that (Franklin) announcement convinced me I had been wrong for a long time.”

Franklin last year took aim at those critics that had doubted whether he would complete his nine-year deal.

“When I first got here, people were knocking that I wouldn’t get there, I wouldn’t make it, I would play for four or five years and that’d be it,” he said.

“I’ve definitely proved them wrong, haven’t I? There’s been a lot of knockers over the years, haven’t there?”

He inked a one-year contract extension leading into last year’s grand final, although he admitted at the time he had been close to retiring.

“50-50 to be honest. But as the year went on and I spoke to the people that I care about, the decision was made clear that I needed to go on and there was unfinished business,” Franklin said.

Longmire praised Franklin’s ability to keep the Swans perennial finals contenders during his time at the club, which is just two points outside the top eight after finding form in the second half of the season.

“I’m sure in the fullness of time he’ll look back on the last few weeks and think, ‘I was still playing pretty good’,” Longmire said. “I think that will give him some comfort.

“I got a bit of a sense of what we were in for at our first training session when we had a couple of helicopters circling above. I thought, ‘this is a bit different’.

“He bought a whole new generation of fans. When you’re going through certain phases of losing players, during that period you’ve got to try to keep being competitive. He helped us do that and helped up keep competitive. That’s always the most important thing from my perspective.”

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2023-07-31 03:23:33Z
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