Buddy Useless: Has Franklin damned the Swans?

GWS Giants kicked six final term goals to record an historic 15.9 (99) to 9.13 (67) win over the Swans.

He's either pondering what might have been if he'd signed for the Giants or he's not. You decide. Source: News Corp Australia

THERE are two ways of looking at the Sydney Swans' shock loss to the Greater Western Sydney Giants on the weekend.

One is that the Swans were ambushed by a keener, hungrier team with everything to play for, that the wet surface didn't suit the Swans, that three of their best players in Tippett, Goodes and Kieren Jack were unavailable, that every team has a bad day, that first round form is meaningless, and that big Buddy Franklin is still gelling with his teammates.

And then there's the other way of looking at it. The other way of looking at it goes like this: This is all karma. And the Swans will never win a premiership while Lance Franklin plays in red-and-white.

$10 million bench warmer... not necessarily what the Swans had in mind when they inked the massive deal. Source: News Corp Australia

This is not to bag Franklin. Everyone has a bad day. Indeed, those who bag Franklin for his often sketchy set-shots conveniently tend to overlook the fact that the 196cm giant can boot them on the run from 60 metres.

That's giant with a lower case g, by the way, not Giant with a capital G. Franklin could have been a giant with a capital G, but chose instead to become a Swan at the last minute, as we all know.

To be brutally frank, The timing of that deal, and the $10 million scale of it, seemed a little "unSwanslike". Anyone who was there at the announcement last year will tell you it just had an air of unfamiliar arrogance to it.

The Swans are a team built on mateship, on guts, on all for one and one for all (words which are part of the Brisbane Lions club song but which always seemed to epitomise the Swans better than anyone).

This is a team which has pulled off the incredibly unlikely feat of forging a blue-collar, hard-working, famously dickhead-free identity in Sydney, the showiest of all Australian cities. That's like opening a successful hotel without a casino in Las Vegas.

He's down but hopefully not out yet. Source: News Corp Australia

Then the Swans go and get on the nose by recruiting Kurt Tippett at the end of 2012 in an acrimonious dispute with Adelaide. And then this Franklin thing late last year.

Meanwhile, the Swans head office continues to bleat and moan about losing the Cost of Living Allowance because, hey, obviously all Swans players are FORCED to live in expensive beachside apartments.

This club is still to be admired. The old South Melbourne "Bloods" culture, which Sydney mystifyingly ignored for many years, years before rediscovering it in the mid 2000s, lives on. Don't forget their best player is Australian of the Year, and deservedly too.

Also, it's not like this is the Swans' first high-profile recruitment of a key forward.

They wouldn't have won the flag in 2005 without having earlier recruited superstar Barry Hall, nor made the 1996 decider (and achieved legitimacy in Sydney) without snaring the services of Tony Lockett.

Well he boosts their profile in the social pages, that's for sure. Source: Supplied

But this one feels a little different. After the way Franklin teased the Giants by almost signing with them, do you think maybe he's cursed the Swans?

Last week was only one week, and the Swans will no doubt finish above the Giants on the ladder in 2014, but this is a debate worth having, don't you think?