The Sydney Swans are big game hunters.
They kind of embody the city in that way.
They want stars, glitz and glamour. Often, they want to import it.
They’re like the Lakers.
Sure, they home grow talent, but when they’re looking for a cherry on top, since the mid 90s they’ve gone with Demott Brereton, Tony Lockett, Barry Hall, Buddy Franklin, and now Charlie Curnow.
While they’ve not always turned into premiership glory, each of Lockett, Hall, and Franklin were stars for the Swans and made the Swans a name brand in the AFL.
But with Curnow, my fear is that they’re barking up the wrong tree. This player is not Lockett or Franklin. He’s far closer to the broken down version of Brereton that the Swans got.
Curnow is a gifted player that had a chance to vault himself into the league’s upper echelon, but he didn’t do it and is now injured beyond repair.
Charlie Curnow is what would have happened if Will Hunting never took a job but kept on relying on obscure precedents to get out of criminal charges. Will would have been a legend in the Boston courts and not much else.
Curnow’s career will be remembered the same way. He’s a “the best athlete at your high school” type.
You can reasonably categorise him that way because every athlete that has the potential to be great gets a moment where they can stamp their greatness with certainty.
Some rise to it and some don’t.
Take Buddy Franklin in 2007. 2007 was Buddy’s breakout year where he kicked 73 goals and looked set to become a superstar.
The game to catapult him into superstardom was that first elimination final he played against Adelaide. Nobody who watched it will forget how he played in that game, kicking 7. Beyond that, he kicked one of the most clutch, high difficulty goals in living memory to win the game (non-Dom Sheed edition).
The year after he kicked 100 goals and we’re off to the races with one of the greatest players that’s ever lived.
Dustin Martin 2017 finals series did a similar thing. It minted him.
But players don’t always rise to the moment.
Take Tex Walker, the toast of the AFL in 2017 after dragging Adelaide from tragedy to triumph, leading to a would-be coronation in the 2017 Grand Final. Winning that game would have cemented him as one of the seminal captains of the era.
But Tex had just 10 disposals and kicked 2 goals, only one when the game was there to be won, and then proceeded to embarrass himself and the club for years after.
He didn’t take his moment.
Charlie Curnow didn’t either.
The moment that he could have done it was the 2023 finals.
After a career beset by injuries, 2022 was the year he got his legs back under him and 2023 was the year that it all came together.
He was the springy, freak athlete we thought he was and he had end product too. He kicked 81 goals and his pairing with Harry McKay was the best that it ever looked, as a second half surge drove the Blues to fifth on the ladder.
The finals series, even just one great final, was the time to mint him.
He failed.
He kicked a single goal in all three of Carlton’s finals that year and never had more than 10 disposals in a game. He had a chance to grab a season by the scruff of the neck and just…didn’t.
He was blanketed by defences that were keyed in on him and, unlike the great ones, couldn’t work out how to take over a different way.
He couldn’t find a way to get 15 rebounds like Kobe Bryant did in the game 7 of the 2010 NBA Finals.
Since that year, he’s never been quite the same player.
He’s not had a season since where he’s kicked more than three goals a game, nor has he kicked more than 60.
2025 was his lowest goal output since his return from his multiple knee injuries kicking less than two goals a game for the first time since 2022 and kicking his fewest total goals since 2017.
More than just the output, since 2023 Curnow simply hasn’t moved the same way. This is a player who played 15 games over three years between 2019 and 2021 because of chronic knee injuries.
At some point, they were going to come back to bite him. My fear is that day has come, and Sydney was too late to notice.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Sydney can sprinkle their magic key forward dust on Curnow like they have on the other ones they’ve imported.
Beyond that, nobody has made it harder on their forwards than Carlton over the last few years with their haphazard, bomb entries. Maybe Curnow’s obvious physical decline can be offset by Sydney having a style of play where they occasionally hit leading forwards rather than sitting the ball on their heads.
But I have my doubts. It looks to me like Sydney bet on the wrong horse, and they’ll be banished to the bottom of the eight this season.