This is from a Facebook site VFL Rewind Radio Program about David Schwarz, one of my favourites, a player who could have been anything, give or take an ACL or three. And when he came back from his surgeries, he was still a champion.

David Schwarz - 173 AFL Games. Melbourne BNF winner, One of the great centre half forwards of the 90’s. Very strong & Powerful.

David signed at Melbourne Demons at just 14.

David was a star at a young age playing junior footy for Sunbury before Melbourne invited him to come play and he first began in the under 19’s before making his AFL Debut in 1991.

Image today one of the brightest AFL stars quitting to go work in a country town, well David did it at the back end of 91. He decided momentarily that footy wasn’t for him and spent a good part of quarter the year away from footy.

Thankfully he was talked out of it and came back in round 2 in 1992.

92 was a breakout year for the Ox playing 22 games and averaging 16 disposals a game.

93 was a challenging year but 94 is when we seen his best. He kicked 60 goals in 94 and looked like he was about to challenge Wayne Carey to be one of the great centre half forwards of the game for years to come.

This is unfortunately where the word knee enters the conversation. David first did his ACL in early 95 and defied the odds and came back 16 weeks later. In that return game he kicked 3 goals but sadly the week after he ruptured the ACL again.

After taking the rest of 95 off he headed to Albury to play a practice game and did his knee again, resulting in missing the entire 96 season.

It was a different time back then with knees. It’s not like today where we know it’s a 12 month absence including rehab, players often came back earlier but run the risk the ACL ligament hadn’t repaired fully.

Round 11 1997. Pretty much 2 and a half years of no footy and David come back and performed well kicking 18 goals from 10 games.

From then on David became a regular again until his retirement in 2002 with 1999 arguably being his best year after the knee injuries winning the Melbourne Bnf.

In 2000 in Queens Kings Birthday Vs Collingwood he had a grear game kicking 2 goals and having 20 disposals. In 2000 David wouid take his Dees to a grand final and he had a great year kicking 31 goals

He was a leader on the field, leading by example with his toughness.

David retired in 2002 on 173 games. In his prime he was one of the toughest players we ever seen, injuries sadly stopped us from seeing his best but it was great he got to 173 games and finish his career off.

Well done on a great career David

Late post!

Still my all time favourite. Loved how he came back from the 3rd reco, adjusted to the limitations in his body and won a B&F.

Edited 17 hours ago17 hr by Somereset

He's had an amazing life. When he was something like 10 he witnessed his father being murdered. Obviously that would affect someone and ended up with a crippling gambling addiction that almost destroyed everything including friendships and relationships. Thankfully he conquered that and turned his life around.

I also remember one night that he was on the Footy Show. Melbourne were that week/month were the laughing stock of the league and Schwarz sat there taking all the barbs. Then that f****** Sam Newman congratulated Ox about his 150th game and walked over to him with a gift in a box. Schwarz could so easily have retired after all the slings and arrows way earlier so his milestone was a big deal. Then this happened .....

https://youtu.be/HBw2XjG5eKA?si=96jXI6nesYsJ1DN4

29 minutes ago, Somereset said:

Still my all time favourite. Loved how he came back from the 3rd reco, adjusted to the limitations in his body and won a B&F.

Very Jack Dyer like in this regard!

Up until the knee tragedies by far the best key forward i had seen at the Dees .Just so powerful in the air and mobile for his size .An inexpressible talent.

1 hour ago, Go Ds said:

He's had an amazing life. When he was something like 10 he witnessed his father being murdered. Obviously that would affect someone and ended up with a crippling gambling addiction that almost destroyed everything including friendships and relationships. Thankfully he conquered that and turned his life around.

I also remember one night that he was on the Footy Show. Melbourne were that week/month were the laughing stock of the league and Schwarz sat there taking all the barbs. Then that f****** Sam Newman congratulated Ox about his 150th game and walked over to him with a gift in a box. Schwarz could so easily have retired after all the slings and arrows way earlier so his milestone was a big deal. Then this happened .....

https://youtu.be/HBw2XjG5eKA?si=96jXI6nesYsJ1DN4

Jeezus, I would've taken that second opportunity...

I have such great memories of late '94. Apart from our winning GF that final against Carlton might be my favourite ever Melbourne game ( live or on TV). Weeks earlier Melbourne had managed maybe 0.7 in the third quarter in their Carlton game only to see Carlton kick two late opportune goals and win running away in the last. We went into the final as 7th vs 2nd placed Carlton. They were maybe 4 goals up early in the second quarter. Then something clicked and some of our younger players stepped up and in a jiffy we scrubbed their lead and (almost like a mini version of the 21 GF) took over in the second half. Schwarz, especially, was amazing that days. The highlights of him at the time had our fans suddenly dreaming that with this Carey-like up and comer a flag might finally not be far off. There is overlap in these clips but my, at the time every time Schwarz went near the ball you'd get excited. Just look at the midair blind turn Ox did agsinst the Bulldogs about 11.25 in the long "before knee"...video! What might have been.

(BTW it sounds like Schwarz was so deep in gambling debt on the day of the Carlton game he had to confront the coaches and confess all... maybe even ask for a loan. Maybe he could've barely touched the ball that day and have been forgiven.)

(FWIW Gary Lyon broke records in the Dogs game with 9 goals in a final)

3 hours ago, Go Ds said:

He's had an amazing life. When he was something like 10 he witnessed his father being murdered. Obviously that would affect someone and ended up with a crippling gambling addiction that almost destroyed everything including friendships and relationships. Thankfully he conquered that and turned his life around.

I also remember one night that he was on the Footy Show. Melbourne were that week/month were the laughing stock of the league and Schwarz sat there taking all the barbs. Then that f****** Sam Newman congratulated Ox about his 150th game and walked over to him with a gift in a box. Schwarz could so easily have retired after all the slings and arrows way earlier so his milestone was a big deal. Then this happened .....

https://youtu.be/HBw2XjG5eKA?si=96jXI6nesYsJ1DN4

First world problem I know, but this makes it easier to open.

That f****** Newman

24 minutes ago, Go Ds said:

final)

24 minutes ago, Go Ds said:

Gary Lyon broke records in the Dogs game with 9 goals in a final)

10*

14 minutes ago, Ghostwriter said:

First world problem I know, but this makes it easier to open.

That f****** Newman

I hope when he dies that's what's on Sam's gravestone.

5 hours ago, Go Ds said:

I have such great memories of late '94. Apart from our winning GF that final against Carlton might be my favourite ever Melbourne game ( live or on TV). Weeks earlier Melbourne had managed maybe 0.7 in the third quarter in their Carlton game only to see Carlton kick two late opportune goals and win running away in the last. We went into the final as 7th vs 2nd placed Carlton. They were maybe 4 goals up early in the second quarter. Then something clicked and some of our younger players stepped up and in a jiffy we scrubbed their lead and (almost like a mini version of the 21 GF) took over in the second half. Schwarz, especially, was amazing that days. The highlights of him at the time had our fans suddenly dreaming that with this Carey-like up and comer a flag might finally not be far off. There is overlap in these clips but my, at the time every time Schwarz went near the ball you'd get excited. Just look at the midair blind turn Ox did agsinst the Bulldogs about 11.25 in the long "before knee"...video! What might have been.

(BTW it sounds like Schwarz was so deep in gambling debt on the day of the Carlton game he had to confront the coaches and confess all... maybe even ask for a loan. Maybe he could've barely touched the ball that day and have been forgiven.)

(FWIW Gary Lyon broke records in the Dogs game with 9 goals in a final)

Two of my favourite games of footy. That team was good enough to win a grand final, if only we could have kept them all on the park.

Been following the Dees a long time. I've got pre knee Schwarz second only to Robbie.

Fair gap to third

If he didn't do his knee and Jakovich didn't do his back, just imagine them at FF and CHF for a decade.

Pre knee Schwarz would have changed the game, he was a freak

5 hours ago, Rodney (Balls) Grinter said:

Two of my favourite games of footy. That team was good enough to win a grand final, if only we could have kept them all on the park.

Yep, Schwarz barely played for the next two and a half years. Sean Charles and Pike kicked bags in the Carlton win and I'm sure we expected the rampaging Jakovich to be back early 95. So 3 rising stars and a missing star and the future looked so bright. But as well as Schwarz Charles played few games for the next two years plus Jako never played for us again, and Pike didn't either (but won flags at two other clubs.) So much bad luck.

2 hours ago, Go Ds said:

Yep, Schwarz barely played for the next two and a half years. Sean Charles and Pike kicked bags in the Carlton win and I'm sure we expected the rampaging Jakovich to be back early 95. So 3 rising stars and a missing star and the future looked so bright. But as well as Schwarz Charles played few games for the next two years plus Jako never played for us again, and Pike didn't either (but won flags at two other clubs.) So much bad luck.

Yep, those guys were great, Pike and Jacko were definitely also personal favourites of mine, but to also have stars like Lyon, Stynes, Wight, Tingay, Viney, Neitz and also some really serviceable depth and quality role players beneath them. Just check out the team list from that season. I had to search it up as my memory was somewhat letting be down beyond Lyon, Schwatz:

2	Stephen Tingay	24	8
3	Garry Lyon	24	79
4	Chris Sullivan	11	3
5	David Schwarz	25	60
6	Glenn Lovett	11	11
7	Darren Kowal	14	2
8	Graeme Yeats	19	0
9	David Neitz	24	2
10	Martin Pike	16	25
11	Jim Stynes	25	10
12	Todd Viney	25	3
13	Allen Jakovich	13	51
14	Rod Grinter	9	2
15	Paul Hopgood	6	1
16	Andy Lovell	24	29
17	Brett Lovett	25	14
18	Sean Charles	13	24
19	Paul Prymke	24	1
20	Matthew Febey	22	4
21	Steven Febey	25	3
22	Jeff Hilton	19	9
23	Kevin Dyson	18	6
24	Phil Gilbert	10	5
25	Jason Norrish	15	1
26	Greg Doyle	13	8
27	Sean Wight	24	0
28	Glenn Molloy	6	1
29	Andrew Obst	16	3
34	Dean Irving	6	2
35	Bradley Campbell	1	0
37	Andrew Lamprill	4	1
41	Peter Rohde	14	2

We were red hot going into that finals series. If only we'd won a few more games earlier in the season and got ourselves a top 4 spot. Travelling to Perth to play a rested, well drilled West Coast in the prelim killed us, just like it did in 2018.

Edited 49 minutes ago49 min by Rodney (Balls) Grinter