Outgoing Sydney CEO Andrew Ireland has shed some light on a few of the club's recent high-profile dealings, including details around the moves of Lance Franklin and Tom Mitchell.
Ireland has been at the Swans for 17 years and was instrumental in the deal that saw Franklin sign a nine-year deal with the club at the end of the 2013 season.
The prevailing thought at the time was Sydney had swooped in late to pluck the free agent from under GWS' noses, though Ireland said that wasn't the case.
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"I probably thought we had him for the best part of eight or nine months but I didn't know because the reality is you cannot do a deal...because in the end, whatever we offered, Hawthorn could've matched," Ireland said in the interview with Mike Sheahan on sydneyswans.com.au.
"When Lance announced that he was coming to us, we still didn't know because we then had to submit the contract and you're waiting to see what Hawthorn would do with it.
"I don't think he seriously considered anywhere else."
The veteran administrator revealed that himself, Franklin, Franklin's manager Liam Pickering and Swans coach John Longmire met at his house in January 2013, and again in the middle of that year for a medical.
Ireland said that the 'go-home factor' even played a role in bringing the key forward North - Franklin had recently started seeing Sydney-based model Jesinta Campbell.
"One of the motivators for us... was we'd heard Lance was starting to come here more regularly to see Jesinta," Ireland said.
"A go-home factor was sort of coming in to play."
Ireland said by the time GWS tried to recruit Franklin, they'd missed the boat.
"The Giants made an approach to [Pickering] probably four or five months after we had already started discussions.
"I think they were always late to the party and he was never going there."
That deal eventually saw the AFL take away Sydney's cost of living allowance, a move which Ireland said hamstrung their recruitment and retention efforts for the next few seasons.
It was that salary cap pressure that eventually saw midfielder Mitchell leave the club.
"People think 'is it because we were paying Lance too much?'," Ireland said of Mitchell's departure.
"The reality is, we got caught in a position where it was making a decision around Tom, Isaac Heeney and Callum Mills, because North came really strongly to try and secure Isaac and the reality is we had to pay more than you'd normally think you'd pay a player coming into his fourth year."
Mitchell has excelled in first two seasons at Hawthorn, most recently winning the Brownlow Medal in 2018.
Ireland said the Swans were under no illusions of how good a player they had on their hands.
"We made a huge commitment to him when he came on to our list originally through father-son," Ireland said.
"The Giants made a huge, multi-million dollar offer to him and we had to go close to matching that to get him on to our list, so he was exceptionally well paid through the early years with us.
"We only did that because we thought he was going to be a very good player."
Ireland will move onto Sydney's board in 2019, with former head of football and Geelong premiership skipper taking up the CEO role.
