DENNIS CARROLL WAS a model of stoicism as captain for seven years through the Sydney Swans' most chaotic era.
Yet all these years on, a hint of exasperation creeps into his voice.
"In the end, it was an absolute circus," he tells ESPN.
A circus is an apt way to describe Australian rules football's brief seduction, consummation and protracted divorce with private ownership.
Garry Linnell, who chronicled all of these dramas in The Age and later his book 'Football Ltd', uses other terms to describe the central figure in the episode.
"He (Doctor Geoffrey Edelsten) was seen as a cowboy and a bulls--- artist," he says.
"But a lot of people thought that was what Sydney needed."
The VFL's marketing guru of the time, Jim McKay, agreed then and reflectively, even now.
"Sydney is not like Melbourne," he says.
"Razzle-dazzle me, win for me now or get out of town."
40 years ago this week, the then-VFL sold the Sydney Swans.
Why it happened, the glittering beginning and the poisonous ending is one of the more extraordinary chain of events in footy history.
It's also why Australian rules football remains an outlier in world sport by resisting private ownership for more than 30 years.
BEFORE HE'D TURNED 25, Carroll had packed in three careers worth of off-field drama.
He came into the side as South Melbourne was being torn apart by its proposed move to Sydney to save the club, lived through all the teething problems of transplanting a club, and then the challenge of trying to win over a new city.
"We were seen as sporting pariahs, coming into the rugby league and rugby union market - how dare we come in and put our flag in the ground," he remembers.
"The crowds and commercial support didn't match the costs of it all."
By the summer of 1984/85, with young talent escaping back to Melbourne, he was well aware the Sydney experiment was on the edge of oblivion.
"Other clubs were feasting on the carcass of the unfinancial Swans," Carroll says.
In the meantime, it could be argued that those same Victorian clubs were not prepared to let the league invest thoroughly in its Sydney incursion.
John Hennessy had been the VFL's corporate planner, originally projecting the Sydney move, and was one of those placed on the board to oversee the club through its early years.
"It was vastly under-resourced, and by 1985 it was financially in crisis," he says today.
The other VFL clubs were quite happy to pull the plug on life support, resulting in what Hennessy terms "last resort thinking."
The words 'private ownership' were being gently mooted by those around the club and the league as a possible solution.
"I can't even recall private ownership being mentioned once as part of a plan before it happened. It was never seen as the great salvation for the future."
Bob Pritchard, Kerry Packer's Marketing Director at Publishing and Broadcasting Limited (PBL), had long thought private ownership in Australian sport was the future.
When he heard the VFL were desperate he called McKay.
"Bob said 'I've got the guy who can do this, money is no object'," McKay remembers.
Within days McKay and Pritchard were at the Regent Hotel in Sydney meeting Doctor Geoffrey Edelsten.
McKay walked away thinking that Edelsten was serious. Given the clubs had declared that there would be no more money, he put the wheels in motion with Hennessy and the VFL.
Pritchard joined Edelsten as his hype-driving running mate, McKay became their confidante with VFL knowledge.
On January 10, 1985 when the news broke that a footy club could be bought and sold it was a rude shock for traditionalists. Edelsten told The Age "I am interested in the Swans and have sounded the VFL out, but there's a long, long way to go."
As the country returned from their summer holidays it appeared others were serious too; ultra-successful businessmen Basil Sellers and Dick Pratt put their hands up too.
Yet Edelsten was the loudest of those bidding voices.
"The essence of Edelsten meant publicity and promotion followed him everywhere, including Melbourne," McKay says.
Thus the Edelsten pitch revelled in enormous free publicity as opposed to his competitors.
Long before his infamous Brownlow Medal entrances, 'The Doc', as Carroll and Swans players will forever refer to him, was already making a reputation built on the sort of saccharine schmaltz that could induce nausea.
His signature was a chain of 24-hour medical centres that looked more like Las Vegas show bars than somewhere to treat the ailing.
"They had grand pianos in the foyer," Carroll laughs.
Edelsten's ego was intrinsic to his motivation to buy the Swans, as was the notoriety and acceptance it would add to his controversial business interests.
Yet, one thing detractors and supporters alike can agree on is that he was committed to Australian Rules Football (he'd previously been a lifelong Carlton supporter).
The straightest-shooter of all of his Swans players, superstar Greg Williams told 3AW Radio upon his death in 2021 that he "loved" Edelsten.
"He was a great guy with a great heart, he loved the Swans...he loved football."
Eventually he and the measured Sellers emerged as the two most serious suitors, dueling out the process over the first half of 1985.
If their business backgrounds were different (Sellers' built in various traditional industries over the previous decades, Edelsten the shooting star adding showbiz to the mundane), their philosophies on how to run the Swans was as wide apart as the Grand Canyon.
Sellers told a radio interview that it would take his consortium three to five years to make the Swans a "real force". Edelsten retorted in the Sydney Morning Herald that "Sydney won't wait for five years for him," and that his rival was too conservative to run a Sydney club.
Pritchard showed the world that the flashy Edelsten was the man for the times.
The PR machine talked about his fleet of luxury cars and even had him so successful that he'd gifted his young model wife Leanne a custom pink helicopter for her 21st birthday.
"He didn't own it, he hired it," Linnell laughs.
"He was obsessed with getting his name and face in the paper, but he and Pritchard understood Sydney and they captured the public imagination."
That didn't impress the recently installed, and more traditional, VFL Commissioners, who favoured the Sellers approach. One week the media would have Sellers as winner, the next it was Edelsten upping the ante.
Yet no matter how garish Edelsten was, the other VFL clubs held the vote on the auction. Their main concern was the number on the cheque that they would get a slice of.
So as deadline approached, Edelsten outbid Sellers with a new offer of $6.5 million that included an initial $1.5 million licence fee sweetener that the Victorian clubs could share, and the Swans were his.
On the night of 31 July, 1985 he earnestly declared "it is a great investment and history will prove me right". It is a statement that sounds absurd 40 years later,
The new owner quickly upset fans by musing about changing the club's colours ("Green and gold sounds like a good selection") but he did win over his players.
"My first impressions were positive," Carroll remembers.
"He was engaging and he did everything in his powers to make sure the players were looked after."
He also told them he had money to spend to make the Swans better.
"We had the underpinnings of a good team. As a player all I was thinking about was 'we're going to move up the ladder and challenge for finals'. We were genuinely excited."
There was excitement ahead for the Swans.
Yet that wasn't half of it.
"EDELSTEN WAS A mysterious figure because nobody could quite work out how he'd made his money, and if it was even there," says Linnell, a veteran of all the machinations in real time.
"He wasn't given the scrutiny he should have, both from the media or the VFL."
Forty years on from the night of the sale Linnell stands by the story he uncovered a few years later for his book.
Pritchard told him that amid the jubilation Edelsten took him aside and confessed that "the only problem is I don't have a dime. I have no f------ money whatsoever. So now we have to go out there tomorrow and find someone with the dough."
Edelsten would deny it until his dying day, even calling Linnell on radio with a threat to sue him.
The circumstantial evidence comes down heavily on Linnell's side and today McKay corroborates the story, recalling the phone call he received from Pritchard the morning after the sale.
"He said 'we've got one problem....the bloke's got no dough'."
McKay's jaw dropped. He called VFL boss Jack Hamilton with the news and was similarly greeted with stunned silence.
Both he and Hennessy remember multiple accounting firms, including the league's own auditors, giving the Doc the all-clear.
"We had to accept that as gospel," Hennessy says.
Aside from the finances, Edelsten was also embroiled in some incriminating dealings with underworld figure Christopher Flannery.
Flannery's nickname was 'rent-to-kill' - a literal description of his line of work.
Clearly 'brand management' didn't play the same role in 1985 footy as it does in 2025.
Yet this was all peripheral to the players.
"He said he was going to get new players here, and on that promise he delivered," Carroll says.
Greg Williams, Gerard Healy (destined to win two of the next three Brownlow Medals), Merv Neagle, Jim Edmond, David Bolton, and Bernard Toohey were among the quality that flew north, lured by the Sydney sell and the Doctor's chequebook.
It could have been more, Carroll remembers how close they were to snaring stars Simon Madden, Maurice Rioli, and Gary Buckenara as well.
"For the Doc to attract those players...we were all in."
The splurge clearly broke the rules of the recently instituted salary cap, but the $20,000 fine was a tickle with a feather rather than a rap over the knuckles.
The spending spree was only matched by the promotional blitz.
For all the negatives that would transpire, Linnell believes the privately-owned Swans taught footy how to sell itself.
"It wouldn't say it was sophisticated compared to what you see now with marketing campaigns, but it was the first time Aussie rules footy had ever encountered slick presentation.
"How do we market it as a product rather than a sport? That really set the tone."
The Eastern Suburbs niche, away from the heartlands of league in the west, and Union in the north, was where Pritchard and McKay targeted.
Soon the Swans were everywhere - they even had Swans-branded nail files distributed through beauty salons.
Carroll, who was named captain for 1986, remembers how things changed overnight.
All of the sudden he was getting flown by sea plane for promotional events around the state.
"Before that we would have had to get a train ticket."
Amid the hoopla, however, one decision rankled Carroll and gave a window to the future.
First year coach John Northey had made a huge impression with the players in 1985, but Northey wasn't a sexy name for Edelsten's assault on Sydney.
Reigning premiership coach Kevin Sheedy was wooed, but eventually the legendaryTom Hafey was hired.
Northey was sacked.
"The way I viewed it, that was because of Tommy's profile and ability to get cut through with the Sydney public and corporate world," Carroll says.
"I enjoyed Tommy's coaching, but I was bitterly disappointed to lose John Northey. With these recruits, I think he could have taken us further."
That Northey would soon turn a less-talented Melbourne side into a regular finals team backs Carroll's view.
Read Part 2 of Shannon Gill's feature on the 40th anniversary of the private sale of the Sydney Swans to Geoffrey Edelsten here.