How things have changed since the club joined the VFL/AFL competition. Remarkably, eight of North Melbourne’s first ten captains shared the duties as senior coach at some stage in their playing career.

It’s hard to imagine a playing coach in the modern game.

When Andrew Swallow leads the Roos out on Saturday night, he won’t need to be thinking of potential changes to the line-up, substitutions or match-ups, but one thing hasn’t changed; the expectation on the captain to be a shining example for his team-mates.

Swallow will be the 37th man to proudly take a North Melbourne team into action and at the age of just 24, he’s relatively young for the leadership role. Since 1970 there have only been two captains to have taken the job at a younger age - Wayne Carey and David Dench.

The pair amassed a combined 547 games, seven Syd Barker Medals and four premierships and while Swallow’s not quite at that level yet, he has already claimed two best and fairests.

Highly regarded, Swallow could follow in the illustrious footsteps of Carey, Keith Greig, Noel Teasdale, Allen Aylett and John Dugdale among others.

To highlight just how decorated past captains have been you only have to consider that 11 of the 28 members of the North Team of the Century were North captains.

The first captain to hail from Western Australia, Swallow has a long way to go to catch the club’s two longest serving leaders. Carey holds the record for most games as captain with 184, followed by Wayne Schimmelbusch with 158.

For Swallow, the past means little and his main focus will be on starting on a good note with victory over Essendon on Saturday night.

North Melbourne captains

Player	Years as captain	Career NMFC games
Wels Eicke	1925-26	21
Gerald Donnelly	1927	14
Charlie Tyson	1928-29	38
Johnny Lewis	1930-31	150
Dick Taylor	1932-34	40
Tom Fitzmaurice	1934-35	54
Ted Llewellen	1935	50
Charlie Gaudion	1936	77
Jim Adamson	1937, 40	180
Keith Forbes	1938-39	31
Len Thomas	1940	6
Jock Cordner	1941	88
Bill Findlay	1942-43	168
Dally O'Brien	1944-45	137
Fred Fairweather	1946	54
Kevin Dynon	1947, 52-53	149
Les Foote	1948-51	134
Gerald Marchesi	1954	92
Vic Lawrence	1955	121
Bob Brooker	1956	107
John Brady	1957-59	118
Albert Mantello	1960	107
Allen Aylett	1961-64	220
Noel Teasdale	1965-67	178
John Dugdale	1968-70	248
Barry Goodingham	1971	158
David Dench	1972	275
Barry Davis	1973-75	71
Keith Greig	1976-78	294
Wayne Schimmelbusch	1979-87	306
John Law	1988-89	219
Matthew Larkin	1990-92	172
Wayne Carey	1993-01	244
Anthony Stevens	2002-03	292
Adam Simpson	2004-08	306
Brent Harvey	2009-11	323
Andrew Swallow	2012 -	106

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