They sang about honouring their club’s name then ordered strippers ‘asap’

Swans players linked arms in the bowels of the MCG after a professional but workmanlike victory over a struggling Essendon.

“Cheer, cheer the red and the white,” they sang.

“Honour the name by day and by night.”

With the club bound for finals, and on trajectory to seriously contest for the 2026 premiership cup, coach Dean Cox was on a high.

However, within hours the private choices of key members of the group – including star players Isaac Heeney and Chad Warner – would drag their 152-year-old club’s name through the mud for the next three months and heap pressure on the chairmanship of millionaire investment banker Andrew Pridham and his rookie chief executive Matthew Pavlich.

Cox, a former West Coast premiership ruckman, decided to give his men the night off to celebrate, telling them to enjoy themselves, within reason.

The players and staff were not set to fly home until the next morning, thanks to Sydney Airport’s 11pm curfew and the players seven-day break before their last home and away match.

The short story is that beers at the MCG, turned into dinner, which became a pre-dawn August 17 party with three strippers at the Pullman East Melbourne and the now infamous group of Isaac Heeney, Chad Warner, Nick Blakey, James Jordon and Riley Bice, former teammate Taylor Adams and a mystery seventh man.

A distressed woman, a call to police and suddenly the group were part of one of the biggest scandals in AFL history.

Four of the Swans players were informed on Friday they had been cleared over the incident, while Riley Bice, Taylor Adams and the unknown man, had already been told by police they were only being treated as witnesses.

The club is now amid what can only be described as a period of profound reckoning.

The famous “Bloods Culture”, shaped in the early 2000s under then-coach Paul Roos around high standards, a team-first mentality and accountability has come under intense public and internal scrutiny.

Sydney’s pain was compounded last week by the foolish actions of star forward Tom Papley, who was busted driving with a suspended licence and subsequently failed a roadside drug test for methamphetamine. Results from a second test are still pending.

Season 2026 will be one for the Swans and their fans to remember for all the wrong reasons.

Wanted: ‘Topless waitresses. ASAP arrival’

The Swans’ playing group, coaching and other support staff had splintered across Melbourne for their sanctioned night off.

Cox and other members of his coaching staff went out for drinks at a planned get-together at Harlow Bar on Church Street in Richmond, leaving just after midnight.

Swans teammates attended various venues before returning at different times to their Wellington Parade hotel, where players and staff occupied a secure floor. The accommodation had been paid for by the Andrew Dillon-led AFL.

It’s history now how the clutch of five players, Adams and the mystery man ultimately found themselves partying in one room.

Deciding to up the ante on proceedings, one of the group engaged two exotic dancers as “topless waitresses” for an “asap arrival” via an agency called Party Girls Melbourne.

After some mix-up in logistics, three women journeyed to the Pullman for the job, with the trio ending up in a player’s room between 4am and 5am. The players let the women believe they were carpenters and attempted to negotiate a discount.

Drugs were also believed to be in the suite as the party unfolded. However, the Swans teammates have denied being responsible for the drugs being there or taking them.

Amid the high jinks, one of dancers began to experience what has been described as a medical episode, including shortness of breath and anxiety over the close confines of the hotel room, which by that time was filled with 10 people.

She left the room to find some space and fresh air, while her fellow dancers continued on with the players booking.

The woman was outside the room for an extended period, during which time none of the group checked on her welfare.

She found her way downstairs to the hotel lobby, still scantily clad – effectively in her work gear – seeking assistance.

Meantime, the other two women finished their time with the players, got dressed, gathered their things and went downstairs, where they found their companion.

The pair sought to regain access to the secure floor where the Swans were staying to help the woman retrieve her belongings, left in the party suite.

Without a hotel swipe card or any authority from a hotel guest, the women were denied re-entry.

By this time, about 7.30am, the lobby of the Pullman was coming to life with guests heading to the dining room for breakfast and Swans officials and players packing up and preparing to board a bus bound for their flight home.

The increasingly distressed woman began confronting Swans staff in their red club shirts.

Photographs later emerged of Cox talking to one of the women in the lobby, while the Swans head of media, Tom Chadwick, and the club’s head of football, Leon Cameron, were among club officials on the scene seeking to triage the fast-moving events.

Amid a chaotic scene, officials were starting to comprehend a sketchy picture of the party that had unfolded with their players and the strippers in a room upstairs.

Aware of the gravity of the unfolding situation, Swans officials sought to contain and defuse the crisis, but instead managed to antagonise the increasingly irate women, who felt disrespected and disregarded.

By coincidence, a group of Emirates flight attendants in uniform who were walking through the hotel also copped a spray from the women, who thought the crew’s red uniform meant they also worked for the Swans.

The situation in the lobby became so loud and volatile police were called in.

A long drive home

Oblivious to the unfolding carnage at street level, the players who had partied all night, had returned to their rooms to pack, check out and board the team bus.

Heeney, on his way out, happily posed in the lobby for a photo with a five-year-old fan. In the snap, which was timestamped 8.16am, the star midfielder is smiling widely. Cox can be seen in the background seeking to deal with what would become football’s biggest story of the year.

None of the Pullman five took the team bus to the airport that morning.

Blakey recalled being called on his mobile phone by a team manager and told to get off and come back inside the hotel.

He maintains he had stumbled across the party, gone inside for a short while before calling it a night, with no knowledge of any incident that had blown up from the gathering.

The story broke within hours of the lobby altercation, and a media contingent watched police come and go from the hotel.

Swans officials, meanwhile, arranged two rental cars in the hotel’s basement.

The Swans’ head of welfare, Brett Kirk, drove Warner, Blakey, Jordon and Bice up the Hume and back to the Harbour City, while Heeney remained in Melbourne.

That afternoon, he voluntarily went to Victoria Police offering to make a statement – which was rejected. Heeney was sent away and then bundled into a car with Cameron and Chadwick for the long drive back to Sydney.

Secret recording

The footy universe was set alight by the unfolding police investigation.

The AFL rumour mill went ballistic, with wild, unfounded claims of a thrown sex toy, broken teeth and sextortion.

Everyone had a take on what had gone on, who the women were, their motivations and what should happen next.

A man associated with one of the women also threw a grenade into the mix, when he spoke to a party close to the club, who then relayed that a possible recording existed of the women discussing the events in the hotel room.

Despite not knowing if the recording was real or what it contained, the Swans, via media man Chadwick, sought to alert key footy journalists of the recording’s existence.

The club went on to tell the AFL’s integrity unit of the alleged recording, with the league then informing police.

In what has become an intriguing side story to the fate of the Pullman five, the recording itself has become the subject of police inquiries.

The man’s home was raided and the recording seized, with an investigation into the man allegedly attempting to pervert the course of justice still under way.

A fresh start?

The diminished Swans’ playing group put on a brave finals run, but lost the preliminary final against Fremantle.

The Pullman five were suspended for the remainder of the 2026 season for breaching club’s behaviour standards.

Blakey has since left for a fresh start with the Kangaroos.

Heeney, previously one of the hottest properties in footy, has been dropped by sponsors, business partners and maybe even his fiancee Steffie Waters.

None of the players were eligible to be selected in the AFL’s annual All-Australian team, although the Swans did allow Heeney to be named as their best and fairest player for the year, a decision that created much blowback from some sections of the community.

His newly published series of children’s books were pulped; podcasts were taken down; promotional material and ads were pulled; and Heeney was dumped from a business that conducted school holiday footy camps with AFL stars for kids.

While some sponsors have walked, long-term backer of the club QBE has stuck around. The insurer has now sponsored Sydney for 40 years, but with its current contract set to expire next year, time will only tell whether the relationship can endure the turbulence – and negative publicity – that this year has delivered.

The club is amid a sweeping cultural review by an independent consultant, while Pridham has held firm, for now, against calls for his exit after 12 years as chair and 24 years as a club director.

In early September, the Pullman five became the Pullman four after Bice (and Adams) were cleared of any wrongdoing.

Isaac Heeney’s full statement

“I welcome today’s announcement from Victorian Police.

The past three months have been incredibly difficult for my family, Steffie and those close to me. Watching my family carry the weight of this has been heartbreaking.

To my family and friends, your love and loyalty has meant more than words can do justice.

To those that have never doubted me and stood by my side in solidarity - thank you. I know it has not been easy in the face of such intense public scrutiny. I will never forget your support.

To the entire Sydney Swans Club - my teammates, coaches, the board, our sponsors, and our loyal members and fans - thank you for keeping faith in me.

The Swans have given me an opportunity to live out a childhood dream and I am fully focused on repaying that faith by being the best person and player I can be.”

On Friday, the others joined them. The relief for all concerned – the players themselves, their teammates, their families, the club and the AFL – was palpable.

And the saga is not over yet.

Each of three women have engaged lawyers to pursue civil legal action against the club and some of the players. Two are represented by Carbone Lawyers and the third by Slater and Gordon.

In a criminal proceeding, the standard of proof is beyond reasonable doubt, while in a civil action the standard of proof is the balance of probabilities.

John Karantzis, of Carbone, told this masthead on Friday that his “clients will vigorously fight and proceed with their claims”.

The Sydney Swans, their Pullman five and the honour of their name are not out of the woods yet as the three women involved have vowed to push on with civil action against the players.