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How to tune into Sport NationHow ex-Saint and Swan almost played on with a third AFL club after retirement
Lachlan Geleit • February 9th, 2025 3:51 pm
Former Swan and Saint Dan Hannebery has reflected on the time he almost pursued an AFL lifeline with Gold Coast in 2022.
News emerged of the Suns’ interest in the midfielder only a couple of months after his AFL retirement, and Hannebery confirmed that talks were legitimate between he and Gold Coast coach Stuart Dew at the time.
Hannebery says he initially knocked back the offer to continue his 226-game career at the time as he was fresh off stepping away from the game having retired due to fatigue and exhaustion.
“I had a conversation with Stuart Dew and Rhyce Shaw around (2022) Grand Final time,” Hannebery told SEN’s This is Your Journey – thanks to Tobin Brothers.
“It was when you're sort of doing your lap of honour and you're kind of shutting up shop.
“Going back to that mental toll, I was so cooked, mentally and physically, so exhausted going, ‘You know what? I don't know if I can go up there and give it my absolute all’.
“At the end of it (my career) was sending me insane. I was going seriously nuts towards the end of it.
“It was just that the cost was probably starting to creep above what the benefit was of playing.”
While he initially knocked back the offer, Hannebery says the flame to continue playing on in 2023 was reignited after an off-season holiday.
The former midfielder says he even tried to take up the offer come November of 2022, but by then, he had left it too late for Gold Coast to conjure a deal.
“But then I went overseas with a couple of Swans players,” Hannebery said.
“I actually went to Europe, came back, started training again and had a real appetite for it.
“Around Grand Final time I told them, ‘I'm done. I’m not going to take it up. I can’t commit’.
“But then around November, I sort of had a bit of a fire in the belly and rang Dewy and said, ‘I’m keen again, let's go’.
“They made a couple of other calls and it never sort of materialised and unfortunately didn't get off the ground.
“But if I had of accepted it around Grand Final time, it probably would have happened.”
Hannebery retired a premiership player, three-time All-Australian and AFLCA Champion Player of the Year.
He received three Brownlow votes in his last AFL game playing for the Saints against the Swans in Round 23, 2022.
