Sid Robins is regarded by the Griffith Swans as the club’s best ever player.
The dashing defender played a record 317 senior games for the Griffith Swans from 1963 to 1980 including the club’s memorable 1968 premiership win in the South West District Football League.
Robins started his football with Beelbangera-Yenda United in the Barellan and District League in 1962. He was persuaded to play Australian football by well-known Griffith sporting personality Bobby Spears, who went out to coach the newly combined team.
Spears, a Griffith star in the 1950s and 1960s who had started his footy at Beelbangera, is quoted in a profile on Sid Robins on the club’s history site Swans-on-screen as saying, "Sid was going to play rugby league - I think he played soccer the year before. He'd never played a game of Australian Rules and I played him on the half-back flank.”
“I had a bit of a chat with him and told him 'you'll be right' and after about four games he was telling me what I should be doing!", recalled Spears.
Spears returned to Griffith the next season and Robins went with him; Sid made his debut in round one of the 1963 season against Narrandera on the Narrandera Sportsground. Alas, the Swans went down to Imperials, 10.11.71 to 7.14. 56.
Robins went on to carve out a highly distinguished football career with Griffith winning the club’s best and fairest four times, 1969, 1970,1971 and 1972. He also won the South West League's Gammage Medal in 1972. He was a pivotal member of the Swans’ 1968 premiership side after playing in losing grand finals in 1964, 1965 and 1966. He represented the South West League in ten games.
"He was a wonderful to play with, he was just a beautiful puncher of the ball," Spears said. "A lot of the time, he'd punch the ball and then go and get it, he was a lot quicker than people thought. You'd get in a bit of a predicament and he'd say, 'I've got him Bob'.
"He was just a marvel, he only weighed about 82 kilos, but he just beat whichever centre half-forward he played on."
Spears and Robins, who were teammates in Griffith’s 1968 flag-winning team, were not only mates on the field but also in life, "Terrific guy, you couldn't help but like him. One of nature's gentlemen," said Spears who used to employ Robins on his farm at harvest time to drive trucks, “He was such a magnificent worker”, added Spears.
Sid Robins was elected a life member of the Griffith Football Club in 1973 and was selected as centre half-back in Griffith Swans Team of the Century in 2016.
Sid Robins was inducted into the inaugural AFL NSW Hall of Fame in 2024 along with fellow indigenous stars of the game in NSW, Sir Doug Nicholls, John “Ossie” Grose and Maurie Goolagong.
(Source: https://www.swansonscreen.com/)
(Photo courtesy of Trevor Harrison)