Where Are They Now – Stan Nowotny

As Stan Nowotny prepares to celebrates his 75th birthday, he has no trouble saying that outside of his family the biggest part of his life has been the Swan Districts Football Club and it continues to be to this day.

There’s nothing that Nowotny didn’t accomplish in his 278-game playing career with Swan Districts that saw him become a two-time premiership player, a Swan Medal winner, a state representative, a captain and the accolades have kept coming in the years since.

Nowotny is now a member of both the West Australian Football and Swan Districts Football Club Halls of Fame and even while living in Mandurah, he is still a frequent visitor to Bassendean’s Steel Blue Oval on game days.

As he takes the opportunity to reflect back on the impact Swans have had on his life and continues to right up to this day, and Nowotny finds it hard to think of anything that’s had a bigger part outside of his family.

“If you look at it in terms of the fact that I’m 74 now and I turn 75 in September, if you take 15 years of that where I actually played, and you add in a few more years on with the juniors and so forth, and then add in my involvement after I played before I moved to Mandurah, and you could say more than a quarter have my life has been associated with Swans in actual involvement,” Nowotny said.

“But once you’ve been involved, then that extends just by the fact that you are who you are and you’ve done what you’ve done.

“It permeates into a lot of other aspects of your life so it has been the major influencing factor in what I’ve done and who I am, and where I’ve been, and where I’m going. It’s a huge part of my existence really.”

Reflecting on playing career

Having come through the junior ranks with Swan Districts, Nowotny made his league debut back in 1969 and remained a key figure in the team right throughout the 1970s.

He will admit that not all those seasons were easy and he had four different coaches in that time firstly with Bill Walker before Jack Ensor, Stuart Magee and then ultimately the legendary John Todd.

That’s when the success was starting to be built to and Nowotny was part of the Swan Districts’ team that made a grand final in 1980. Then he was a key player in the premiership teams of 1982 and 1983 before retiring after that 1983 triumph against Claremont in the grand final.

“I stated in 1969 and we finished sixth, winning six games. Then in 1970, we were eighth and we won four, and in ’71 we were eighth and won four, ’72 we were seventh and won seven, and ’73 we were sixth and that was when Bill Walker was coaching,” Nowotny said.

“They weren’t very successful years and it was pretty hard going, and then Jack Ensor came alone and we finished fourth in ’74 and second in ’75, and then for some reason the club got rid of Jack and we had Stu Magee.

“Then in ’76, we finished seventh and that’s when Toddy came. We finished eighth in his first two seasons and then ’79 fifth, and then in ’80 we were runner’s up when South Fremantle beat us in the grand final.

“In ’81, we were second and then 82-83-84 we were premiers so really if you take it as a percentage in terms of the good years over the bad, they were mostly tough and hard because you weren’t winning.

“When you’re not winning things tend to feel a lot worse than they really are. You learn from those tough years and when you get the opportunity for some success you go for it and don’t let it slip because you know how hard it is to win grand finals.”

Retiring at the end of 1983

A fairytale finish for any player is to be able to retire from playing on their own terms and after winning a premiership. That’s what Nowotny got to experience when he called time at the end of that 1983 grand final.

He was 33 years of age at the time and with 278 games to his credit to be only second on the club’s all-time games played list at the time behind Bill Walker on 305, and now third behind Tony Notte who finished up with 323 this year.

While he feels like physically he might have been able to play on in 1984 and potentially have been part of that third premiership in the hat-trick, but he’s more than happy that he made the right decision.

“People have often said to me why didn’t I keep playing and I could have done that I suppose because physically I wasn’t in too bad of shape and things weren’t too bad,” Nowotny said.

“And a lot of people have said I could try to chase Bill Walker’s record, but for me to do that I would have had to two more years really and I didn’t want to play on just for that reason.

“Instead I thought that going out on a winning grand final wasn’t a bad way to go and I had made the decision prior to that I might say in my mind.

“As it turned out, we won that grand final and for me it was a culmination of everything that was as good as it could get right there and then when the siren went so I have no complaints.”

Looking back on fantastic experience

Not every season was easy for Nowotny in that 278-game playing career, but that only made the winning and triumphant seasons all the more memorable as he looks back with tremendous fondness on his playing time with Swan Districts.

“It was just a fabulous time and even when you think about the tougher years along the way, it was just a fantastic experience the whole thing that I went through,” Nowotny said.

“You have to be in appreciation of that and I do consider myself extremely lucky to have done all those things that I did.

“Lucky is the word that springs to mind as I look back but my luck was mixed in with a lot of other people’s good luck as well and hard work and the desire to achieve something, which we ended up being able to do together.”

Full respect for Swans supporters

Through everything and there continues to be more losing than winning seasons that Swan Districts have gone through in their 91-year history in the WAFL, what Nowotny continues to be blown away by is their undeniable support base.

Winning or losing, premiership or wooden spoon contending or whatever way the team is tracking, the Swans supporters remain fiercely loyal and supportive. Nowotny appreciated that when he was playing and even more in the 40 years since.

“Through all of that, the supporters of the club still remained and we still are one of the best supported clubs in the WAFL, and we have been for a long time,” Nowotny said.

“That’s a credit to all our members and supporters of the club who have stuck by us with those tough times, but we’ve more than repaid them with some of the success.

“We were able to win three straight which is what happened back with the 61-62-63 side as well so there’s a bit of repetition there.

“It really does show the resilience of the supporters because they are there at every home game and I know all clubs have their base supporter group and the volunteers and so forth, but the supporters and volunteers at Swans have just always been especially fantastic.”

Remaining closely connected

Immediately when Nowotny stopped playing he remained closely connected and heavily involved with Swan Districts including in that 1984 premiership team and then being a key part of helping to keep the club alive through some tough times.

He has settled into life in Mandurah now for more than the last 30 years, but has continued to get to as many Swan Districts games as possible and club functions that he can including as recently as this past weekend for the 2025 Hall of Fame dinner.

“I finished playing in ’83 and we moved to Mandurah in ’89 but prior to that in my first year after I stopped playing I was the runner when Toddy was coaching and I had an active involvement in a managerial role,” Nowotny said.

“They went through a thing called ‘Save the Swans’ because financially the club went through a bit of trouble so I was involved with that in a marketing type role and then I moved to Mandurah, and coached Mandurah for a couple of years and coached Waroona for another couple.

“I played veterans footy as well but the thing that still made it easier for me was the introduction of the railway line down to Mandurah. That’s made it a lot easier for me to get up to Bassendean and I’ve made sure I still get up five or six of the home games at least to this day.

“I still keep up to date with everything going on with things like the Fighting Swan newsletter through the wonders of the internet.

“I certainly still stay in touch with a lot of other players and ex-officials and office bearers and so forth that I knew in my time at Swans, and a number of us live down in Mandurah.

“We have a little group get together twice a year when we go up to Perth and have a bit of a reunion amongst ourselves so it’s good.”

Family ties growing up

While the Swan Districts Football Club has become the biggest influencing factor in Nowotny’s life for just about 60 years now, it wasn’t always going to be the case with his family tied with East Perth early on.

His uncle, Gerry Burton, played 26 games with East Perth throughout the 1950s but when he was tied to Swan Districts because of where his family lived, he quickly embraced playing for the black-and-whites and has never looked back.

“My father really had a lot to do with my footballing career because when I was growing up in Ashville he coached me in under-14s, 16s and 18s and him and his brother and the Nowotny family were all mad East Perth supporters,” Nowotny said.

“In fact my dad’s cousin, a guy called Gerry Burton, played for East Perth and he was in the RAAF.

“He was tied up in helicopters and the first year he played for East Perth, he was runner-up in the Sandover Medal but at the end of that year the RAAF said to him that he could get an overseas posting to Butterworth if he wanted it, and financially for him that just made the world of sense to do that.

“But the Nowotny family used to have a little spot there for the home games at Loton Park and we’d all meet down there on a Saturday and watch East Perth play.

“I didn’t really have any connection to Swans at that stage but the point was finally arrived to where if I wanted to play league footy, it had to be with Swans because we lived in the area.”

Now all these years later and it’s fair to say the entire Nowotny family are fiercely loyal Swan Districts supporters.

“Now my immediately family are well and truly Swans supporters,” Nowotny said.

“Both my wife’s parents were long-time members of the Swan Districts footy club and had been supporters pretty much their whole lives so the family has now taken on a great love of the club that’s for sure even since my playing days.”

By Chris Pike