Heeney's dual reality: Wilson's wake-up call for Swans

The Sydney Swans are a club with serious problems that need to use recent off-field scandals as a wake-up call, according to Caroline Wilson.

The Pullman Hotel incident and Tom Papley's failed roadside drug test – which remain open police investigations - have forced the club into numerous public apologies and explanations.

This week, CEO Matthew Pavlich announced the club would be engaging external advisors to review the culture as he expressed his deep remorse to the fans, members and sponsors of the team.

The Swans insist they are engaging externals to advice on protocols and programs to “achieve meaningful change wherever necessary”.

For Wilson, the last four months has exposed damning issues within the club.

“If this doesn’t deliver a wake-up call after what happened involving a former Swans leader in Will Hayward from Carlton in another party incident where he wasn’t suspended but a younger teammate was for drug use, then I don’t know where they are going,” she said on her podcast Don’t Shoot the Messenger.

“That club has clearly got a problem. This has been a hidden secret.

“A lot of their players – one of them particularly in Isaac Heeney – had been living a dual reality. Pretending to be one thing but really another.

“Then you had Heeney allowed to win the best and fairest although he wasn’t allowed to go to the event.

“There has been double speak coming out of that football club.

“Dane Rampe when he retired, saying that we all had to own this, was the first time that someone has acknowledged that this is a major problem.

“The fact that (Tom) Harley and (John) Longmire have been - I am told - personally shattered by this and looking at themselves.

“I think this began long before Pavlich became CEO and Dean Cox the coach.”

LISTEN TO THE FULL EPISODE: