THE Swans are the strong men of footy. Mentally, I mean.

Sure, Big Barry snapped. Headlines went off like fireworks, but what struck me when I watched the Swans against North Melbourne last Sunday was that the furore had made not one iota of difference to their composure as a side.

Since meeting Brett Kirk and Lewis Roberts-Thomson this year to write about them and getting an insight into their club spirit, I've started getting into the Swanees a lot more.

Time and again, something like the Hall incident happens and you think, "That's it, goodbye Swans, you were a side with serious limitations and in the end, you were exposed".

But the end never comes.

The Swans, in the words of Bob Dylan, keep on keeping on.

Against them last Sunday were the Kangaroos. How can you not admire the Kangaroos? I've seen them three times this year for a win, a loss and a draw. Each time, they've been terrific. This is a big year for North Melbourne.

If North was playing like Melbourne is right now, it would be talked about in the way Fitzroy was talked about towards its end. As the living dead. But what I saw last week was a meeting of two teams with great morale and ambition. It ended in a draw.

That, predictably, led to a week of controversy. Personally, I liked what coach Dean Laidley said when the AFL implied that if North really objected to a 19th Sydney player being on the field, Laidley could have instructed his captain to call for a player count.

"I don't want to be remembered as the Trevor Chappell of football," Laidley said. If he meant by that he didn't want to be remembered as someone whose idea of the game got horribly out of proportion, then I agree with him.

I'd gone to the Anzac Day match between Collingwood and Essendon and been disappointed. Not only was it not much of a game, I somehow knew it wasn't going to be from the moment I walked into the MCG.

The Magpies are lacking something this year. Is it Nathan Buckley? The Bombers are lacking something this year. Is it James Hird? And if you're going to have the full circus, what better ringmaster than Kevin Sheedy?

Suddenly, they had all gone and nothing or no one stood out in any obvious way to replace them.

The Swans v North game is one I might have avoided in the past, fearing it would be dour, but I watched it and was glad I did. It was magnificent.

In the old days, draws were seen as fluky, as an expression of chance. There wasn't much chance about last Sunday's game. It was like seeing two forces ending up locked in a sort of desperate unity. You'd have needed a jackhammer to separate them.

The game had minor aspects that were remarkable in themselves. One was a Brady Rawlings chase. His target was Adam Goodes and the black cockatoo from western Victoria was flying.

Rawlings missed him by a fingernail and Goodes, chest out, legs pumping, tore apart the structures that otherwise kept the ball hemmed in packs.

I haven't seen nearly enough of Goodes, but this was a great performance — one of those when the other team, for all its best endeavours, cannot prevent an individual from showing the full range of his skills and footballing nous.

The fact that Goodes, a dual Brownlow medallist, had received public criticism from his coach during the week was mentioned by those calling the game. "Ah well," said Dennis Cometti. "I suppose there's no point getting stuck into someone who can't play."

Big Den, as I understand it, used to coach. His half-time addresses to a poor team would be worth listening to, or not listening to, as apparently little or nothing would be said.

Cometti is to contemporary sports broadcasting what Dean Martin was to the Rat Pack of the 1950s and '60s — the one who took neither himself nor what he did totally seriously but appeared to enjoy himself nonetheless.

As I have said before in this column, North has a champion in rover Brent "Boomer" Harvey.

The game is now so fast and unstructured that the quick little man is making a comeback.

North has a fleet of them, several with an indigenous edge to their game. David Schwarz said last year that he marvelled at the way North kept finding new ways to score goals.

So do I.

North's emphasis on conformity to team rules makes it appear less versatile than it actually is.

My chief regret from Sunday's match was the injury to North forward Aaron Edwards. He doesn't get a lot of the ball, but he is one of the best players to watch in the game. His certainty in the air is awesome.

That only leaves me to speak of Kirk, the exceptional team leader with the Buddhist mantra tattooed on his back. I've always thought of Kirk as a tough and capable in-and-under player, but not more than that.

Two of his kicks in the first term represented the moment when the Swans stopped setting up a particular play and made their forward move. At such moments, he was very obviously kicking for his teammates as well as himself. Both times, he showed fine skill and control.

Kirk also had the last shot at goal after Goodes had single-handedly set up the play. It was a logical end to the game, but then, from nowhere, Michael Firrito stopped the ball on or near the line.

The compliment I would pay Firrito is that there are times now when I look at him in the Kangaroos' No. 11 guernsey and no longer think of Glenn Archer.

The match ended in a draw, but draws such as this have a purpose. They mean neither side was beaten.