Sydney youngster James Rowbottom has spoken about the chaos surrounding his late call up to play GWS, arriving at the ground just 20 minutes before the first bounce after the club was embroiled in a last-minute COVID drama on Sunday.

Rowbottom, the nephew of AFL commentator Brian Taylor, was back at the team hotel in the shower when his phone rang as Swans club official Peter Berbakov desperately tried to get in contact.

“He said, ‘What are you doing?’ and I said, ‘I’m just in the hotel chilling out’,” Rowbottom recounted.

“He said, ‘Good, get your gear on, it’s been a sh*tshow down here, you might be playing’.

“I jumped out of the shower, got dressed. My girlfriend came upstairs and said ‘What are you doing? Aren’t we leaving in like an hour?” and I said ‘Nah, I think I’m playing’.

Within the hour, Rowbottom was one of three last minute call ups to the Swans side, despite playing in a match the day prior.

“I was a bit tired towards the end there... but it was very enjoyable,” he said.

Sydney coach John Longmire wiped tears from his eyes as he praised his side’s resilience without COVID isolated trio Callum Mills, Harry Cunningham and Colin O’Riordan who were ruled out right before the match.

“I quickly got on the phone and rang the players back at the hotel,” Longmire said. “We got the medical staff in and went through the players that we thought could back up – and then I rang them and then told them to get in the car and come to the ground, get changed.

“Once it was locked in, we just grabbed the players together and told them: ‘We’ve been away for a month, we’ve lost staff, we don’t have one fitness guy and you lose three players before the game (and bring in three) that played yesterday’.

“They (Rowbottom and teammates Dylan Stephens and Ben Ronke) had to quickly get strapped … all the meetings and that went out the window.

“When it becomes three moving parts, we had to throw it around a bit. Credit to the three blokes who came in.

“It was an amazing effort to come from that far down.”