AFL 2021: Sydney couldn’t afford to rebuild, but the Swans did it anyway
Bottoming out in Sydney is equal to box-office doom. But the Swans did it anyway. This is how they pulled it off in record time.
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Sydney Swans boss Tom Harley has a simple mantra about successful football clubs: they never officially rebuild.
The memories of the Sydney school headmasters who banned Australian rules footballs from their ovals has always instructed John Longmire’s attitude to the dreaded R word.
“When I first came up here I remember a school principal saying if an AFL ball was kicked at lunchtime it would be confiscated. And that was common,” Longmire recalled this week.
For almost every year of the club’s 39 seasons in a NRL dominated NSW market, bottoming out equalled box-office doom.
Harley said of the full-blown rebuild: “We are not a club that outwardly goes to rebuild. My philosophy on footy is you try to win every game and put forward the most competitive team you can because building a winning culture is bloody important.”
At Sydney, you don’t rebuild, you don’t restump, you don’t rewire.
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So how did a team that could never afford to rebuild go ahead and do it anyway?
How does a team which made finals in 15 of 16 straight years, which played in Grand Finals in 2012, 2014 and 2016, which played finals as recently as 2018, suddenly have one of footy’s most exciting young lists?
When you put one of footy’s great coaches in Longmire alongside a great list builder in Kinnear Beatson, it is possible to rebuild on the run.
Five years on Carlton is still after knocking down its list with a bulldozer and starting from ground zero.
Yet Sydney’s kid-based resurgence is a fascinating combination.
It mixes the club’s determination to replace the old breed (Jarrad McVeigh, Kieren Jack, Heath Grundy, Dan Hannebery) with the realisation it doesn’t have the salary cap space, even if wanted, to top up its list.
A Sydney side that has relentlessly pumped games into the likes of Ollie Florent, Will Hayward, Nick Blakey and company suddenly had its breakout party against the Brisbane Lions at the Gabba last week.
In that side were Braeden Campbell (19), Nick Blakey (21), Jordan Dawson (23), Oliver Florent (22), Errol Gulden (18), Tom McCartin (21), Logan McDonald (18), Hayden McLean (22), James Rowbottom (20), Chad Warner (19) and Sam Wicks (21).
Fellow youngsters Justin McInerney, Dylan Stephens, Will Gould, Matthew Ling and Joel Amarty missed selection, while Tom Papley (24) and George Hewett (25) each played their 100th game.
Callum Mills is only 23, with Isaac Heeney still yet to turn 25 and on the verge of superstardom if he can manage his pesky ankle injury.
It is an awesome array of talent the Swans are only now getting credit for amassing.
“You try to do two things at once. Be competitive and blood young players,” said Longmire as the Herald Sun visited the club’s rain-sodden SCG headquarters.
“We have been able to do it for a long time — 2016 was the Grand Final, 2017 and 2018 we were still playing finals. We want to give our players every opportunity to play finals every year and it’s a responsibility we think we have got.
“But there is also a reality to that. We have played a lot of young players for a long time now, and we don’t have an inclination to be down too long. It’s important it’s not just a spike, it needs to be sustainable.”
Remarkably, Sydney has taken a first-round pick in every draft in the past decade despite its reputation for topping up with the likes of Lance Franklin and Kurt Tippett.
Longmire admitted the club made hard choices after losing the 2018 elimination final to Greater Western Sydney by 49 points.
“It’s always hard when you are in finals to say you are a bit off the pace. But you do have to be mindful in those moments of the decisions you make and how it can impact you. If you think you are at the pointy end and it affects your decision-making it can set you back further,” he said.
“You have your recruiting priorities and your salary cap and it just meant we went to the draft. I am fortunate to work with Kinnear Beatson and have done for 20 years so we weren’t afraid to embrace the draft and probably didn’t have much choice, so that’s what we did.”
As Harley said, the willingness to embrace the draft combined with the reality that Sydney just didn’t have the money to scout around for ready-made players.
“We won the 2012 Grand Final, played in ’14 and ’16, were good enough to win 16 of 17 games in 2017, got on a serious roll after losing the first six. But the footy environment changed so much. We benefited from free agency with Lance, but COLA was removed, the veterans allowance was removed. We were all-in during those years and good enough to play in three Grand Finals and 10 consecutive finals series.
“So now we have gone to the draft and our academy and we have also had a reasonably high level of injuries and you have to field 22 players each week, and hopefully that will pay dividends after investing in some young players.
“Some of our most structurally important players who are under 23 have played more games than they normally would.”
There is planning to thrive, and then there is just the slice of luck and timing that means you can pull off a draft heist like the trio of kids that are Logan McDonald (pick No. 4), Braeden Campbell (pick 5) and Errol Gulden (pick 32).
McDonald kicked three seemingly effortless goals on debut last round. Gulden is the clever goalsneak who matched that haul and Campbell’s sumptuous kicking skills will see him setting up countless thrusts off half-back.
Best mates Campbell and Gulden have been tied to the Swans’ academy for a number of years. The club logged 284 training sessions for Gulden in his junior years.
But had Franklin kicked 70 goals and the Swans finished 10th in 2020, it might all have been so different.
Instead the young and injury-hit Swans finished third-last, then watched North Melbourne ignore West Australian Football League phenomenon Logan McDonald.
Sydney pounced on Logan, added explosive academy teen Campbell with the next pick (he might have been off the board by pick 8), then waited for rivals to bid on the smaller but more consistent Gulden.
Sydney had him at pick 21 or 22 on its draft board but was gifted him at pick 32 instead of having to match an early selection.
“Everyone had a chance to bid on him,” Longmire said. “So other teams didn’t rate him as highly.”
So Franklin’s absence meant a bottom-four finish, which provided a double-dip at the elite talent in the draft’s top five, with three-goal Round 1 hero Gulden the icing on top.
One more curiosity. Had Sydney let go of Tom Papley and secured Joe Daniher last year it would have given up a future first-rounder to the Dons.
That pick became McDonald, who has looked every bit the 200-gamer in his limited action so far.
He already moves like a 25-year-old and every Swans player will tell you about his first training session.
Isaac Heeney, that megawatt smile beaming as he pops his head in to say hello, can’t stop talking about the one-on-one duel where McDonald outbodied Dane Rampe in that first session.
Rampe got a fingernail to the ball and McDonald couldn’t complete the mark.
McDonald was absolutely ropeable and every Swan on the training track saw a hunger to work hard, to demand the best, to fast-track his talent with sheer determination.
Sydney fans will look at the Round 1 performance as the coming-of-age moment for these kids.
But Longmire has known he was on the right path since Round 9, 2019 when his team hit a Rhyce-Shaw coached North Melbourne side that was brutalising rivals with aggression and speed.
“I have been really confident about our younger players for 18 months even though we haven’t got the results,” Longmire said.
“Eighteen months ago we played down in Tasmania against North Melbourne and we had an enormous amount of senior players injured, we only had four players over 100 games and the rest were really young and we hung on by a kick. I remember thinking before that game, I like the nucleus of players coming through.
“But it’s one thing to like the nucleus and get games into them and it’s another thing playing hard, competitive footy. From week to week, the best teams are able to sustain that. And we are still a step away from doing that.”
LONGMIRE WARNS AFL TO WATCH ‘AGGRESSIVE’ NRL BOSS
Sydney premiership coach John Longmire has warned the AFL of a looming staff crisis across the entire industry in a dramatic call to arms for the league to reverse its savage cost cuts.
Longmire said the league needed to continue investing in grassroots football and talent pathways rather than cut costs, afraid league bosses are unaware of NRL boss Peter V‘landys aggressive growth mandate.
He told the Herald Sun: “There is a bloke in charge of rugby league who is as aggressive as anything we have ever seen in this marketplace.”
Longmire on Thursday urged the AFL to reinvest in the game as it emerged from COVID, warning any industry which did not invest in its people quickly went backwards.
He is also concerned about cuts to Victoria’s NAB League and even the lack of a NSW-based reporter at the league’s AFL.com.au website to help promote the code in an NRL-focused state.
Clubs are concerned about the AFL Commission’s obsession to pay back a $100 million loss immediately rather than over multiple years and the damage it will do to the game.
“We have to invest in our game, in the future of our game rather than looking at it as a pure cost base,” Longmire said in the strongest comments by a club figure on the AFL cost-cutting regime.
“If the decision makers are looking at just the cost and not investing, it doesn’t matter what business it is, we will lose in the longer term.
“And so as soon as our decision making goes from saving our game, to stabilising our game, to investing in the game all over the country the better and hopefully we shift into that very, very quickly.”
The league’s own review of its COVID cuts and the footy soft cap is due to finish in March but it says spending levels will not return to pre-COVID levels.
Longmire said dramatic COVID cuts to football departments would see them quickly reaching breaking point, with the Swans employing Brett Kirk as their development boss as well as their head of welfare.
Longmire revealed that no AFL figure had ever reached out to Don Pyke after he used his 2019 departure press conference to warn of the extraordinary pressures being placed on senior coaches.
Pyke is now a Sydney assistant coach at a club that is allowed to pay $6.2 million in its football department cap, down from nearly $10 million pre-COVID.
It is understood coaches remain disappointed they have not been canvassed by the AFL about the savage toll of hub-life and their key learnings despite Rhyce Shaw walking away from his senior role.
Longmire said the league should be worried about Pyke’s warning that the code was “treading very close to the line” in terms of the intense focus on its senior coaches.
“When you have a person like Don Pyke mentioning it, the industry should listen,” he said.
“You couldn’t get a better person than Don Pyke when you are talking about a well-balanced person who has done many things in life in and outside of footy.
“I am not sure whether the AFL have ever spoken to him and asked him about that. It would be a good thing because he has got a lot to offer. He has been at the coalface, been a board member, been a senior coach, stepped away, been in the media and hopefully the AFL sit down at some stage and talk to him about it.
“And that was before the last 12 months and the hub experiences and cuts to the industry.
“There will always be natural pressures to the job, but it’s another reminder this game is built on its people and you have to look after our people.”
Longmire’s warning about a staff exodus given pay cuts of close to 40 per cent for many coaches is stark.
“Everyone is doing a hell of a lot more work and multi-tasking with a lot less money. We are not the only industry but we have to be careful we don’t tip too far.
“If it stays the way it is at the moment, the repercussions will mean you won’t be able to keep the best people because they will go and do something else.
“We were once an industry where you would go overseas and sit there with confidence we were cutting-edge. But we have to look after our people. The AFL has done a good job keeping the competition going but there is a people element to this as well.
“History tells you when people make decisions about the bottom dollar and don’t invest in your people, whatever business that is, you get into trouble.”
SWANS SAY EVIDENCE ‘IRREFUTABLE’ FOR COLA-STYLE SET UP
Sydney chief executive Tom Harley says the club supports chairman Andrew Pridham’s call for a sweeping independent review of the AFL’s operations post-COVID
Harley also believes the league’s clubs are mature enough to have a discussion about Sydney’s cost of living and capacity to retain players as part of the league’s equalisation mantra.
Harley told the Herald Sun on Wednesday that the Swans had benefited from their own experience in 2003 as the league mandated a review after a heavy financial loss.
“It’s a Swans position. Andrew has been very vocal about that. It’s not a hostile statement,” he said.
“What he is saying is it is good governance, whether you are running a publicly listed company or a local footy league in the country, you should constantly aim to get better and a key part of getting better is looking at what you do.
“In a lot of instances a fresh set of independent eyes gives you great opportunities.
“As a club the Swans undertook an independent review at the request of the AFL in 2002-3.
“We didn’t want to do it at the time, but they presented the club with some recommendations at the time that may not have come about otherwise, so as a club we are supportive of it.
“The AFL have done a remarkable job to keep the competition going as viable and seemingly as vibrant post COVID.
“But I don’t think anything should be off the table in the pursuit of getting better.
“Survive, reset, thrive, it’s the mantra internally here and I am sure that’s a mantra of the AFL as well.”
The Swans burst from the blocks with an upset win over Brisbane in Round 1, and are hopeful 30,000 or more fans will flood the SCG to see Lance Franklin’s return against Adelaide on Saturday.
Sydney posted a $6.1 financial loss as NSW teams were battered by the COVID impact, wiping $4.5 million in cash reserves and becoming an “assisted” club after requesting a $1.5 million AFL loan.
But Harley is confident the Swans can get “back in the black” after a 2020 season in which $12 million of the AFL’s $22 million losses across 18 clubs came from the Swans and GWS.
Harley says the latest CoreLogic data on March 1 again showed undeniable proof of the cost of buying and renting property, hopeful the league will reconsider some kind of retention allowance.
“The reality is as soon as we talk about COLA it’s a tarnished topic, but the cost of living in Sydney is irrefutable,” he said.
“A mature conversation around each club having an equal opportunity to retain players that they bring to their club is a conversation worth having.
“What is looks like and what it could potentially materialise is, well that’s unknown but if we are going to have a broader conversation around equalisation about it all and maybe down the track, one of the positive things out of the COVID conversation is as an industry we can deal with more change than we thought about.”
MCCARTIN RETURN ON TRACK AS AFL AUDITION LOOMS
Paddy McCartin is just three weeks of contract training away from official AFL approval to return to games as brother Tom yesterday pledged his future to the Sydney Swans.
Former No. 1 overall pick, McCartin will play with Sydney’s VFL side this year, but is yet to be fully ticked off by an AFL-appointed panel after repeated concussion issues.
Having trained for a month with Sydney, he is now a week into a month-long period of contact training that he must complete to be medically cleared.
Sydney’s VFL season does not officially start until April 17 against GWS, which could allow McCartin to play in that clash if given AFL approval.
Sydney has a mid-season draft spot but has made no promises, more intent on giving McCartin a forum to show what he is worth to prospective teams.
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“He is going well, he has got another three weeks of contact training but he’s loving it here,” Tom McCartin told the Herald Sun.
“Hopefully he gets a good run at it. The AFL implemented it for him, he had to do a month of non-contact and a month of contact training, and he will start playing in a couple of weeks. I am looking forward to seeing him play and he will go all right, hopefully.
“I would love to play with him, but we have got one list spot and that could be used for anything, so hopefully he plays well and another team gives him a chance. Sydney would be bloody great, but if not I would be happy for him either way.
“It’s just getting that confidence back, he hasn’t played a game for nearly two years now.”
Sydney coach John Longmire said the Swans, McCartin and his manager Winston Rous had ensured his health was always front of mind, with his last AFL game in March 2019, when he suffered his eighth concussion.
“We love the McCartin family, they are absolute beauties, the whole lot of them,” Longmire said.
“So those conversations are first and foremost to make sure everything is right and he feels good about himself and understands the next step. It’s not about (an AFL return) just yet.
“It’s just an opportunity to get him up here and in another environment and get him playing footy again.
“Talking to Tommy through this whole period, there was a time there he was really struggling and to see him up here enjoying life and running around on the training track with a smile on his face, that’s a great thing for him and footy. Now where that goes from here, that will take care of itself. To see him highly engaged and enjoying himself and healthy is important.”
CONCUSSION IN THE AFL: MULTIMILLION DOLLAR LAWSUIT LOOMS
The McCartin boys are living 10 minutes apart and spending every living moment together, a thrill for Tom McCartin, given Paddy left home at the age of 15.
Tom said yesterday talks were underway, with the 21-year-old loving his time in Sydney and aware of the club’s bright future.
“I love Sydney, love the club and hopefully sign something soon. It’s a really exciting group. We are having a talk at the minute and hopefully we will do something soon,” he said.
“I love the place and the list and I am excited to see what the group can do in the next couple of years, it’s exciting times.
“I love it down back. I played down back when I was younger and have always had a taste for it which I loved and I was always happy to make the move down back. I played the last four games of last year there and I really enjoyed it.”
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