Finals pain in the past as Sydney Swans focus on 2016 campaign
ON the eve of the finals Sydney Swans coach John Longmire stands vindicated. After a humiliating grand final defeat in 2014 and quick finals exodus last year, Longmire’s Swans are back with a vengeance.
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AUTUMN. There is a slight chill in the air, the leaves fall and pundits write off the Sydney Swans.
We did it again this year. In March, in John Longmire’s office at the SCG, I put to him the supposedly sound reasons why the Swans would finally relent to a salary cap/draft system that is calibrated to bring them down.
I suggested a humiliating grand final defeat to Hawthorn in 2014 followed by a straight-sets finals exodus last year constituted a trend. That Buddy Franklin’s health problems had proven unsettling and even jeopardised the club’s huge investment in the star forward.
The list went on: the Swans’ defence was brittle, their midfield slow and their list lacked depth. All theories being ventured in the traditionally gloomy pre-season forecasts.
By the notoriously combustible standards of top-flight professional coaches Longmire is the most patient and affable of men. But for one of the few times I’ve spoken to him he bristled slightly. Rather curtly, he reminded me the Swans had won a record 17 games in 2014 and 16 in 2015. How with an injury-depleted team they had almost beaten Fremantle in Perth during last season’s finals.
“Does that seem like a team that’s on the way down?’’ he asked.
Longmire did not, I suspect, make such a strident defence of his team because he cares what outsiders think. It was because as one successful season followed another, surely we should be looking for the reasons why the Swans would prosper. Not forecasting their imminent downfall.
The suppositions about Franklin, particularly, were close to the coach’s heart. As a leader Longmire has done more than most to help “normalise’’ the treatment of mental health issues. In that context, it was offensive to suggest the club had not worked sensitively and diligently to ensure their new star returned in good order.
And so here we are on the eve of the finals and Longmire stands vindicated. The 17-win record has been equalled by a team rebuilt with different parts but along familiar lines.
The engine continues to purr. Josh Kennedy, Luke Parker, Dan Hannaberry, Tom Mitchell, Kieren Jack and Jarrad McVeigh represent the best and deepest midfield in the competition.
Less familiar names such as Tom Papley, Allir Allir, George Hewett, Sam Naismith, Dean Towers and Xavier Richards have been added to a winning team, or taken more responsible roles. Academy picks Isaac Heeney and Callum Mills are bona fide stars.
Franklin has been ultra-dependable, occasionally phenomenal. Where once you measured the great forward’s performance by the pleasure he gave fans, the mark of his season has been his own palpable sense of enjoyment.
There has been tinkering with the game plan. More fluid, less stoppage-dependent, added versatility. The supposedly vulnerable defence led by the ever-reliable Heath Grundy and a new stalwart in Dane Rampe has conceded fewer points than any other.
But even as some of the names and methods change, the fundamentals remain. Both in the tough, accountable football the Swans play, but also the structures that underpin their success.
The feisty but good humoured president Andrew Pridham now sets the tone for a club that stands its ground both in a tough local market, and among sometimes jealous southern rivals.
The brilliance of Heeney and Mills have vindicated the club’s controversial academy — and perhaps also justified the higher price the Swans have been forced to pay to retain such first class talent.
The Swans’ resilience was challenged when ruckman/forward Kurt Tippett suffered a long-term injury. It says something of their stability that, without such a seemingly crucial component, they hardly missed a beat.
Of course, as Longmire will be acutely aware, another excellent home-and-away season has only brought the Swans back to where they were in the past two years.
They have given themselves an opportunity that was squandered in 2014 during an uncharacteristically dismal grand final defeat to Hawthorn and largely yanked from their grasp last season by injury/illness.
The 2014 grand final debacle remains something of a mystery. Did they walk into a trap? Was their favouritism false or did they believe their own publicity?
That one game, as much as anything that happened in the seasons since, might provide the best motivation for Longmire entering a finals series where great things are expected. Where there is the chance of making another grand final without leaving Sydney.
And if the Swans fail to win the premiership? Only we fools won’t think they will not be back next season giving themselves every chance.
Originally published as Finals pain in the past as Sydney Swans focus on 2016 campaign
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