John Longmire on why he knocked back $6 million to stay at Sydney and his affection for his players
He barracked for North Melbourne as a kid and made his name as a footballer at Arden St. But when a lucrative offer came to coach the Roos, John Longmire said no. He reveals why in a candid chat with Mark Robinson.
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Of the thousands of photographs John Longmire has been involved in over 30 years in football as a player and coach, two recent snaps have jumped into his faves.
He’s in one of them.
And he took the other.
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Both epitomise what the Sydney Swans mean to him and somewhat explain why he was never going to accept the six-year, $6 million dollar offer from North Melbourne to coach them in 2020 and beyond.
Rhyce Shaw won the Kangas job anyway, but for a couple of weeks in late June, Longmire was making headlines. Some of his own doing.
“I’m absolutely contracted to the North … to the Sydney Swans Football Club,’’ Longmire said on AFL360.
It was gaffe. And that’s all it was.
Photograph 1 was taken by Longmire in the Sydney rooms after the glorious send-off victory for Jarrad McVeigh, Nick Smith, Kieren Jack and Heath Grundy at the SCG in Round 22 last year.
The Swans had missed the finals for the first time under Longmire, yet the coach was swept up in what he believes is the soul of football.
“I was standing in the middle of the SCG,” he says, “and everyone was happy, was pumped, the crowd was going off, blokes were getting carried off, and was I thinking, ‘should I be feeling happy or should I be dirty we’re not playing next week’.
“You just go with it because it was such a great day and great send-off, not only for those players going out, but for our young players to sit there and watch it. That was important to show these blokes what that link is.”
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Like you’d find in any country or suburban footy sheds on any given Saturday night, the merriment continued inside in a kind of retirement party.
“I was standing in the rooms looking around,’’ Longmire says, “and there’s LRT a former player, Clementine McVeigh who is Macca’s wife, Andrew Ireland on the board and our ex CEO, there’s Nick Smith, Hanners is in there somewhere, kids are everywhere, parents everywhere, Plugger was there with his daughter, Josh Kennedy’s boy Emilio was running around, he’s mad but a funny bugger, there were board members through to former players … it had everything.
“We’re eating pies and drinking Crownies and it was just fantastic.
“I got up and grabbed the phone and went bang with the camera.
“It’s one of my favourite footy photos of all-time.
“I’ve been tossing up whether to blow it up and put it somewhere at the club, in my office.
“You know what it shows … It shows a footy club.’’
Photograph 2 was taken a week later.
It was the Friday after that final game at a Jamaican smoke house in the inner city Sydney suburb of Barangaroo.
Longmire, McVeigh, Grundy, Smith and Jack met for lunch. Which turned into dinner. Which turned into after dinner drinks. Just a coach with his boys who grew to be men.
“Yeah, it was real late one,’’ Longmire says. “It was ripping day.
“I remember getting home and I said ‘Shelley’ … I woke her up and she’s saying what are you doing? I was just pumped. For me coaching is what we had just done today. I saw them come in as 18-year-old kids, fresh-faced, saw them all through their careers and to sit down and spend 10 hours having lunch, having a laugh, it was great.
“And we have Nick Smith at the club, Jarrad McVeigh at the club, Kieren Jack is upstairs … I feel good about that.
“And I look at James Rowbottom, Nick Blakey, Ollie Florent, Tom McCartin, Will Hayward and you’ve got (to) give them that in a bit more.
“I enjoy working with the young players, I think they’re really good people, we need to do a s--t load of work, no doubt about that. But when they come in young just like previous boys, you can see something, you love working with, and that’s what coaching is.’’
😱 | It's back to the drawing board for North Melbourne, with Sydney coach John Longmire to reject the Roos' advances, @ClarkyHeraldSun reports: https://t.co/alK5Ab9fqx
— SuperFooty (AFL) (@superfooty) July 12, 2019
'Why get John Longmire — who is about to be offered a fat new contract anyway — when you can get the next John Longmire?'@RalphyHeraldSun says Rhyce Shaw is ready to be appointed senior coach at North Melbourne: https://t.co/3TZIQ8JbrF #AFLPiesNorth pic.twitter.com/KXCeMI39Zt
— SuperFooty (AFL) (@superfooty) June 30, 2019
Longmire was never leaving Sydney.
He signed with the Swans until the end of the 2023 season and, last year, became the club’s longest serving coach, having started in 2011.
He is devoted and committed, traits nourished while growing up on a farm near Corowa.
“If you look at my track record,’’ he says.
“I barracked for North as a kid and I spent 12 years at North playing.’’
His first game was the Battle of Britain in London in 1987. He was 16 and met his teammates for the first time at the airport. His coach was Josh Kennedy’s grandfather, John.
“Now it’s 18 years, now 19 years at Sydney. I have a wife who I went to school with, we met in Year 7. That’s just who I am.’’
Loyal?
“I’m a country boy. I’m pretty basic. I’m not complicated with a lot of beliefs and systems I’ve got. It’s what you’ve been brought up as. My kids were born in Sydney. One is 16 (Thomas), Billy is 14 and Sahara is 12. I named Billy and Thomas and my wife named Sahara.’’
He laughed at himself, for the uncomplicated choice of the boys’ names.
“Sydney is all they know. They surf, they love Sydney. It’s an easier decision to keep the family here because they’ve got friends, been through the school, the network is here.’’
Still, the decision to continue coaching was far more consequential than considering the North role.
It wasn’t about a possible new adventure, it was about whether he wanted — and the Swans wanted — him to continue the adventure he was on.
He says he goes through deep reflection every time a contract comes around.
Is he still good enough to coach? Can he take the players to where they want to go.
There’s the list assessment. Personally, the drive and passion? After all, this is a whole new group.
“Only Parker, Kennedy and Reid are left from 2012,’’ he said.
“You know, McVeigh came in with curly hair, gets a partner, has kids, captains the club, then goes out … it’s quite a privileged position coaching.
“And now we’ve got a whole new generation.
“My challenge was to myself. I’d need to give this next generation more than the last. More in an everything-way. You’ve got to give that energy every day. If you ever felt like you couldn’t get out of bed and go to work, you don’t want to be coaching.
“So, you decide, can you give this generation another crack? My gut feel was I could but I needed to make sure it was right.’’
In the space of three weeks, he told Sydney he wanted to coach, he told North Melbourne chairman Ben Buckley, a former teammate at the Kangas, he was staying and he agreed to a new deal.
“If this club tapped me on the shoulder, well, that would’ve been different. But I wanted to be here.’’
Sydney fielded the youngest team in the competition about a dozen times in 2019.
It will be younger again this season.
They have 21 players aged under 21 and 12 players aged 22 to 25. Ten players are aged 26-29 and have three players aged 30 or more — Kennedy, Franklin and Callum Sinclair.
Since 2016, their total number of games by played by debutantes in that time is 709, which is the second-most behind Carlton (747).
The fewest debutant games in that period is at North Melbourne with just 242.
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Longmire says after having an experienced list for so long, he’s now back to “fundamentals” coaching.
“You go back to your coaching roots, more education,’’ he said.
He needs to. Last season, the Swans were ranked 18th for contested-ball differential, a staggering number for a team which played trench warfare footy for most of the past decade.
They were also poor in the post-clearance — 16th for ground balls and 17th for loose ball gets.
As a result, they were 17th for inside-50 differential and 18th for time in forward half.
Just horrible numbers.
They need muscle at the contest and they need high-speed run from contest-to-contest.
“We’ve got to look at our midfield, for instance, add some more depth and run, which what we’ve been trying to do with our draft,’’ he said.
“We need the new generation of midfielders.’’
Asked why he was enthused about the season ahead, he cites the Round 8 win over North Melbourne in Hobart last year.
The team lost Kennedy the night before the game and fielded four players with more than 100 games experience. North, he said, had 18 players with more than 100 games.
The Swans won by five points.
In that game, Tom McCartin, 19, and Nick Blakey, 18, were in a wrestle with the hardened North pair of Scott Thompson and Robbie Tarrant. He showed the playing group the video.
“I put in on the screen and said how good is this? I thought it was a good thing the younger players taking it up to some of the stars.’’
Longmire makes no promises about the season ahead, nor does he make excuses.
“We need to teach these young blokes, but it doesn’t mean you don’t have high standards and want to win every week. That’s what we expect as a club and that’s what our supporters expect.’’
Waxing lyrical about pies and beers is long gone and his game face appears.
What follows is a five-minute snapshot into the modern game.
He reaches for a graph detailing the defensive numbers of every team over the past decade.
He finds another graph detailing the home-and-away numbers over the same period.
“What have Hawthorn been doing? What have Geelong being doing What’s Richmond doing now?’’ he said.
He talks of team defence, creating turnovers quickly and decisively, scoring from those turnovers and slow-play defence.
He draws scenarios on a white board, and then moves magnets to show how his back six or seven might set-up.
He talks of watching games in their entirety with behind-the-goals footage. It's about how teams set up in defence and in attack. How they kick the ball from the back half.
How the wings converge without the ball. How the exits are covered. It's about the fitness required to defend and the mental demands to want to defend. It's about teaching young players to sacrifice for the team.
His energy is consuming and, quickly, the pies and Crownies are a beautiful memory.
“We’ve got a whole new generation to teach,’’ he said.
Originally published as John Longmire on why he knocked back $6 million to stay at Sydney and his affection for his players
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