Goodbye Sydney, next stop… Tasmania? I got to ask John Longmire the question we’re all thinking

It’s weird not seeing John Longmire in a red polo shirt, standing in front of a sponsored backdrop. Roughly once a week across the last six AFL seasons, that’s how I’d see him at his weekly press conferences, and rarely if ever in a different setting. He never used to give much away to us humble journalists, either. And he almost seemed to delight in it.

So this was different. I’m five minutes early to our lunch meeting at The Paddington on Oxford Street, just around the corner from the SCG, but “Horse” is there already, wearing a long-sleeved black shirt, looking a million bucks and probably feeling it, too, now that he is no longer coach of the Sydney Swans.

John Longmire is adjusting to life after the all-consuming job of Sydney Swans coach.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Not that it was a bad gig. Far from it. But now he can actually relax.

There’s an adjustment period, though, when you go from being in the coach’s box for 14 years to being just another punter in the stands. Longmire went to watch Sydney’s season opener against Hawthorn – the first time he’d ever gone to the SCG as a fan, let alone with his three kids.

“I didn’t know where to go, for starters,” he tells me. “I’m serious. I actually had no idea where to sit. And I actually asked about five people where I should go because I had absolutely no clue.”

The next morning was different, too. There are no days off when you’re an AFL coach. Even in the off-season, your brain is always ticking over. In-season, it consumes you.

Until he stepped down, the post-match press conference was the usual venue for Longmire to speak to the media.Credit: Getty

“I woke up and normally … you open your eyes, and you jump into the computer for two days,” he says. “But I didn’t have that for the first time. I went and watched my kids play sports. Pretty good. Pretty simple things. Most people think, what’s the big deal about that?”

This is a bit weird for him, I sense, talking this over with someone who is usually asking about one of his player’s hamstrings. For me, though, it’s a rare pleasure to access one of the game’s greatest brains, and a man who has genuinely helped culturally shape the part of Sydney we’re in.

When Longmire first came here in 2002 as an assistant to Paul Roos, the AFL was simply not cool. “I went out for lunch when I moved up here, I sat next to a school principal, and I said, ‘How’s your AFL program going?’ And he started laughing at me,” he says.

Now, the Swans feel organically Sydney. They have the biggest crowds of any team in the city. Their games have become social events among the eastern suburbs set. And on the field they have been a formidable side for more than two decades.

The burrata at The Paddington on Oxford Street.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Longmire lets me handle the food. Suits me fine. For our starter, I go with some bread, butter and burrata, with rockmelon and prosciutto, which brings us to travel. Specifically, Italy during the European summer; our winter. As a coach, and before that, a player for North Melbourne between 1988 and 1999, it’s something Longmire simply couldn’t contemplate.

“I’ve never been to Europe in summer. Never been in my life,” he says. “I’ve been in football since I was 16, so for 38 years I’ve never done that. I haven’t organised anything; my daughter’s still finishing year 12, so we’re not doing it this year. But I want to go to Italy, I want to spend some time there. That’s what I’m looking forward to the most, to be honest.”

It was in Europe, after last year’s AFL grand final, when Longmire realised he was as cooked as the whole Bannockburn chicken we’re about to rip into, along with some fries, gravy and cos lettuce.

When Longmire signed a two-year contract extension in 2023, he agreed with chief executive Tom Harley that it would be his last. Having benefited from a seamless handover from Roos in 2011, he wanted to make sure Dean Cox, who was identified as his successor long ago, had the same luxury.

The Bannockburn chicken with fries, cos lettuce and gravy.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

Midway through last year, the Swans were 12-1 and flying on top of the ladder. He was enjoying the ride, but felt something inside.

“I needed a rest,” Longmire says. “Spoke to Tom about it. We got to the end of the home and away season, and on the eve of the finals, we had another chat, went for a drive in the car, and we had another chat about it, and we thought at that particular point I could be able to get through the end of this year [2025].”

But the grand final changed things. The Swans lost by 60 points to the Brisbane Lions; it was Longmire’s fourth grand final defeat in five attempts, and the second in a row by a big margin. It was a disaster nobody saw coming.

As agreed, Longmire wasn’t due to return to the club until January, giving him the opportunity to recharge his batteries at the end of last year. His son, Tom, had not long turned 21 and was in Europe on holiday. Longmire went to meet him, and they spent three weeks together in Britain, took in Premier League games involving Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal, and then watched the Wallabies beat England at Twickenham.

The Swans come to terms with their demoralising grand final loss last year.Credit: Getty Images

“We did some things, father and son, that I never had a lot of time to do,” he says.“We went out for dinner one night, and I said, ‘I think I’m about done.’ So yeah, that was an interesting moment.”

The day after Longmire landed home, he went to see Harley and Swans chairman Andrew Pridham, let them know, and they found him a new job upstairs. (We’ll get onto that after the main course, which was delightful.)

Longmire seems to have made peace with what happened against the Lions, and his unfortunate 1-4 record in grand finals, which grossly undersells what a transformative coach he has been for the Swans – if it’s possible for someone so competitive to make peace with such things.

“You probably bury it down inside you somewhere,” he says. “If you sat there just thinking about it the whole time, you’d end up just sad. You have to balance the whole thing out with … the fact the club’s in great shape, we’ve given our players and staff and supporters opportunities. It would have been great to make more of those opportunities. I guess some clubs will be sitting there looking at the fact that we’ve been able to finish top four a number of times and get to grand finals … that’s a high, high standard to be able to achieve. The club’s still in a good position to have another crack and I think that’s what we try and do, is give ourselves another crack at it.”

Speaking of another crack ... Tassie? Any chance?

“Jesus, mate,” he laughs. “I’m sitting here on a Monday having a beer with you and having lunch and all of a sudden, you’re throwing that at me.”

Sorry, but I had to ask. The Tasmania Devils are supposed to become the AFL’s 19th team in a few years’ time (assuming they can build a stadium) and pretty soon they’ll be looking for a coach. Longmire seems like the perfect guy to build them a winning culture from the ground up. They’ve reportedly already approached him to be the boss of their football department, and he told them no.

Is he done with coaching? He can’t say for sure. “I only just stopped,” he says, nursing his schooner of Hahn SuperDry. For me, Balter.

“Don’t read anything into that because there’s nothing to be read into that from my perspective. I’ve just stopped. I had a couple of months off over Christmas, and I’m getting into a new part of my life as far as new business opportunities, so I’m sort of looking to dive into that at the moment. All my energies are into that.”

Longmire allowed himself a couple of days to veg out on the couch, but a bloke like him doesn’t feel comfortable doing that for too long. So it was on to the next thing. He still goes into the Swans’ Moore Park offices five days a week, and has made himself available to Cox for advice whenever he needs it, though he no longer works in the football department.

His new job title is executive director of club performance, allowing him to more deeply explore his many other interests. Longmire’s breadth of experience in the AFL universe is vaster than some might realise; before he became a coach, he worked part-time at the AFL Players’ Association, headed up IMG’s nascent Aussie rules talent management division, and even worked as a television presenter on the Seven Network show Game Day. One of his clients at the time, Paul Salmon, was supposed to host it but pulled out, and left the producers in a pinch.

“They said to me, ‘Do you want to go in?’” he recalls. “We had no auto-cues, no training, no anything. Fair to say we were thrown in the deep end. Myself, Todd Viney and Tony Shaw. We spent all those Sundays in the studios … I was hosting three different time zones all over Australia, four different games. Trying to get my head around that was interesting.“

The bill.

Longmire’s new baby is something called the Sydney Swans Institute (SSI), which offers a variety of leadership and development programs in which he and the club will share their philosophies on people, culture and performance and what they’ve learned in their pursuit of sustained success. That’s what Longmire delivered at the Swans; in his 14 seasons, they missed the finals only twice, defying an AFL system specifically designed to prevent dynasties.

The idea for the “institute” has been sitting in the back of his mind for a few years, and was partly inspired by executive business and leadership courses he had attended at Harvard.

“We’ve made mistakes. We’ve had setbacks. We’ve had success,” he says. “It’s about sharing those ups and downs. You need something, a purpose to get out of bed in the morning. In my case, I was coaching for such a long time. Coaching was just enormous for that. Now I’m putting my time into this, and it’s been great.”

On Easter Sunday, when the Swans host Port Adelaide at the SCG, fans will get their chance to show Longmire their appreciation. Modest to a fault, he took some convincing, but eventually relented and agreed to a pre-match lap of honour.

“That’s right up my alley,” he laughed. “I feel a bit uncomfortable about it. Tom asked me … it was ringing through my mind straight away: there’s a bit of ‘me, me, me’ all about it. But I reframed it a bit. It’s not about me. It’s more about … there’s a lot of people I want to thank. I’m hoping a few turn up.“

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