Sydney Swans So Disappointing This Year
Are the Sydney Swans so disappointing this year because their former coach, John Longmire, jumped from a sinking ship? Did Longmire desert the players in their greatest moment of need? Has Dean Cox, the long serving apprentice, been handed a poisoned chalice? Whatever is at the root of the blight the team are playing like a bunch of hapless losers. Cox has resorted to blaming the players in public, after 10 weeks of sucking up the pain himself, he is dishing some out himself. Questioning the list, as not being up to current AFL standards and questioning their heart. This last damning reality was never something to entertain under Longmire or Paul Roos.
Last Year’s Swans So Much Better
Last year, the Sydney Swans cut through sides like a hot knife in butter. They did this in 2022 and 2023 at times also. Acknowledgement was given to the former Adelaide AFL coach, Don Pyke, who was the team’s assistant coach at the time, for some of the impetus around this ball movement driven winning strategy. WTF is that now in 2025? Yes, Errol Gulden is missing but he was not the only exponent of this skill. Where is the dare under Dean Cox? WTF is the Lizard anchored at full back, when we desperately need his run and incisive ball use? Nick Blakey is being poorly applied at the Swans as a winning resource in 2025.
Sydney AFL Team Lack Spirit & Skill
Sydney Swans so disappointing this year. You know, as a longtime Swans fan, I look at the playing group and I see boys and not enough men. Light weight body types as far as the eye can see. Luke Parker is gone and WTF happened there? Longtime Captain and champion out the door. George Hewett bigger bodied AFL midfielder gone to Carlton. Don’t get me started on Jordan Dawson. How could we not hang onto the quality? We are left with lightly framed and none too tall cattle. Yes, we have champions like Isaac Heeney and Chad Warner; but it takes 18 players to field a team and 23 to fill the bench. We have the tallest head coach in the AFL and our talls struggle to take a mark during games. Teach and train these buggers to perform their duties better! What are all these bloody coaches paid to do?
“There is a worrying complacency, combined with rank mediocrity, permeating the Swans in 2025. Happy little children dressed up to play footy rather than men with a game to win is what emanates from the red and white these days. The Swans coaching cohort appear bland and beige despite being dressed in scarlet.”
Peter Pans Playing Football
I get the sense when I watch the players that I am watching a bunch of Peter Pans – boys inhabiting athletic bodies who haven’t been able to grow up into men. Held in stasis somehow as privileged kids in ‘no man’s land.’ They train hard and have wonderful physiques but where is the grit required to compete and win week in week out? It is a brutally hard business; but that is why they get paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to perform at the elite level. Now, this reality is in the million dollar category for a few of them.
Blood’s Culture Missing In 2025
Ultimately, it comes down to culture because this is a team sport. The AFL media, like all media, focus on individuals to tell their stories. However, AFL is a team sport and it is team and club culture that wins premierships. I suspect that there is too much bullshit, extraneous bullshit going on at the club, and not enough simple messaging about what is expected of the players and the team. It is not a celebrity circus, it is a footy club, plain and simple. Why haven’t players improved in 2025? Why haven’t the gaps left by injuries to key players like Errol been filled by players rising to the opportunities provided? The players have to drive the culture and if that is missing – the leaders need to take steps to address it!
“Former Demons captain Garry Lyon and respected commentator Gerard Whateley have shone a light on Sydney’s “poor” discipline in recent weeks following the Swans’ 53-point loss to Melbourne on Sunday.”
Swan’s Coaches Not Performing?
I could mention that there have been very few ruckmen who have gone on to become premiership winning AFL coaches. Too tall? Too far away from the shorter playing group? The ruckman’s experience of the game itself is very different. Sydney Swans so disappointing this year. Are the Swan’s coaching staff too soft and pandering to mediocrity? I look at Hawthorn and watched their young players in comparison to the Swans. They play with far more passion and grit. It is like the Swan’s players are not all there on the night or on the afternoon. Something integral is missing. Whatever is going on the antidote is only coming in fits and starts. One week on, next week off. One good quarter and one or two bad terms. The MCG hoodoo strikes again! Are players messed up by grand final nightmares? Get the psychologists on the phone and down at the club. Call the exorcists!
Midfield Needs A Second Effort & Plan B
We get killed out of the middle all too often. It is like the blokes in the midfield only have one gear or one effort to give. They need to have plan Bs and plan Cs when required. Who is the midfield coach? The thinking and stratagems around the centre bounces are less than stellar. Do something about that! The pundits have written off the team in season 2025, in Dean Cox’s first crack at head coaching. The players lack resourcefulness when being beaten. Whatever the game plan is, it is shallow and unrewarding in too many instances, especially when put under pressure.
Keep It Simple Coach!
The best coaches have always said that AFL players are not the smartest human beings. Keeping the messaging simple for every player is the key. I remember past Swannie’s saying, ‘the coach gave me a role and I went out and played it.’ Strip it back and give them a role to perform. Obviously, the better and more experienced champions can handle more instruction and freedom. AFL has been taken over by running coaches, just look at the body types of the current players, lean running machines who can’t stick a tackle. Players run up and down the field like a bunch of wingers, fast but unaccountable. The Swans get too easily pushed aside and get gun shy in response. Sydney are no longer a great AFL team without the ball. If Sydney are not attacking they are lost and if that attack is blunted likewise the game is lost.
Basic Defensive Skills Poor
Sydney Swans so disappointing this year. How many easy goals scored by the opposition from crumbing contests have I seen this year – these would have never been tolerated under Paul Roos. The defending has been dire. Dean Cox needs to go back to basics re-defence. There is so much emphasis on attacking from the backline that no one bloody defends.
Rebuilding lost confidence can be a delicate task. Hayden McLean needs some TLC. Get in the head doctors pronto! Ollie Florent has never recovered from missing those goal shots after the siren. Something needs to be done to fix things at the Sydney Swans.
I have been barracking for this club since Gary Buckenara coached Sydney; and he coached me once when I was a schoolboy footballer at Subiaco.
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of America Matters: Pre-apocalyptic Posts & Essays in the Shadow of Trump.
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