Did Sydney Dodge a Media Bullet?
Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera’s and St Kilda’s Lazarus-like comeback in the last quarter at Marvel Studium rightly placed the spotlight firmly on Simon Goodwin and his embattled team. However, with all the hype surrounding the Dees, another performance last Friday night has flown completely under the radar.
In one of the most dominant quarters seen this year, the Giants slammed on nine goals in the third term at Engie Stadium to turn a 28-point deficit at halftime, into a 27-point lead at the final change.
It effectively killed the contest, and the season of Sydney.
The Giants wiped the floor with the stunned Swans, who looked like they were having flashbacks to the 2022 and 2024 Grand Finals as another season was blown to smithereens without even the slightest hint of resistance.
The Song Remains the Same
Teams running roughshod over the Sydney Swans has been a constant theme of this incarnation of the Bloods, even with a new coach at the helm.
Different year, different coach, but the same result.
The Appointment of Dean Cox
In 2011, Sydney got lucky with the success of Paul Roos’ handover to John ‘Horse’ Longmire, and it immediately paid dividends with a premiership in 2012. As such, it was seen as a great template for the future – groom the next coach ready for a smooth transition.
Coaching succession plans look great when they work, but when they go wrong, they can go terribly wrong.
So, is Dean Cox the right fit?
It is hard to judge the performance of Dean Cox based purely on his body of work in 2025, and at this stage I don’t question his ability to coach, however, I do question the Swans’ process, or rather lack of process, concerning Cox’s appointment.
At the end of the 2024 season, the Swans had once again failed miserably in a Grand Final. It was a performance that was almost a carbon copy of the 2022 capitulation. Once can be considered an aberration, but twice in three years it very problematic, and this is not the first time the Swans have been in this position.
The Swans losses to Hawthorn and the Western Bulldogs in the 2014 and 2016 Grand Finals should have triggered a reaction internally from the club at that point of time, but on face value the club carried on with ‘business as usual’.
After all, making a Grand Final is nothing to sneeze at, even if the result of that game ends as a disaster.
Without any internal review (at least made known to the members and the public at large) the Swans carried on as business as usual for seasons 2017 and 2018 as they blooded new talent, and transitioned into the current formation of the Swans.
Many have argued John Longmire’s tenure should have been evaluated at the send of the 2016 season, and possibly it should’ve. The problem many have with the Swans’ 2016 loss was all and sundry within the club believed they were close, but history has shown time and time again, teams that get smashed in Grand Finals do not automatically recover.
Move forward to the end of the 2024 season and the Swans are again in the same situation, coming off another annihilation in another Grand Final.
The appointment of Dean Cox was another succession plan – the same as 2011. However, the club and the team have been battered, bruised and psychologically scarred from losing four Grand Finals in the space of ten years, and Cox’s appointment should never have been a fait-accompli.
(It is worth noting, I have the same reservations about Josh Carr’s succession at Port Adelaide, another club that is psychologically fragile.)
At the end of the 2016 season, the Swans missed the opportunity to thoroughly examine every area of the club, but when 2024 presented the perfect opportunity for a full and thorough review of everything Swans, they again ignored the waring signs as they appointed another internally-trained coach on a succession plan.
Like at the end of 2016, and now 2024, the Swans have failed to seek answers the members and supporters have been asking as they continued as ‘business as usual’.
The 2025 coaching position for the Swans should have been advertised, as the club should have been seeking the best possible person fit for the club. Maybe Dean Cox is still the right appointment, but due diligence should have been seen to have be done.
Dean Cox has been handed a poisoned chalice, and it will be interesting to see if he can put his own imprimatur on the team in 2026. It is to be hoped he does.
I take no issue with Dean Cox’s appointment as a coach, rather the lack of due diligence concerning his appointment.
Thus, coming full circle, the Swans are back in the same position as 2015, 2017, 2027 and 2025, and all the supporter forums are asking the same question; what has changed? The short answer is basically nothing, but that it is letting the current playing group off the hook way too easily.
The Playing Group
Ill-discipline generally starts from the top and then spreads it way down through the rest of the playing group. As much as the Swans gloss Callum Mills shoulder injury from a mad Monday tussle with Jacon Konstanty, the optics of Mills continuing as captain of the club were not good.
I get the argument that anybody can stuff up, but what was the captain of a football club doing wrestling a teammate at Mad Monday function?
Once again, the club handled the matter, or didn’t handle the matter, as another example of the Swan’s ‘business as usual’ policy.
Mills should have been stripped of the captaincy. Doing so would have set a tone for the whole playing group that off-field stupidity will not be tolerated.
At present, Sydney is probably the most ill-disciplined club in the competition, with silly injuries regularly occurring, players being suspended for ridiculous acts, and on-field behaviour that reeks of arrogance and entitlement. Instead of the playing group being wrapped in bubble-wrap and protected from the outside noise, it might do them good to realise how they are perceived in the larger scale of things, which isn’t pretty.
Business as usual – the playing group.
Last season, Brisbane won a Grand Final with a very inexperienced, but match-ready forward line. Young cubs, Logan Morris and Kai Lohmann rallied to the call, and they performed on the biggest stage of all. They played with a maturity beyond their years.
It says a lot about the Lions’ list depth, as well the club’s culture of not letting passengers remain in the team, that the performances Morris and Lohmann, as well Callum Ah Chee, Cam Rayner are now Lions folklore, and the careers of Joe Daniher, Charlie Cameron and Eric Hipwood have now been franked with a premiership medal.
Reputations are made and lost on Grand Final day, and for the Lions, reputations were made on the Grandest Stage last September, while for the Swans reputations were tarnished.
While Brisbane showcased their present, past and future in 2024, the Swans are still waiting what seems like an eternity for Logan McDonald, Joel Amartey and Hayden McLean to come of age.
Logan McDonald has not played a game this season, Hayden McLean’s confidence is in tatters, and Joel Amartey has spent most of this season recovering from niggling injuries and/or stupid suspensions.
In 2022, it was blatantly obvious that McDonald, McLean and Amartey were not a good combination up forward, nor for that matter in the same team, but for three seasons now, it has been ‘business as usual’ as the Swans continue to bash their heads against the wall trying to make this trio work. The time for ‘work experience’ and ‘potential’ is over, and it is now or never for all three.
They are all reasonably good players individually, but not as a combination in the same team. One, or possibly even two of them should be traded while they still have some value to suitors from other clubs.
On a positive note, Jack Buller has been a bit of a revelation this season, but he needs to be the third or fourth forward option and not the first or second as he is currently.
Will Hayward, Tom Papley, Justin McInerney, Braeden Campbell and Ollie Florent have been the first or second tier players most noticeable for their absence/s when the Swans have been used as witches’ hats in big games since the Grand Final 2022.
Papley is a ripper of a player, and he is the ultimate energiser bunny when the Swans are up and running, but his career is tarnished by his performances in big games. Brandon Starcevich took Paps to the cleaners in last year Grand Final, and it is to be hoped that performance stings him into action for future big games.
Something I have noticed about Papley’s game since the 2022 Preliminary Final is the he tries to be a team first player which is not his natural instinct. He opts to pass the ball off when he should be the player doing the miraculous.
Certain players, like Papley, should be given free licence to ply their trade as hungry small forwards who can turn a game on its head in two or three minutes of brilliance.
There are stark similarities between Tom Papley and Shannon Grant, as in being all-or-nothing players. Grant possibly played the worst game of his career in the 1996 Grand Final, but he rebounded in 1999 to win the Norm Smith Medal. Papley has struggled this year with injuries, and he needs a full offseason to get fully fit for 2026.
Nobody would be hungrier than Tom Papley to redeem his reputation.
Will Hayward and Braeden Campbell are both silky smooth players who look great when they are up and firing, but they don’t rise to the occasion when called upon to be leaders. When the flow of the game is going against the team, they’re nowhere to be found. It is easy to point the finger at Heeney, Gulden, Warner and Rowbottom, when things go awry within a game, but this is precisely when the second tier of players needs to stand up to take some heat for a period within games to stem the opposition’s momentum.
Justin McInerney has really disappointed this season with a couple of suspensions, as well as turning the ball over regularly with ill-disciplined acts. In every game I witnessed this season, McInerney has given away silly free kicks and 50 metre penalties, and there seems to be an uncontrolled anger or frustration about the way he has approached this season.
Maybe this stems from his Grand Final failures? Check the record on how he performed in those games. It ain’t pretty.
Ollie Florent’s papers look like they have been stamped as he has only played a handful of games this season and it doesn’t seem like he is in Dean Cox’s long-term plans. Good luck Ollie.
Where is the muscle?
When Geelong in 2022, and Brisbane in 2024, ran onto the field for their Grand Finals against the Swans I couldn’t help but notice how much bigger and stronger their players appeared.
Sydney has some very flashy players on their list, but not many brutes. Flashy is good, but sometimes pure strength is required, especially in big games like Grand Finals and it is an area the Swans need to work on.
Grundy is great, but he is no Carl Ditterich. Heeney is a Rolls Royce and, while he does lead by example, he needs a chop out when it comes to matters of strength, from time to time. A player like Jordan De Goey, Jarrod Berry or Toby Greene (I wish) should be explored over the offseason to take some of the hits Heeney currently receiving.
Errol Gulden – silky but certainly not an enforcer.
Chad Warner – gifted but not yet developed enough to be a brute (he does try).
Nick Blakey – Bambi, in that he runs and runs but at times it is destination unknown.
James Rowbottom – tough in and under and as a lockdown player, but not rugged tough.
James Jordan – a great tagger, but he is not built to be an enforcer.
The back six – solid, dependable but I don’t believe they put the fear of God into other teams.
Back to the future?
Which brings us back to, doe a deer, otherwise known as the third quarter against the Giants last Friday night, and another humiliating psychological Swans breakdown under pressure.
It is crisis time at the Swans again, and the old ‘business as usual’ model since the days of Paul Roos’ needs to be scrapped. Every level of off-field and on-field performance needs to be examined with an open mind, and if hard decisions need to be made, now is the time, as the club has September off this year.
Forgetting the Grand Final losses as they are obvious, but losses such as last Friday night and the embarrassment against Port Adelaide last season are becoming more frequent as the Swans are no longer saving their worst performances exclusively for Grand Finals anymore.
I fear, as do many neutral supporters, that Sydney will rebound next year and make the Grand Final (which is another habit they have developed), only to fail again because they have ignored the elephants in the room.
Same cake, same recipe, same method, same result.
It is up to Dean Cox to confront the elephants in the room during the offseason and fix the on-field breakdown issues.
It is up to recruitment team to do a Collingwood and recruit select players to fulfill select roles and to provide greater depth. Sydney’s weakness is its mid-tier players who know they won’t be dropped, and they play accordingly. Sack a couple of them and bring players to the club who are hungry and who will fight like hell for their position.
It is up to the head honchos to oversee a refurbishment of the entire club and to act without fear or favour in the decisions they must make. The time for ‘business as usual’ is over as change is a must if the Swans want to remain relevant.
I savaged Callum Mills earlier in this article, and rightly so, but to his credit he has played some of his best football as the captain since returning from injury earlier in the year, and getting a few games under his belt. Saying he should have had the captaincy taken from him back then is probably correct from an ‘example’ point of view, but he has done a lot to salvage his leadership credentials in the back half of season 2025.
Finally, Sam Reid should never have been selected for the 2022 Grand Final, and the same applies for Issac Heeney taking to the field in last year’s decider. Another case of business as usual when tough decisions needed to be made.
Thank you, Melbourne, for covering up the shortcomings at Moore Park, by doing a Sydney even better than Sydney can do. No wait, probably not that bad, but thanks for trying, anyway.
For the record, I am a lifelong passionate supporter of the Sydney Swans, aka South Melbourne Football Club, and this inventory is not easy to write, however I seriously believe there is a Premiership in this team if they can get their heads right on and off the field.
