The unique challenges of living their best football life in Sydney had rarely been better explained by coaches John Longmire and Adam Kingsley than when they dined out on the eve of the 2024 season with the visiting AFL posse of Andrew Dillon, Laura Kane and Daniel Richardson.
Rule changes, game trends and the match review system were off the menu when the group, on a warm night in early March, sat down over Middle Eastern fare in the Harbour City. Kingsley was quieter than his more experienced Swans counterpart but voiced his concern about the game’s struggle to attract Indigenous talent from among the big numbers living in Sydney’s west.
Longmire, a passionate campaigner for better wages for assistant coaches, said he feared football would be worse off in the long term if coaching was no longer an attractive pathway for the game’s most respected on-field leaders. He lamented that Luke Hodge, Joel Selwood and potentially Scott Pendlebury were not exactly beating down the door to become an assistant coach.
The Sydney and GWS coaches spoke with AFL bosses about ways to attract more supporters into footy’s toughest market, to their games and via TV ratings.
And Longmire spoke yet again about the prohibitive cost of the housing market in Sydney compared with every other AFL town. Although he stressed how fortunate the Swans had been in attracting high-quality football staff, Longmire’s comment that the game should be looking after its people better seems to have finally hit home with head office.
Of Kingsley’s five assistant coaches, three are living away from their families. Ben Hart’s and Craig Jennings’ families remain in Victoria while Brent Montgomery’s stayed in Adelaide. All three men are into their second season of commuting with Jennings living in a mobile home.
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