Roos to step aside as Swans look to future

Sydney coach Paul Roos discusses tactics with assistant coach John Longmire at the three-quarter time break during the AFL Round 08 match between the Sydney Swans and the Essendon Bombers at ANZ Stadium. Slattery Images

The Sydney Swans are set for a major coaching shake-up, with the club yesterday announcing that senior coach Paul Roos will step aside at the end of next season. Long-time assistant John Longmire has been named as his replacement from 2011 onwards.

The move follows the lead of Collingwood, who just two weeks ago announced a similar succession plan with current coach Mick Malthouse and favourite son Nathan Buckley.

The move also carries broader implications for the coaching search at North Melbourne, the former club of Longmire, where he was reported as a front-runner for the vacant senior coach position.

Roos’ tenure began half-way through the 2002 season as a caretaker, after the Swans parted ways with Rodney Eade. Just three years on from that ten-game stretch, he delivered the club’s first premiership in 72 years.

Prior to this year, there hasn’t been a full season he’s coached that didn’t end with finals action. Going into round 20 this weekend, there is a (very) slight chance that streak may yet continue.

But despite all his success, Roos has reiterated on many occasions that he did not consider himself a “career coach”. Indeed, his exit will come a year earlier than when his contracted term was up, and in his press conference yesterday he labelled it “primarily a family decision”.

He wants to spend more time with his teenage sons before they move out, and has stated in the past his desire to spend more time in America, where his wife hails from.

The other factor weighing on his mind and, more specifically, the club’s minds – one that may have in fact altered the timing of this decision, if nothing else – was John Longmire.

Longmire had played 200 games and won a premiership at North Melbourne. He joined the Swans coaching staff as an assistant in 2002, and was recently promoted to the role of coaching co-ordinator.

Given the success of former (and at the time of his senior appointment, less-touted) Sydney assistant Ross Lyon at St Kilda, you can understand why he was getting attention from Melbourne-based clubs.

Longmire has essentially been groomed to succeed Roos (which is one reason why we’ve seen Roos on the boundary line so much this year) and yesterday’s announcement makes it formal.

It’s a win for Roos, who gets to bow out in the manner he had intended to.

It’s a win for Longmire, who at long last gets to shake the “coach-in-waiting” tag and have a senior job locked in.

But above all, it’s a win for the Swans. They were always going to lose Roos at some point, but to have lost the man they’d pinned their succession plans on so close to that point would’ve been a cruel blow.

Like Collingwood, they didn’t just get their guy – they got their guys.

Even better, they managed to do it avoiding some of the potential stumbling blocks that surround the Magpies’ handover.

Roos has no interest in coaching beyond next year; Malthouse’s interest has shown no signs of waning and he’s still aiming to win premierships.

Longmire and Roos have an obvious history of a working relationship as coaches; it is unknown whether any tension will exist between Buckley and Malthouse.

At the very least, it’ll mean the media won’t be on their back as much.

The next challenge for Sydney going forward is to rebuild in order to return to being a player in September. It only makes sense that a rebuild of sorts will take place in the coaches box, too.

But after a drought-breaking premiership and a sustained finals-making run, it has to be said Longmire has some pretty big shoes to fill.