Sydney coach John Longmire says star Callum Mills’ infamous shoulder injury from club post-season celebrations “didn’t change our minds” about whether he should be the Swans’ 2024 stand-alone captain – although it did delay any confirmation.
The Swans on Tuesday confirmed Mills, 26, would be the club’s sole skipper this year after sharing the duties with Dane Rampe and Luke Parker, who’d been the club’s leaders since 2019.
Mills, who has played 155 games for the Swans and was first elevated to co-captain alongside the duo in 2022, will now take the role solo, despite his playing return remaining unclear having torn his rotator cuff while wrestling teammate Jacob Konstanty at a Surry Hills pub last September.
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Speaking on SEN Breakfast on Wednesday morning, Longmire said the Swans had “full faith” Mills would learn from his experiences and that he’d be “a wonderful captain for this footy club”.
“I guess the evolution of Callum’s captaincy has been reasonably obvious to those internal at the Swans for a long time,” Longmire told SEN Breakfast.
“He’s just got a great ability to be able to think ‘team’ and do things on the ground, as far as setting the tone, and off the ground has been superb for a long period of time. So from that regard, I think most people internally would have thought there was a natural progression for Callum.
“Obviously what happened at the end of the year, it certainly didn’t change our minds, but we needed to put a bit of time in between the announcement (on Tuesday). Everyone makes mistakes, as Callum has put his hand up to, but in the end he was the man to lead us forward.”
Longmire added: “That’s part of what happens in life is that you deal with some things that get thrown up and you have to negotiate the best way forward. And the best way forward for this footy club was still to have Callum as sole captain. That’s ultimately what we fell back on is the players knew it, the players understood it, they were really keen for that to happen and in the end it was, internally, certainly a reasonably obvious choice for us.”
Longmire said he was hopeful Mills would be fit to return “a bit earlier” than the middle point of the season, but stressed the club was keeping an open mind.
“He’s coming along really well,” Longmire said of Mills. “He’s doing a fair bit of training for us. Obviously none of the contact work, but he’s still running around and doing some drills and moving really well.
“The challenge will be we’ll have to hold him back – save him from himself, I guess, to some degree – in regards to he’d be pushing really hard to get back and play.
“We’re talking around the mid-season (for a return). Hopefully a bit earlier, but we’re not locking anything in at the moment. We’ll just keep it open and see how he progresses. But also it’ll be up to the surgeon about when he gets back, it won’t be up to what we say.”
