It wasn’t quite the “Ludovico Technique” from A Clockwork Orange. But day one of the Dean Cox era at the Sydney Swans did involve a rather confronting form of behaviour modification treatment: a thorough and unsparing review of their latest grand final embarrassment.
Cox officially took the reins from his long-time mentor John Longmire last week, but Monday was the first day of training with the club’s full squad in the house.
The review was so extensive that their first field session together had to be pushed back until Tuesday.
“It was something we had to do,” Cox said. “We spent all day doing it.”
The main lesson learnt from their 60-point defeat to the Brisbane Lions – their second heavy grand final loss in three years – was as painfully obvious at the time as it must have been three months later: the Swans were absolutely horrendous in the physical contest, an area of historical strength for them, and were bullied in and around the ball.
“That was our last performance as a football club,” Cox said. “To be able to do that, to stare it in the face, to learn from it … that’s the only way you can go forward.”
Dean Cox talks to players during Tuesday’s training session.Credit: Getty Images
The good news? No eye clamps or sedatives were required. At least by Cox’s telling, players were happy to sit through the torturous vision and speak candidly about their mental states in the match and subsequently, in the hope that a pathway to improvement will emerge.
“It was really tough and everyone has different emotions towards it … it’s something we obviously weren’t proud of,” said captain Callum Mills, who didn’t play in the grand final due to injury, but was no less emotionally shaken by their performance.
“As Coxy said, we have to stare it in the face … and then hopefully when we get back, or even any big games, we’re able to produce what we learned.”
The bad news? Since they failed to apply this year what they learnt from their 2022 grand final shellacking against Geelong, nobody outside the four walls of Sydney’s swanky Moore Park headquarters will believe in this team until they get back to the AFL’s biggest stage and win.
Swans players get to work on Tuesday.Credit: Getty Images
That is the cold, hard reality the Swans now face, and the hope is that a change of coach can be the circuit-breaker they need.
Longmire made the surprise decision last week to step down a year early and enact his succession plan with Cox, who had worked under him since the end of 2017.
While the Swans’ playing style will stay true to what Longmire had been working on, Cox says he plans to change “a fair bit” tactically, and those tweaks will be rolled out at training over the coming days and weeks.
But one of them was easily spotted on Tuesday: key defender Tom McCartin, still only 24, was training as a forward.
Chad Warner (second from left) is off contract at the end of 2025.Credit: Getty Images
“Tommy’s been phenomenal for us down back for periods of his career so far, but he started as a forward,” Cox said.
“We want to build flexibility in our team. We want to also make sure that Tommy’s been around for a while, and he gets a look ahead of the ball at times. When he does that, he creates something completely different for a dynamic of our forward line. We’ll do that with midfielders, we’ll do that with forwards and also some defenders will change places. That’ll eventuate over the whole summer.”
Also high on Cox’s to-do list is getting a deal over the line with off-contract star Chad Warner, and fighting off the huge interest in his signature from the two clubs in his native Western Australia.
The 23-year-old reportedly went golfing in Perth recently with former Swans types Don Pyke and Kieren Jack, who just happen to be employed by the West Coast Eagles as chief executive and head of strategy and innovation, respectively.
Former Geelong champion Cameron Mooney said on SEN last week that such a meeting was a “bad look” for Warner, and that he’d be “filthy” if he was his teammate.
Cox said: “He’s certainly known Don and Kieren from his time here. We take it at face value on that.
“For us, we’ve got to control what we can. It’s about trying to create a football club that Chad wants to be a part of going forward. With players coming out of contract, [negotiations] happen a long way before the actual last year of their contract. That will be the same with Chad. It’s just constant dialogue with Chad, his management group and the footy club.
“Hopefully, something can get sorted.”
Keeping top talent at the club is an all-hands-on-deck effort, too, as Mills noted.
“We want to create the best high-performance environment we possibly can. Hopefully, Chad sees that,” he said.
“We don’t do it all for Chad. We do it for everyone within the building. He’s obviously a really vital part of our team, but we do this for everyone.”
