Sydney Swans coach Dean Cox asked his players, including Isaac Heeney and Callum Mills, for feedback over the off-season. This is what they told him

1: The Swans needed better leadership underneath captain Callum Mills and vice captain Isaac Heeney.

2: The players wanted more one-on-one time with Cox, who had operated in 2025 with restricted resources.

3: They wanted more clarity on the implementation of the new game plan.

“People ask when you become a senior coach,” recalls Cox, “‘Do you think you’re ready?’ You probably think that you are.”

Cox half laughs when asked now whether he was ready – at a relatively late point in the 2025 pre-season – to replace a long-time and highly successful senior coach and take on a group still shell-shocked in a sporting sense from a grand final humiliation.

“You look back 12 months later and question that, but maybe in 12 months’ time I’ll question things as well,” Cox said.

“What we want to do is keep moving forward and put ourselves in a position of competing in finals and knowing what to do when the whips are cracking.

“I do believe upon reflection that having that time to add things to the football program that I think we needed, and the players felt we needed, was a great opportunity.”

All up, 44 players completed the coach’s review. Some of the answers were short and punchy, others more detailed. Roughly half of the senior list put their names to their questionnaire, the rest chose to remain anonymous. Not every player raised concerns with the key football issues facing the Swans, and neither was Cox shocked by the key areas troubling his team. But the areas of concern were consistent.

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“The players said we needed to improve our leadership,” he said.

“We needed to provide more support to [captain] Callum [Mills].

“One thing we needed to decide was whether to deal with it in-house or bring in an external [figure], so we brought in Gerard Murphy as a consultant to work with the leaders and the emerging leaders. In the end they’re the ones you need to step up at the crucial moments, and you saw that after half-time [on Thursday night].”

Cox’s US odyssey came after the emotion-laden final three days of the trade period, which saw the Swans land Charlie Curnow at the expense of popular pair Will Hayward – who was in Colombia when he received the fateful news – and Ollie Florent.

Senior players had expressed their disappointment at the treatment of Hayward, in particular.

The nuances of the deal and the timing was tricky – James Rowbottom was briefly mentioned as part of the Curnow deal but refused to leave, and the coach navigated that path with honesty and plain speaking to the end.

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The trip also came after a three-day brainstorming session in Bowral involving all the senior coaches and analysts, and football boss Leon Cameron bringing together every aspect of “how we want to play,” said Cox. The players’ spring and summer regimes were micromanaged to unprecedented levels. Every day of the Swans’ pre-season was mapped down to the last player and last line coach.

Acknowledging that Heeney has stepped up as a leader over the past year or two, Cox said that the Swans had chosen to keep the remainder of their leadership group under wraps. But Dane Rampe moved back into a key role and the group was expanded to seven, and former Leading Teams boss Murphy has become a regular fixture at the club.

That call, said Cox, took careful planning, given the soft cap struggles facing all clubs, but specifically those in Sydney.

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Last season Longmire was still in contract, with much of his wage still included in the football department budget. That, coupled with Cox’s promotion, which did not take place until November, left the losing 2024 grand finalists and their rookie senior coach with the smallest line-up of assistants in the AFL, which, in turn, robbed Cox of one of the strong suits that led to him winning the job in the first place.

Cox’s new role and added responsibilities across every aspect of football significantly reduced his contact time with his players. The feedback came back strongly in the football review: the players wanted more one-on-one time with their coach.

“A common theme was that the coach needs to spend more time with the players. My door was always open, but now it’s still open, and I’m in there more often,” said Cox.

He lost only one assistant coach, Jarrad McVeigh, to a new career opportunity in the US, but gained premiership coach Simon Goodwin in the new role of director of coaching and performance. That, along with new forwards coach Jeremy Laidler and Nick Malceski, who is coaching the Swans’ VFL side.

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“My goal was to surround myself with aspirational coaches who could all become senior coaches,” Cox explained.

“I look back at Alastair Clarkson when he had people [like] Luke Beveridge, and Leon Cameron and Adam Simpson as his assistants. Why would anyone hesitate to surround yourself with talented people?

“My big question for ‘Goody’ after what was a tough year for him was: does he still have the passion? I have no doubt about that. His first question to me when he came on board was, ‘What do you need me to do to take off your plate?’

“I’ll never have all the answers, but I feel that all we can do is keep moving forward and trying to improve, and we haven’t wasted the opportunity to work at achieving that.”

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