The Australian Financial Review. We were given a lot of responsibilities from about five or six years of age. We were driving cars, we were driving our way. stop and doing things that You were driving to the bus stop at the age of five. Six with me, so I couldn't say I have a steering wheel, but... I was saying you haven't got all the answers at that particular. find a lot more people willing to
Hi, I'm Sally Patton, editor of BOSS from the Australian Financial Review. And welcome to 15 minutes with the BOSS. We're hoping to get some really great advice is John Longmire, the Executive Director of Club Performance at the Sydney Swans. Hi John, how are you? Thank you so much for coming in. Now, John, as I said, you're the executive director of club performance at the Sydney Swans, but you were a senior coach of the team between 2011 and 2024.
Under your leadership the team won the Premiership flag in 2012 and made the grand final in 2014-2016. 22 and 24. That's a lot of playing the whole season. Indeed, you coached the Sydney Swans for 333 games and you're only one of 25 people in the AFL to have coached more than 300 games. And of course before your coaching career you're a player and you played for North Melbourne.
That's a long time to have been involved in football and to have been involved in coaching. What's the best part about coaching? I get asked a lot about what's best. Is it playing football or coaching football? And I'd always put coaching football at the top because you're a lot more aware of the impact on so many more people from supporters to boards to... Coterie groups, sponsors, partners, you're so much more aware.
When you become a coach, one of the great things is that the network and the reach you have is so big. So many people love the game. We're the number one supported team in the country. So when so many people love your club and love the game, it's a great privileged position to be in.
So you've just got all those stakeholders that you've got to sort of pay attention to absolutely you're much more aware of that and when you're a player you're essentially worried about your performance and your teammates performance and it's a bit more of a smaller view of the world whereas when you're a coach it's a lot more wider and
There's many stakeholders, many wide and varied. That adds pressure, but it also adds great joy and great reach to be able to get out to those people. All right, John, we've only got 15 minutes. We better not waste any time. The clock starts now. My first question is What happens at the beginning of your day? What time do you get up? What do you do? I get up at 6am and I'm usually in at work at about 6.35, 6.40, so pretty quick transitioning to work and then I'm either on a bike or...
i'm in the pool so it's a general sort of 45-minute session before I have a shower and start my work day. And do you do the breakfast thing? I have breakfast at the club, so we have a great facility there, a football club, and so I sit down and have breakfast there. It's a pretty light breakfast there. And do you think about having been a player and having been in high performance athleticism for so long do you think about
protein and what you're putting in your body in the morning? Not really. That's refreshing. No, I don't think too much about that. It's what's available generally. It's what's available. We're lucky enough a number of mornings a week there's a team there that do some cooking so when they're not there we just help ourselves to whatever's available so i'm not too fussy okay my next question is about a pivotal moment in your career was there something that you worked on
a big change that happened that really changed the whole trajectory of what you were doing? There's probably two, if I can have two. Sure, you can have two. Thank you. There was probably one when I grew up in the farmers. As a 16-year-old, I was going to be a farmer, that's where my dad was.
I was really enjoying that type of lifestyle. And where was the farm? Down at Coral in New South Wales on the Murray River. But at 16, the opportunity came to go to Melbourne and play professional AFL football. I was given that decision-making process by myself. My parents said, and you make that call.
That was significant. I always thought I'd be down there for two years and come back and haven't quite got back there yet. So that was the first one. The second one was when I decided to come to Sydney, my wife and I, or my girlfriend at the time, and now my wife.
End of 2001, I was working for an international management group, one of the biggest sports management companies in the world i'd retired from afl football was loving loving life and then decided to jump into coaching and that was a pretty significant moment sort of 23 years ago that's um It's really changed where our family lives as well as, you know, what I do from that point onwards. So when you were 16 and you first came to Melbourne,
Was that a total culture shock? Did it take you a long time to sort of get into Melbourne? Absolutely. I was working in the city in an accounting firm and I come straight from the farm. At the 16th? At the 16th, yeah. getting a train into work and back, and I was a fish out of water big time, and I probably struggled a fair bit early days. But they put us in clubhouses, so I was living with three other young fellas in our clubhouse, and we had great fun.
And do you think you learned anything from that idea of being the fish out of water? Absolutely. put me right out of my comfort zone at a very young age. I was used to being out of my comfort zone on the farm anyway. It was always, we were given a lot of responsibilities from about five or six years of age. We were driving cars, driving our way to the bus stop and doing things that probably normal young kids. You were driving to the bus stop, yeah.
I'm the age of five. Yeah, well, six, yeah, six. We'd be sort of old. Couldn't say I have a steering wheel, but we found a way to do it because that's just what happened in the country. You just find a way because your family, your mum and dad were pretty busy, so you just had a...
find a way of doing things so when I went to Melbourne it was another big step I'd probably been used to making decisions but that was a big step as a 16 year old to move to the city for the first time without your family and but it also taught me to
mature and grow up a lot and I think that was good for me in the long run. And what were those first year or two like as a coach? Did you take to that immediately was it quite difficult to move from that sort of player side to there being the coach and having people rely on you and ask you questions and you can't be everybody's mate as the coach right whereas as a player you're the mate
Yeah, I retired at a young age until I retired at 28. And then I spent three years working at IMG and then went into assistant coaching under Paul Bruce. And I guess... I was still at the age of some of the players. Tony Lockhart, for instance, made his comeback around that time. But I always found that okay. I didn't have too much drama with that.
I was very fortunate at the end of my assistant coaching period to be able to have a handover period into senior coaching with Paul Rue. So I was very fortunate to work. with Paul for a long period of time that taught me a lot about how to manage people okay interesting my next question is What is the best piece of career advice you've ever been given? It's from an old coach I had, and if it was easy, everyone would be doing it.
I thought it was pretty succinct. It was very sort of straight down the line and something I've turned to quite often. Also when you've got challenges and when you're going through some tougher times as a coach or a leader, you've got those, and often in the job that we're doing, high media scrutiny as well.
When it feels a bit tough, you've got to remind yourself they're actually in a privileged position. And in our case, as a senior coach, there's only 18 in the country as in AFL coaches. So in the old adage of if it was easy, everyone would be doing it stands pretty true. So does that thing give you confidence that
someone has the confidence in you to do what you do. So you should have confidence in yourself that you'll get through the hard time. Absolutely. There's faith that someone's got in you to be able to have that position of authority or leadership or whatever you like to call it.
They've got faith that you can get through any situation and therefore you have great faith in yourself too because that's probably the most important thing. Quite often early days you make a lot of mistakes and you still make mistakes as you go through and you get older. I've got a 7 out of 10 leadership role. You know, if you get 7 out of 10 things right.
that's a great result as a leader but it automatically means you're going to get three out of ten things wrong but don't let those three stop you from doing the seven that's interesting though the seven out of ten rule yeah i talked to about with our captains every year i just talk to our leadership group and particularly our captains
that they're not going to get everything right. But they're in that position because generally they get most things right. And I think that that's all you can expect. But I think that's a challenge because a lot of people do expect of themselves they will get everything right. Yeah. For instance, when I first started senior coaching, I do a press conference and... I wouldn't go to bed until I'd seen it online and used to be, you know, back when I first started, I wasn't online until midnight.
So I used to have to wait up until midnight just to make sure I didn't make any mistakes. Then I got to the point of I couldn't live like that. You couldn't keep being concerned about how many mistakes you made. So I came to really feel comfortable with making mistakes. particularly when you're making decisions On that night, John, We are going to take a short break, but don't go away. When we come back, we're going to open the chatterbox.
Welcome back to 15 Minutes with the Boss. I'm here with John Longmire, the Executive Director of Performance at the Sydney Swans AFL team. Now, John, this is our section called the Chatterbox. In front of you is this lovely, shiny brown bog. inside of which today are about 15 questions. I'm going to ask you to pick them out one by one and we'll continue with a little bit more Q&A. Have a fish. I get to read the questions. Thanks very much. I'm in control of this. Fair enough.
What's your favourite party story you like to share? Or I went to Las Vegas when Samuel L. Jackson hosted the ESPN Sports Awards. And I was fortunate enough afterwards to go to an after-party and met Steven Seagal, Samuel L. Jackson, Andy Garcia. Some of the biggest names in movies at the time. And Steven Seagal actually gave me his personal cell number. So we were managing Cathy Freeman at the time who won the ESPN Sportsperson of the Year.
And he invited us down to his ranch in Texas, but never quite got there, unfortunately. So you mentioned Cathy Freeman. How do you think someone like her would have handled the pressure that she was under in that 400 metre race at the Olympics in Sydney?
We were really fortunate that our company managed her, and I shared an office with the girl who was a personal manager, so we were able to see up close how she handled it. It was just an amazing experience. I mean, the way that she dealt with that. having the pressure of the nation.
on her at that moment. I'm not sure there would be too many people would have ever experienced the pressure that Cathy experienced at that final at the Sydney Olympics. And do you think... she has or had techniques to cut without like breathing or somehow being able to block out the pressure that was around her. She had a few different things that she used to use, but she also had good people around her. Her team were really good people in the Rawa too.
not shield her, I guess, but sort of use some space around her to be able to allow her to focus on what she needed to do. She needed to play a role and do a job and her main job was running fast and so her preparation was outstanding. You would have had similar circumstances as a coach. You may not have the entire nation's eyes on the Sydney Swans, but there are a lot of very big pressure games. How did you coach or how would you coach your team?
How to deal with that pressure? Usually try, and particularly if things aren't going well, you try and get them to zero back in on to... just do one thing really well. Because sometimes if you're If you're thinking about all the noise that's around and you're listening to all the commentary around it or you're not sure which way to turn, some of the best advice you can get, I think, is to just concentrate on what your job is, what your task is at that particular point.
and make sure you do it really well, and that usually helps get through all the noise. Right, okay, I love that. Okay, next question, Herfish. I'll hand it to you this time. Okay, thank you. Who is a leader, business or otherwise, whom you admire and why? I've got a couple. Trent Robinson's a friend of mine who's coach of the Sydney Roosters.
He's a wonderful leader over an extended period of time. I look at the ones that are able to do it over a long period of time at the height of their game, not just one or two years. I think he's been able to do that. And what's made him special, do you think? Why do you admire him? He knows his players. He knows his people. He knows how to get the best out of people. And I really admire that. I think it's one of the great strengths you can have as a leader or a coach.
And in the business sense, I've got to know Robin Cooter, who's a... CEO and founder of Airtrunk. Yes. And he's a Sydney Swan supporter. I hear. Yeah, and to hear what his story's like. Well, Robin built her company in 2015, started by himself. had the foresight to be able to come up with an idea and then the courage to back that in. And then he got the right people around him. And then nine years later, sold the company for $24 billion. That's right, $24 billion.
And then he was able to reward the people that went on the journey with him. So what a great story. And the company is in data center. That's right. That's right. Yeah, absolutely. So what I loved about it is how he shared when he eventually sold the company. how he shared the prophets with a lot of his staff and a lot of the people that came on the journey with him.
just talks to really the quality of person and how he appreciates the people that help build the company with him. And do you think that's in general very important to share the spoil, share the benefits, the joy of...
attaining something amazing. We can imagine the loyalty you get out of that or the dedication from your staff you get out of that or the love from your staff is incredible. If you've got staff that generally love coming to work because they've got skin in the game and they get rewarded for that, whether it's financially or otherwise.
from a leader, they're going to give you a lot more. And the people at Airtrunk have given a fair bit over the last few years and hopefully they're rewarded well. Yeah, true. Have another fish. So what has been the hardest day of your career or the hardest thing you've had to do? Pick a football club up after a devastating loss.
And when you're not feeling great yourself, So when things feeling really bad and you feel it's a very public sense and particularly the game that we play being a national game, it's very public and on the biggest stage in front of 100,000 people and millions on television. to be able to lead the club, I guess, through that, but also how to respond on a Monday in a personal sense.
is really important. So you're aware of how everyone's feeling in an emotional sense. You're aware of how your players, your staff, everyone around you is feeling. But then you need to make sure that you look after them, care for them in the right way.
And then give the right message to your supporters. So those are challenging moments that you've got to make sure that you get the messaging right. So do you, to an extent, have to put a bit of a barrier up in front of you and block out what's happened so that you can front up to the media you can front up to your players do you have to sort of block
yourself for a little while in certain circumstances you do but in other circumstances in particular when you're talking with suppliers I think you let them in to how you're feeling there's Certainly some of the things I've learned as a leader over a long time is
the more vulnerable you are, the more connected the people are around you. And rather than standing up and telling them, this is the way you should feel, this is what you should do, tell them how you're going and actually be quite open with them. adds a connection that you'll be paid back many years down the track. By saying you haven't got all the answers at that particular moment is actually a healthy thing. You'll find a lot more people willing to get in.
help you if they know that you're struggling with it and i think in the end that's a really positive thing i think the most vulnerable leaders are the ones that They get the most out of their staff. And by saying that you haven't got all the answers all the time, it's actually a positive thing. I think that's been the biggest shift I've seen in leadership in probably the last 20 years.
I don't want to focus on the negative because getting to the grand final so many times isn't such an amazing achievement. But is there any one particular grand final loss that sort of stands out? More so than the others? No. No, they're all tough ones. They're all tough ones and each grand final's got their own storyline to it. I'm fortunate that if we were able to win one, it would have been great to win two or three more.
And you've been there. That's right. That's the important thing. That's right. Yeah, interesting. Okay. On that note, John, you have passed, with Flying Colours, the chatterbox section. I am now going to ask you one more question, which we ask everybody who comes in, and that is, if you weren't doing your current role,
What would you be doing? I'd most likely be a farmer. Oh, you'd go back to the farm? I'd be back to the farm. I've been meaning to go back there for many years, but my brother won't let me drive the tractors these days because they're worth over a million dollars each and he probably doesn't trust me. Why would you want to be a farmer? I guess it's in my blood. It's where I grew up. It's where I was born.
My whole family is still back there. I go back there every summer for harvest. I love it. It's just once it's there, it's hard to get out of your system. It's my downtime when I... Wanted to switch off from football. I talked to my brother on the phone about farming. It's a great part of, you know, very fortunate part of my growing up. I love that. Okay, on that note, John, our time is up.
John, it's been so great talking to you today and I really love the idea that these jobs aren't easy. If they were easy, everybody would do it. So you just have to learn to back yourself. You've obviously been dealing with pressure for a long, long time. It's been great hearing how you've managed to do that. And also that idea that
You need to get things right seven times out of ten. The seven in ten rule is something that I will definitely take back with me. So thank you again so much for allowing us to spend 15 minutes with the boss. Thanks, Sally. If you like the podcast, more, consider or writing a review as it helps us to reach more people And follow us wherever you get your podcasts. At the Financial Review investigate the big stories about markets, business and power.
该是爱发着 and you can subscribe to the Financial the daily habit dot com slash subscribe was hosted by me, Sally Famous by Alex Our head of podcast is LatFan. premium content. The Australian Financial Review.