TWO-TIME All-Australian Chad Wingard has reservations as to how seamless the Sydney’s coaching succession plan will be, ahead of the Swans opening their 2025 season with under Dean Cox
Former West Coast champion Cox had been a Swans assistant coach under John Longmire for seven seasons before he was handed the reins just weeks after Sydney’s devastating 60-point Grand Final loss to Brisbane.
The Swans have made succession plans work in the past, transitioning from Paul Roos to John Longmire across 2009 to 2011, which saw the club claim the 2012 premiership, just two years into Longmire’s tenure.
However, Wingard has seen the more difficult side of succession plans during his time at Hawthorn, as the playing group struggled to adjust to the proposed transition from Alastair Clarkson to Sam Mitchell in 2021.
“The thing that made that very difficult was because [Clarkson] had his set ways that he wanted to coach the team, and the way they wanted to play,” Wingard said on AFL.com.au‘s new preview show, The Round Ahead.
“While that was happening, he was head coach at Hawthorn, and Sam Mitchell was the head coach in the VFL at Box Hill. So, when a player would come from Box Hill into Hawthorn, it actually made it very difficult for that player to emulate exactly what was happening [because they were] playing completely different game systems.”
In July of 2021, less than 30 days after the original announcement of an 18-month succession plan, Clarkson revealed he would instead be stepping down at the end of that year, with assistant coach, Mitchell, taking over.
Mitchell’s first year in the job in 2022 was rocky, guiding the Hawks just one place higher than the 14th they finished in Clarkson’s final year. It took three seasons for the club to fully transition to Mitchell’s system, as last year saw them finally make their first finals series in six years.
Sam Mitchell and Alastair Clarkson at Hawthorn training in 2020. Picture: AFL Photos
Wingard queried whether it would take Sydney just as long to move into a different game plan under their new head coach.
“I’m wondering whether [Sydney will] have an issue with Dean Cox’s system,” Wingard said.
“Is it going to be a man-to-man defence? Is it going to be a zone? What does it actually look like in terms of the nuances, the stuff that you can’t get across in a few months?”
The first look at Dean Cox’s coaching system comes tonight, at 7.40pm AEDT as Sydney takes on Hawthorn in the opening game of the 2025 Toyota AFL Premiership season at the SCG.
