Fading Swans premiership dream dashed by ‘tough’ coach call

As if Sydney’s hopes of winning the premiership this season weren’t made hard enough already by the mistakes and subsequent suspension of five key players and the mental drain of the last week, they will now have to navigate September down a coach.

Mark McVeigh has served as an assistant coach at the Swans since 2022, but after winning the Essendon coaching role on Monday, he has departed effective immediately.

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This means he will not be in Dean Cox’s coaches box for the club’s qualifying final clash with Brisbane next week, leaving more ground for the remaining coaches to cover and forcing the club to change their match-day set up.

The Swans already have a thinner coaching group than some other clubs. Under Cox, they have former Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin as director of coaching, and, without McVeigh, three assistant coaches: Ben Matthews, Jeremy Laidler and Amon Buchanan; plus development coach Adam Kennedy.

By comparison, Collingwood, under coach Craig McRae, has Hayden Skipworth, Matthew Boyd, Jordan Roughead, Tyson Goldsack and Greg Stafford as assistant coaches, and Matthew Lokan, Chloe McMillan, Dyson Heppell and Nathan Murphy as development coaches.

The Swans at the very least benefit from the sheer quality of experience around Cox. Goodwin is a premiership coach, general manager of football Leon Cameron coached GWS for a decade and long-time Swans coach John Longmire remains in the mix as director of club performance.

Every team has the same soft cap to work with when constructing their football departments, but there’s not much a team can do about losing an assistant coach on the eve of a finals series.

Particularly after losing Isaac Heeney, Chad Warner, Nick Blakey, Riley Bice and James Jordon a week earlier and the fallout that has come with that.

Speaking on Tuesday in his new Essendon polo, McVeigh said he and the Swans agreed long before he got the Bombers job that he would depart upon winning the role.

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“The dialogue with Dean Cox and Leon Cameron was pretty clear throughout this process if I was to win it,” McVeigh told reporters.

“We know the enormity of the job. We sat down as it got a little bit closer to the decision and if we were able to win the role, we knew if the Swans got to a grand final it would be six or seven weeks (from now) and that was just too long if I was to win the role.

“They were fantastic in supporting me, although it’s tough leaving the players and the club in a really difficult moment, the job is just too big and I have to start straight away.”

McVeigh inherits an incredibly tough job at the Bombers, after the club finished 18th and won just two games this season.

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Assistant coaches departing immediately upon being named head coach of another team is relatively common, but it varies from situation to situation.

Steven King remained with Geelong across their 2025 finals campaign after being named coach of Melbourne just last year.

In 2022, Adam Kingsley similarly remained with Richmond through their finals run after winning the GWS job.

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By contrast, in 2011 Brenton Sanderson controversially departed Geelong on the eve of a preliminary final, after being named coach of Adelaide.

As McVeigh pointed out, Sydney’s finals campaign could stretch through to the end of September if all goes well for them, and there is already a lot for him to do now that he is running the show at Essendon.

List management calls, speaking to players before they go on holiday, the upcoming trade period and multiple senior players wanting out, what to do with the No.1 pick in the draft. McVeigh needs to get to work at Tullamarine immediately.

But that unfortunately leaves Sydney shorthanded for their finals campaign, at a time when the club needs all hands on the wheel.

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