Sydney coach John Longmire doesn’t wish to “spook” his playing group about what lies ahead in 2021 as COVID-19 continues to linger in Australia.
Border closures and restrictions continue to pop up around the country and this could potentially see AFL teams heading back to hubs for portions of the season.
After spending months in Queensland to complete the 2020 season, Longmire said it’s a fine line working out how to prepare his playing group for the season without worrying them about what the future could hold.
“There’s a fine balance between preparing them for what might be ahead, but also not spooking people either and understanding that it’ll evolve and it’s very hard to predict what will happen in the future,” Longmire told Sportsday.
“We couldn’t predict it last year and we’re probably not going to be able to predict it this year.
“Other than the fact that the whole community, the governments, the AFL, the clubs, are much more aware than this time last year and clearly more educated.
“The governments and the AFL are more educated and what we did last year in response to what happened was two-fold – one was because of the seriousness of it, but we also didn’t know.
“If it’s not as serious (as last year) and we know more about it as an industry, I think that stands us in good stead going forward.”
As the 2020 season rolled on and it became clear that the Swans were out of the finals picture, Longmire said he challenged his playing group by playing them in different positions and introducing young talent.
“We saw last year as, when you get over the shock of what happened to the game and the people we lost to the cutbacks, you sort of had to look back and say ‘what are we going to get out of this year’ and one of the things we wanted to do was keep introducing young players and having a look at them in different positions,” he said.
“We would’ve liked to have won more games, that’s what we’re about, but we wanted to keep playing some of the younger players and exposing players in different positions.
“Tom McCartin went back, that was strong, Will Hayward spent a bit of time back, we changed up a couple of different roles throughout the season just to have a look at them, which is good for their development and good for the team’s development.”