Sydney coach John Longmire didn’t let the club’s Grand Final loss to Geelong burden him.
While Longmire and the Swans would have been disappointed with their performance in the 133-52 loss, the coach himself views the defeat as simply part of the ups and downs of a career in the caper.
“It’s just part of life, it’s part of football and a football career,” Longmire said on SEN’s Sportsday.
“I’ve been beaten in the last 10 seconds of a Prelim final, as a player in finals I’ve had some terrible losses as I have a coach.
“I’m sure Chris Scott would say the same thing, I’m sure Tom Hawkins would say the same thing.
“That’s just part of what we do and what we have to be mindful of.”
As well as not letting the defeat define him, Longmire revealed that post-game he implored his players to pick themselves up and used a famous quote from former US President Teddy Roosevelt to prove his point.
“I spoke to the players about the Teddy Roosevelt quote which is that you’ve got to be prepared to get back into the arena, you’ve got to admire the man in the arena,” Longmire said.
“Give yourself a chance, you’ve just got to keep doing things right all the time to get back in there and give yourself a chance.
“There’s no doubt we’d like to give ourselves a better chance next time and do it a lot better, but you’ve got to give yourself a chance and put ourselves in that position.
“That requires a lot of hard work but it’s also understanding what you do well.
“In the Grand Final we clearly didn’t do well, but we did a lot of other things really well.”
Longmire and Sydney will hope that the Grand Final defeat doesn’t negatively affect them in 2023 as they look to go one better.