The time Blight tried to hire Longmire as Gold Coast coach and why he stayed in Sydney

Sydney coach John Longmire has been in the club’s top job since 2011 and has finished inside the top eight in 12 of his 14 years in charge.

In that time, the 53-year-old has been approached by rival clubs in hopes of luring him away from Sydney, and one of those opportunities came his way at the end of the 2014 season at Gold Coast.

Then Suns advisor Malcolm Blight was one figure who desperately wanted to hire Longmire to replace the outgoing Guy McKenna at the time, and he explained how he was turned down by the Sydney boss despite his advances.

“Here’s how much I rate John Longmire...” Blight told SEN's Sportsday SA.

“When Guy McKenna finished up at the Gold Coast Suns, we sat around the board and just said, ‘Who should we go to next?’.

“I just said, ‘Look, I'll make one phone call to John Longmire’, he was at Sydney Swans at the time, and I spoke to John, and he was fantastic.

“He’d already coached at Sydney for a while and he said, ‘Blighty, I’m rapt you asked me and I’m quite honoured really’, and we had a great conversation.

“But I just said to him, ‘John, I'm not going to annoy you (so are you interested?)’. 

“He said, ‘Blighty, I love Sydney, my family loves Sydney, I love the way we’re doing it here mate. To be perfectly honest, I appreciate the phone call, but I want to stay in Sydney and give them everything I’ve got’.”

While Blight was disappointed to be rejected by Longmire, he says that conversation only reaffirmed to him that Sydney had the right man for the job and without doubt one of the league’s best coaches at their helm.

“I then had about a 15 to 20-minute chat with him, we talked about North Melbourne people we knew and goodness knows what else,” Blight said.

“He's a really good guy and I said, ‘John, after this conversation, I won't annoy you again. I can see Sydney have the best man for the job. That's why I thought that our club at the time Gold Coast could want you because you've got the best way of operating’.”

Longmire will coach in his fifth AFL Grand Final this Saturday against Brisbane.

If he and the Swans taste victory on Saturday he’ll become a two-time premiership coach.