John Longmire opens up on booing during player\u2019s final years<\/p>\n
\u2018I should have threatened to pull our players off the ground\u2019<\/p>\n
Former Sydney Swans coach John Longmire has opened up on his regret for not doing more to support Adam Goodes in the final years of his career, as the two-time Brownlow medallist faced \u201cdiabolical, almost unforgivable\u201d treatment.<\/p>\n
Writing in his autobiography released this week, Longmire said the final years of Goodes\u2019s career were a source of regret.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish everyone had done more,\u201d he said. \u201cAdam Goodes was not just a champion footballer, he was a leader and a man of immense courage. What he endured was diabolical, almost unforgivable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Longmire led Sydney for more than a decade before resigning in 2024, having won a flag in his second season, in 2012. He had been a Swans assistant as Goodes emerged as one of the country\u2019s best players and stepped into the head coach role with his star midfielder-forward at his peak.<\/p>\n
After calling out racism from a 13-year-old Collingwood fan in 2013, Goodes was subject to targeted booing from opposition fans. The treatment was immediately condemned by some, but it took four years after Goodes\u2019s 2015 retirement for the AFL to apologise unreservedly.<\/p>\n
Longmire regrets not doing more at the time. \u201cIn hindsight, I should have threatened to pull our players off the ground if the booing didn\u2019t stop,\u201d he said. \u201cIt might not have changed anything but it would have brought the matter to a head and forced the industry \u2013 and the community \u2013 to consider what this continued behaviour was doing to one of the game\u2019s greats.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt would have been an extreme act \u2013 but then what was happening to Adam was extreme too. Unfortunately, there were no guarantees anything would have changed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Longmire wrote he noticed booing of Goodes increased following the Collingwood match in 2013 and its aftermath, when former Magpies president Eddie McGuire suggested Goodes could be used to promote the musical King Kong.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was in that game that he [Goodes] called out a young Magpies supporter for calling him an \u2018ape\u2019, which started a firestorm that wasn\u2019t of his making, but he showed great empathy,\u201d Longmire said.<\/p>\n
\u201cCollingwood president Eddie McGuire apologised on behalf of the club after the game, but torched that apology with an insensitive comment on radio a few days later that cut to the core. If only it had ended there.\u201d<\/p>\n
McGuire subsequently offered a personal apology in both a call to Goodes and in an address to the media. In the 2019 documentary The Australian Dream, he described his comment as \u201cjust a mistake, it was a misspoken moment\u201d.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Horn brings expert analysis on the week's biggest AFL stories<\/p>\n
In the same documentary, Goodes recounted the phone call from McGuire. \u201cWhen I finally took his call, I just said \u2018you\u2019re not a friend\u2019,\u201d he said. \u201cHe just forgot where he was, he forgot that he was on radio, and it was just an off-the-cuff thing that he would say at a barbecue, at a bar, and it just highlighted my point. That casual racism is there, it\u2019s alive and it\u2019s flourishing in our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n