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Essendon has secured John Longmire as its new general manager of performance, a hybrid role overseeing coaching and player development alongside head coach Mark McVeigh.
Essendon has appointed John Longmire as its new general manager of performance, one of the most significant additions to the club in decades. The role is a hybrid position blending parts of coaching director with responsibilities carved away from the general manager of football.
Longmire Reshapes Essendon Image
Longmire will oversee coaching and player development. The appointment instantly reshapes the image of Essendon, an organisation that has been smashed in recent years as amateurish. Longmire brings unimpeachable football credentials as both player and coach. He is exactly the sort of person Essendon have needed but had been unable to attract for years.
He gives authority to a football department and, by extension, to the club. Longmire is not a messiah and will not single-handedly change Essendon on the field. What his appointment does is enhance the idea of Essendon bringing in football people of gravitas. The Pullman sexual assault investigation has hurt the Sydney Swans reputation, but for decades, stretching back to Paul Roos then Longmire, the club had a football program and playing culture that was the envy of other clubs.
For two decades, the same could not be said of Essendon. The club struggled to attract elite players and staff while being plagued by off-field factionalism. Some candidates pulled out fearing either a boat race for a pre-ordained candidate in James Hird, or were dissuaded by Essendon simmering factionalism. The appointment of Mark McVeigh offered dual benefits.
It secured a long-term assistant with multi-club experience, a current trend in modern coaching, while bringing a popular former Bomber back to the club. Critically, he is also a friend and teammate of Hird and tightly connected with that generation of Essendon players. If the club was not going to appoint or re-appoint Hird, then hiring a person of McVeigh standing would be the next best political outcome.
To bring in Longmire, the man McVeigh worked under at Sydney, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with him at Essendon is as politically smart as it is a clever football appointment. It projects a mature image of the club to be embraced by such a respected figure. Longmire does not come in as general manager of football, nor as coaching director. Essendon is still looking for a new general manager of football.
Easing Senior Coach Burden
The club has just hired Brent Prismall as its new head of development. The belief at Essendon is that the role of the senior coach has become so big it is unreasonable to expect one person to cover everything without burning out. The idea is that Longmire can ease some of the burden of media, corporate and commercial work that the senior coach would normally do, while also being involved in coaching, strategy, mentoring the coaches and overseeing player development.
Essendon insist Longmire is not coming in as de facto head coach. Whether Longmire will be in the coaches box on match day with McVeigh or whether McVeigh coaches from the boundary while Longmire is in the box is yet to be decided. But it will be McVeigh decision because he is the head coach. Essendon now appear to have a blend of two coaching types.
One, in McVeigh, is the 45-year-old assistant who has done a long apprenticeship in good programs and is ready for a senior gig like Craig McRae and Damien Hardwick were, and like Josh Fraser is. In Longmire, on the coaching panel and in football management, they have something of the avuncular elder statesman. The appointment of Longmire furthers a wholesale turnover of the football department over two years.
The process was started by former CEO Craig Vozzo, who after stepping down for personal and family reasons has continued to consult the club and work with his replacement as CEO, Tim Roberts, on how a football department should look and be structured. Matt Rosa took over as list manager two years ago and began a thorough turnover of the list. Essendon brought in the highly regarded Mathew Inness to head up conditioning at the start of the year.
Prismall was appointed head of development two weeks ago, and now Longmire arrives. Essendon stood in the way of Zach Merrett leaving for Hawthorn because they wanted to show they would not be pushed into accepting a deal they did not like just because the player wanted to leave. Pragmatically, it was not the right decision, as they will get less this year for him, but at the time they wanted to be seen to stand up for themselves.
Building Essendon Football Department
The club got veteran CEO Greg Swann in and set about making sure they had good people in key roles across coaching, football management and list management. The playing side was the slowest piece because young talent coming in, moving players out to turn the list over, and instituting a cultural change can take time to filter through before results show on the field. Essendon have been trying to do something similar.
David Barham started the process before passing it over to Welsh, who has worn some political heat, but he has made some big decisions. Securing Longmire is the biggest of them.
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brisbanetimes:The arrival of John Longmire may be the most significant addition to Essendon in decadesThis story was compiled and edited by the HeadTopics newsroom and HT AI from the reports above.
John Longmire Mark Mcveigh AFL Coaching Appointments General Manager Of Performance
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