Hiding to nothing: Cox questioned following Swans embarrassment

The Sydney Swans have fallen significantly from the heights of 2024, enduring more than just a Grand Final hangover.

Exemplified by Saturday night's 90-point mauling at the hands of the Crows, the Swans have been well off the pace throughout their first 12 games, winning just four games to find themselves in 14th place on the AFL ladder.

On a night dedicated to club legends in honour of their 2005 premiership triumph, their Round 12 matchup was a disaster. Sydney’s first home loss to the Crows since 2019 was a dismantling, crumbling under Adelaide pressure to allow easy transition throughout the contest.

The Swans turned the football over 80 times across the night, conceding 70 inside 50’s en route to the Crows’ 131 points, 88 of which spawned directly from turnover.

In rather controversial fashion, Crows defender Wayne Milera was honest in his on-field assessment of the mentality of the struggling Swans.

“You could sort of feel it as a group,” Milera told ABC Sport post-match.

“They were sort of a bit of a rabble, just hearing them on the ground.”

The ongoing struggles have led to questions of coach Dean Cox.

Since accepting the role, the Swans have had very little luck on the injury front, with Errol Gulden, Tom Papley, Callum Mills and Logan McDonald combining for just four games under Cox, however with the likes of Isaac Heeney and Chad Warner taking to the field, the reigning Grand Finalists have few excuses for their Round 12 performance.

With that being said, former Crow Josh Jenkins weighed in on the Swans' current struggles, identifying what is a major error sporting organisations tend to make following Grand Final heartbreak.

“This is the biggest mistake that teams make in the AFL but probably across world sport," Jenkins told SEN Crunch Time.

“The team that loses the championship game or the championship series, the biggest mistake you can make is thinking that you are the team that needs to improve the most.

"You are the team that needs to improve the least. The other teams who didn’t make it, the week before, the month before, who were out of calculations at Round 14, they’re the teams that need to improve the most.

“Because of the focus, because of the emphasis and the eyeballs on the game, even coaches, highly paid, highly thought-of coaches can make that mistake.

“I heard Dean Cox on SEN Breakfast talk about ‘we spent an hour (reviewing) the first five minutes (of last year's Grand Final loss).’

“The first five minutes would have been four stoppages, and a little bit of ball movement. Alarm bells straight away.

“For these young men… for the most part, this is the most difficult thing they’ve experienced in their professional life. Go and sit through it for seven hours!

“He has thrown the baby out with the bathwater.

“Their offensive game is non-existent. They’re missing (Errol) Gulden who is an incredibly important part of it. Ollie Florent is a great distributor off half-back, he’s not even in the team! (Nick) Blakey has not kicked a ball back through the middle of the ground for a month.

“I think they’ve gone away from it and said ‘we need to be the Bloods of old. We need to be South Melbourne; we need to be those guys up in the crowd that were up there last night’. Jude Bolton, toughness, Brett Kirk.’

“That’s not what this team is actually built upon. I know they want to improve in that space, but what got them there wasn’t their toughness, it was their sizzle with their ball use.”

Former Demon David Schwarz also labelled Cox's decision not to take on the role at the West Coast Eagles as somewhat egotistical.

The former assistant coach took the reins at the Swans this season, opting to remain at the club and take over from the outgoing John Longmire rather than accepting the vacant West Coast Eagles job offered to Cox at the time.

“That was just awful,” Ox told SEN’s Point of View.

“They’ve had a couple of bad weeks, 143 points in total for the last two games. It’s a real issue.

“Dean Cox has got his work cut out. He was on a hiding to nothing taking on the Sydney job.

“I know it’s comfortable, he’s been in there and he knows it, but the West Coast job was his. They were on the bottom of the ladder, and there’s only one place they could go and that was up.

“Maybe a bit of ego (taking the Sydney role)? You need ego as a coach, if you don’t have ego, you’re not going to have belief, but wow.

“He has got some work to do.”

With Richmond to come before their bye in Round 14, the Swans have everything to play for if they want to keep their season alive.