John Longmire (born 31 December 1970) is the current coach of the Sydney Swans in the Australian Football League (AFL) since 2010, and is the longest serving active AFL coach. As a player, he represented the North Melbourne Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL) from 1988 to 1999.
Early years
Longmire was born in Corowa, New South Wales. He took up Australian rules as a child and first came into notice when he won the 1984 Thirds goal kicking award in the Coreen & District Football League with Corowa-Rutherglen. In his first season of senior football career with Corowa-Rutherglen in New South Wales, he nearly won the Ovens & Murray Football League's leading goalkicker title in 1987 as a 16-year-old, kicking 82 goals. His ability and size quickly attracted the interest of the North Melbourne VFL club's talent scouts.
Longmire's grandfather is former Fitzroy Football Club player Keith Williams. His uncle, Robert Longmire, is a former Collingwood Football Club player. Walter Longmire (John Longmire’s great grandfather) represented New South Wales v South Australia at the MCG in 1927.
Playing career
North Melbourne
Longmire's physique and size earned him the nickname "Horse". His first match for North Melbourne was in the infamous exhibition match between North Melbourne and Carlton at The Oval in London in 1987. His first official match for North Melbourne was in the 1988 season against Footscray with a four-goal performance, but he struggled after that and near the end of the season coach John Kennedy Sr. moved him to full-back. He did well in that role during the 1989 season, holding Tony Lockett to five kicks in Round 14, but North's lack of key position players in attack saw him moved back to the forward line in August.
The 1990 season saw Longmire jump to the top of the tree: at only nineteen years of age, he kicked 98 goals and won the Coleman Medal as the league's leading goal kicker (and the youngest player to have done so). In Round 2 of that year he kicked a North Melbourne record of twelve goals against Richmond, which he broke twelve weeks later when he kicked fourteen goals in round 14 against Melbourne. Going into the final round Longmire looked likely to reach the 100-goal milestone for the season, however inaccurate kicking against a strong Collingwood defence resulted in two goals and eight behinds, leaving him two goals short. Longmire won North Melbourne's best and fairest award that year and led the club's goal kicking list every season from 1990 to 1994.
At North Melbourne, he formed a powerful goalkicking partnership with centre half-forward Wayne Carey. In six seasons between 1990 and 1995, Carey and Longmire collectively kicked 768 goals (of which Longmire contributed 464), and thirteen times they combined for ten goals or more in a game. Individually, Longmire kicked 5-plus goals in a game 36 times, 7-plus goals 18 times and 10-plus twice, before a serious knee injury forced him out of the game for the 1996 season. When he returned the following year, he played out the remainder of his career in defence and in the ruck.
Longmire missed out on playing on the winning side of the 1996 premiership with a knee injury and just made it back from an elbow injury to make his last career game the 1999 Grand Final, in which the Kangaroos defeated Carlton. This was his only year to also not score a goal, managing only to kick 1 point in 10 games.
Longmire played a total of 200 games and kicked a total of 511 goals for North Melbourne from 1988 to 1999, as well as being a member of the North Melbourne premiership side in 1999.
Coaching career
Sydney Swans
Longmire returned to New South Wales to take up an assistant coaching position with the Sydney Swans in 2002. In 2006, he was considered to be a front-runner for the St Kilda Football Club senior coaching role, which was made vacant by the sacking of Grant Thomas, however, the role later went to then-fellow Swans assistant coach Ross Lyon. In 2008, senior coach Paul Roos, appointed Longmire the Swans' "coaching co-ordinator". In a succession plan, Longmire replaced Roos as senior coach of the Sydney Swans following Roos' retirement at the end of the 2010 season.
Longmire's first game as the Sydney Swans senior coach in the 2011 season ended in a draw against , with both teams scoring 11.18 (84). His first win as senior coach came the next week, against in Round 2, 2011. Longmire had a relatively good start to his coaching career, with only five losses in the first fourteen rounds of the season (albeit against top-four opposition in , (twice), and ).