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Sport Nation
If you were Greg Swann, what changes would you make?
Mark Duffield • July 22nd, 2025 8:30 pm
Greg Swann has started work as the AFL’s new football performance boss – so before he gives us the answers – what are the questions?
If you were Greg Swann and you could make three changes to football to make the product better – what would those changes be?
If you are wondering what Swann might be thinking – he has already given a hint or two on what his views might be. He would like games to be shorter – that doesn’t mean changing the 20 minutes plus time on nature of the game as it stands – but it does mean reducing the amount of wasted time.
He is not a fan of the bounce – that would be one thing that would help shorten games – no need to recall errant bounces. He also believes umpires could restart play quicker at stoppages – and he will get no argument from most of us on that one.
If you are a West Coast fan – don’t hold your breath waiting for priority draft picks in 2025. He has urged the Eagles to follow the lead of clubs who have climbed off the bottom without priority picks. I see Swann has already picked up the AFL habit of a selective memory. He used the example of Brisbane who have gone from cellar dwellers to competition powerhouses.
Of course there is the small matter of a Lions Academy and three stellar father sons which have helped the Lions significantly – Jack Payne, Kitty Coleman, Harris Andrews and Eric Hipwood are examples of the Lions Academy. Then there are the father sons: Two Ashcrofts – Will is already a Norm Smith Medallist and Jaspa Fletcher is already a premiership player
Levi Ashcroft might be the favourite for the Rising Star award.
If the AFL wants to deny the Eagles a priority draft pick then so be it. There is a case to argue that no club should get priorities. But the AFL can’t make that argument because they have given other clubs priority picks.
There is a ridiculous argument that the Eagles are too rich. How does more money help them here. They are not a destination club. Neither of the WA clubs are destination clubs because of where they are located and they are limited on how much they can spend by the league’s equalisation rules.
And there is the other bulldust argument that it is the Eagles own fault they have ended up where they are. Which would apply to every club that ends up down the bottom including some clubs that have already received priority draft selections.
West Coast have won 11 of their last 90 games. Make no mistake – if they shouldn’t get priority selections – then no club in the forseeable future should EVER get priority selections.
The only proper criteria for whether or not a club receives priority draft selections is the state of your list – and this West Coast list is as vulnerable as any list I have seen in recent memory.
To be clear – Swann is a good appointment. He is widely respected. He has been an administrator in WA, at Perth. He has been at big Melbourne clubs like Collingwood and Carlton and he has been at Brisbane – a non-Victorian club in the footy frontier.
But let’s hope he is a voice for common sense and not a voice for the all too commonly occurring bulldust that comes out of AFL house when they realise that achieving real and meaningful change that takes the league closer to being properly national is difficult…and at times unpopular in the game’s Victorian heartland.
