John Longmire

John Longmire (born 31 December 1970) is the current coach of the Sydney Swans. As a player, he represented the North Melbourne Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL) from 1988 to 1999.

Longmire began his playing career at the Corowa-Rutherglen club in New South Wales, where he won the Ovens & Murray Football League’s leading goalkicker title. His ability and size quickly attracted the interest of the North Melbourne VFL club's talent scouts.

Longmire’s physique and size earned him the nickname Horse. He began for North Melbourne in 1988 against Footscray with a four-goal performance from full-forward, but 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 1989 – 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.

1990 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. 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 certain to reach the 100-goal milestone for the season, however terribly inaccurate kicking against a hard Collingwood defence resulted in a tally of two goals and eight behinds, leaving him just two goals short. Longmire went on the win North Melbourne’s best and fairest that year and led the club’s goal kicking list each season from 1990 to 1994.