Justin Longmuir stood on the margins of the mayhem in Fremantle’s rooms last Friday night. His Dockers had mown down a willing but truncated Sydney side and Longmuir stood slouched, relieved, knackered. Some people walk into a room and automatically command it. Footy is full of people like that. Some are teachers. Some are generals who never found a war. Some, as Neale Daniher always said, are actors – projecting hope to the players and stability to the critics. Most of them are a bit mad.
Longmuir has always been something of an outlier – a classic introvert who can come across as nervous and awkward in press conferences, a man who had to steel himself to speak to large groups when he started coaching. He’s not a coach who picks fights or creates diversions or speaks in riddles. He says he’s an over-thinker. He says he’s harder on himself than any critic, and there has been plenty of those. As one of just two senior coaches who have never played in or coached a grand final team, it’s something that can make him an easy target when the side are underperforming – that he doesn’t have the playing record, the aura, the eloquence, the polish, the prick in him.
