SYDNEY coach John Longmire has fired back at Richmond counterpart Damien Hardwick's comments that the Swans were to blame for Sunday's seven-goal snooze fest at the Gabba.
A blunt Longmire revealed Hardwick had called him to apologise for questioning the Swans' tactics in the Tigers' eight-point win – the second-lowest scoring match in the AFL era.
Longmire also took aim at Hardwick's decision to query the coaching calls of rival clubs as he did on Sunday.
"I think we had 50-odd inside 50s for what, four or five goals, which is farcical in nature really. (It was a) horrible game of football," Hardwick said post-match.
"There's not much I can do, we're attacking, we've got 75,000 people in our forward 50 so it's pretty hard.
"It's become a tactic in the AFL, fold-back mentality is really keeping sides in games at the moment and it's creating the game that we got tonight."
Longmire said the apology from Hardwick still required him to defend himself.
"I'm not sure it's my role to walk up to Damien's coaches' box, knock on the door and say, 'What would you like us to do?'" Longmire said on Monday.
"Damien called me straight after the game, he apologised for the comments which was appreciated.
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"But as I said to Damien, they're out there, now you've got to have a press conference and talk about them.
"The comments after the game from Damien were completely unnecessary and unwarranted. They just weren't correct.
"We didn't play an extra defender. Richmond bring a player (forward) up around the ball, they've been doing it for a long time, we just held our six defenders in place.
"If Damien didn't want to do that, he could've brought his forward back in and just played 6-6-6 and the issue would've been done."
Longmire said the Swans were only forced to restructure the personnel of their forward line after injuries early in the game to Isaac Heeney, who will miss the rest of the season and Josh Kennedy, who will be sidelined at least six weeks.
The coaches spent time together in February picking the squads for the State of Origin Bushfire Relief match, with Longmire leading the All-Stars and Hardwick taking charge of Victoria.
"I thought that coaches were really collegiate and I was hoping that would still be the case, but we’ve got to be careful, I reckon, as an industry that we don’t drop into this habit of potting other people and finger-pointing," Longmire said on Monday.
"It's a bit of a challenging time for all of us and I just think we need to take a deep breath and help each other through this.
"I don't make it my mission to coach or to comment on other clubs. I just can't understand it, I never have been able to understand it.
"I find it difficult enough to coach our own club, I've got enough on my plate, looking after our own players without giving advice to others. I just think it's unnecessary."
