Dean Cox’s stunning revelation about Sydney’s review of the 2024 AFL grand final

NEW Sydney coach Dean Cox has spoken in-depth about the club’s review of last year’s grand final, saying they put the first full day of pre-season aside to talk through it.

The Swans were battered by the Lions, who scored 93 points after quarter-time to Sydney’s 41.

Cox admitted it was a tough day at the office.

“We just had to watch it (the game),” Cox told SEN Breakfast.

“On our first day of pre-season all the senior players were back early December, we pushed the program back a day.

“For us it was about making sure we reviewed it. We sat down and spoke about what happened, we identified it as a playing group and a coaching group what went wrong, what we wanted to focus on going forward and then everything started rolling from there.

“It was a tough day for the players to have to reflect on that game and watch the performance that they did put in.

“From there it was about learning from every experience you have.

“We had a really harsh one on grand final day and we have to learn from it.”

Cox made the stunning admission that reviewing the first 60 seconds of the game took them over 60 minutes to review.

“We broke up into two different rooms and one thing we wanted to do was watch it from a different perspective and talk through what they were feeling and to call out what was happening,” he said.

“The review took all day. It took seven-and-a-half hours.

“On top of that, the first minute of the game took over an hour to get through that.

“To the players’ credit, they dove right into it and wanted to address it as quickly as possible and learn from it.

“They wanted to get this done.

“Once the day finished we walked into the next day and we’re set for 2025 now.

“There were some home truths that were needed and the understanding of situations; we tried to address everything we possibly could.

“Would we have gotten everything right, probably not, but I think we needed to make sure that we started the day with a review and a reflection and the ability to move forward can only come from that.”

Sydney will face GWS in a scratch match on February 21before playing Gold Coast on February 28 in the AAMI Community Series.

SEN