DEAN Cox scans his eye around Sydney's team meeting ahead of the Swans' training session last Friday. "We're not going to be reactive this year," he tells his players. "We know our strengths." 

The second-year coach has his weapons sitting in front of him.  

Right there, a fit and healthy Callum Mills asks questions for the group, himself settled into a half-back role again. To his right, midfield stars Errol Gulden and Chad Warner sit side by side. Behind them, gun runner Justin McInerney answers some of Cox's questions about the club's gameplan.

Matchwinners Isaac Heeney and Nick Blakey watch on and a mix of young and older Swans take notes on the gameplan. Recruit Charlie Curnow, to the amusement of teammates, has taken off his shirt and sits in the back row, ready to get out on the track and battle Sydney's defenders (and the city's steamy heat). 

"We want to be as prepared as we can be," Cox says. "We need to know our shit." 

Players had filtered into Sydney's world-class facility at 7am knowing they had perhaps their toughest day of the pre-season ahead of them. There would be 70 minutes of match simulation, plus top-up running after that. And it was hot.

Defender Tom McCartin prepares with a bowl of seven Weet-Bix. Some players gather around the coffee machine. Gulden and Logan McDonald face off with their daily game of backgammon, a hobby they started when travelling in Turkey together in the off-season before Gulden's girlfriend bought him a board to bring into the club. Every day they play at breakfast before Gulden then stashes the game away.

With less than five weeks to go before the Swans host Carlton in the first home and away game of the year, they know every session counts. And after missing finals last year for just the third time in 16 years, the Swans have spent a longer than usual off-season preparing a new look.

Sydney granted access to AFL.com.au to its inner sanctum last week as it counted down the days to Opening Round, with Cox now seeing the benefit of a refreshed group. 

"Not making finals hurt everyone at the football club so they've come back to the club reinvigorated. I can't question their appetite to train and improve, so hopefully 2026 is a different year," Cox tells AFL.com.au.

"The pleasing part at the start is we didn't have a lot of surgeries over the off-season so the players could have a really good break. 

"Unfortunately it was a little bit longer than what we'd want, but through that they came back in great shape and we could work pre-Christmas on the way we wanted to attack and some offense fundamentals that we needed to adjust. And now as we really ramp up, it's more about our contest method and the way we want to defend and shape our ground."

This is the window where Sydney will be embedding how Cox and his coaching panel want the Swans to play. 

There have been significant changes to the list – Curnow headlining the trio of trade period inclusions alongside tall defender Jai Serong and small forward Malcolm Rosas jnr – while Will Hayward, Ollie Florent and Jack Buller left.

But Cox has also built his own team out, adding Melbourne premiership coach Simon Goodwin as the director of coaching and assistant Jeremy Laidler, who has returned from the Giants.

Last year, after John Longmire's exit as senior coach on the eve of the pre-season, the Swans had one of the smallest coaching groups. This year is different.

"Last year had its challenges early but still I wouldn't have changed it," Cox said. "There are some challenges and things you learn from but hopefully I'm saying in five years' time that I learn every year."

The players have learned plenty this year, too. Notebooks have been compulsory at team meetings and they've been necessary.

"We've had a bit of an overhaul with most of our gameplan, to be perfectly honest, especially our language around the way we want to play. So that's taken us a little bit of time to learn," Gulden told AFL.com.au. "We want to play with a bit more speed on the ball and I think we've trained really hard this off-season with really high intensity running."

That was on show during Friday's session. It continued a brutal stretch of pre-season, with the Swans putting key markers on how much running they wanted their players to achieve. "I got up to 17.1 kilometres for the session with the footy (match simulation) and running. I'm pretty cooked right now," Gulden said afterwards. For context, the AFL Telstra Tracker had Melbourne's Ed Langdon and Giant Lachie Whitfield (both 17.7km) as the most distance covered in a game in 2025. 

Though at times scrappy, the match simulation showed what weapons Cox was alluding to in the morning's team meeting. Chad Warner sizzled, and a piece of play linking him, Blakey, Gulden and Heeney was like Sydney's version of Real Madrid's 'Galacticos' coming together. 

The addition of Carlton superstar Curnow followed a long line of star spearheads leaving a Victorian club to join Sydney – Tony Lockett, Barry Hall and Lance Franklin before him – and with him has come added expectations. 

"He's fitted in really well and he just has a jovial outlook on life. He loves going for a surf, he loves spending time at the beach, walking around with his shirt off and we want to really embrace that. He's here for a reason, which is on and off field as well," Cox said.

So how does Cox plan to fit all of his talls in? There's Joel Amartey, Hayden McLean and a returning McDonald, as well as rucks Brodie Grundy and Peter Ladhams. Friday's session didn't give many clues, given Grundy and Amartey were both in concussion protocols from the previous week. 

"I still don't know at the minute. I've got my thoughts on the 23rd player and how we try and use that. We're going to start to bring that into all our matchplay now in what does it look like, how much time do they spend on the ground, how do you test the opposition at all times," he said.

"Whether it's three talls who can ruck, whether it's four, whether you'll play another dynamic mid, whether you play another forward, two rucks ... There's so many variables. And then we've got to work out how much game time they play, do you use it as a sub, do you just spread your load across the players?"

Sydney's 2-5 start to last year had it chasing the pack for most of the season and despite winning eight of their last 11 games of the year, the Swans finished 10th in Cox's first season in charge. It was a drop that followed their second Grand Final thumping within three seasons, but Cox said that heartbreak was now in the past.

"It is. The part of dealing with those [defeats] was to look at them, discuss them and talk about action moving forward," he said.

While the Swans have a point to prove, so does Mills. He was one of several key Swans, alongside Gulden (ankle), Tom Papley (heel/hamstring) and Amartey (hamstring), to be absent for a big chunk of last year with injury, missing the first half of the season with a foot injury. 

Cox has seen an inner drive for the skipper and All-Australian to get back to his best after two injury-hit years and has settled him at half-back. 

"The thing we talk about with players is where they want to play, and he might want to play at times through the middle of the ground, but his first thing is 'What does the team want? And where does the team need me?'" he said.

"He's a very dangerous half-back. He showed that at times last year, but that was off not training. So he's training really well and we hope for a bit of luck throughout the year that he can string a year together."

Cox and the Swans know there will be renewed focus on their flag hopes this season with the high-priced acquisition of Curnow, a deal that saw them send over three first-round picks and jettison Hayward and Florent. 

The moves were part of getting the Swans closer to a premiership – although inside Sydney headquarters, flag aspirations aren't yet being said out loud.   

"Players understand where they think a group's at and the dynamic they have and it is unspoken," Cox said. "But also having said that you want a playing group to have confidence in their ability in what we can do."

DEAN COX ON…

THE IMPACT OF SIMON GOODWIN
"He's been unbelievable. One thing I've always said to the football club is I'm not an expert in the senior coaching position and I'm the first to admit that. I want to surround myself with people who first of all love the game of footy, have done extremely well in their own right at another organisation, and then still have a huge passion to develop players and people. So when I spoke to Simon throughout the period of his unfortunate sacking it was about 'Is there an opportunity?' and does he still have the passion to want to coach straight away? He's going to be in a position where he can help develop the assistant coaches, take some time away from my schedule to allow me to coach the players. There's not often the case where you get a player who wants to come to your football club but also a really experienced and successful senior coach wanting to join your ranks as well."

WHERE TO PLAY LOGAN MCDONALD?
"The great thing about Logan is you've got a player who can demand the ball a bit inside 50. His versatility and ball use between the arcs is really important. He's a clever footballer and he understands what's going on. He had a horrendous year last year and some of the stuff you don't hear about to try and get back. For us at the minute it's about training where he knows, which is ahead of the ball, and then with some flexibility of 'Does he play on the wing at times? He can ruck, he can play behind the ball' He would've trained for six weeks last year so we need to make sure we get him back knowing what he does know."

WHETHER 2024 FIRST-ROUND PICK JESSE DATTOLI LANDS A SPOT IN OPENING ROUND?
"He's had a really good pre-season. The hard part for Jesse is he missed five months [with his back injury last year]. The thing I love about Jesse when he got here is his real inner drive and determination to play as early as possible. When he got told about his back and he's in my office upset that he was going to miss a period of football, it shows how much he wants it. So he's trained fully, we haven't fully extended him out yet because we need to make sure we get him right, but he's done everything he possibly can to give himself every chance to start."