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Team Roos, secret of the Swans' success

Caroline Wilson, Michael Cowley and Neil McMahon

Sydney Morning Herald 24/09/2005

Perhaps Paul Roos has learned that the club means more when it doesn't mean everything.

The Swans coach will wake this morning in a Melbourne hotel with his wife, Tami, and their sons, Dylan, 11, and Tyler, 9 - his family together as they nearly always are, regardless of the myriad demands on his time and attention. And demands do not come much bigger than those awaiting Roos today: his first grand final as a coach, and only the third of his life since he started playing Australian football as a child.

So he will wake, and then he and Tami will meditate, finding calm at the centre of a sporting storm that should define his life yet somehow does not. For that, he can partly thank a marriage that has broadened his horizons, to a woman who knows what comes first. "If it ever got in the way of the family," Tami Roos says, "we'd give it away."

The "we" is important. The Rooses are a team, the boys included. And while it would be trite to say that the oft noted special spirit of the Swans makes it the "family club", it is fair to observe that the things that make the Roos household tick also inform the coach's methods at the club, and account for some of its success. Bonds of deep loyalty are the hallmark of both; Swans and family are intertwined.

"When Paul said we're all in this together, he really meant it," his wife says.

Their love story has come a long way. They met in 1988. She was a pretty blonde student living in San Diego, he a dark and handsome footballer on an end-of- season trip, although he did not tell her that at first. He insisted he was a professional surfer.

By the time Paul Roos was heading home he had come clean. Tami did not know what to believe. And she had never heard of Australian rules football.

But as it happened, she and a girlfriend had already planned a trip to Australia and New Zealand the following year. "When you get there, look me up," Roos said. "Just call the Fitzroy Football Club and they'll find me."

She did, and Tami Hardy discovered Australian football. She remembers two things: she had never been so cold. And there was anarchy on the field. "I remember saying: 'There's no rules in this game. This game has no rules'," she said.

Nor does life. The romance presented a quandary when she returned to the US. Completing her degree in international business and having already studied in Spain, she contemplated travelling before taking on an MBA.

But in September 1989 Roos called and told her he was returning for another end-of-season visit. Her fate was settled, and his took a new turn.

Before they married in 1992 in California, Fitzroy allowed their champion to do his pre-season training in the US, and when Roos took his wife to a new life in Australia he made her a promise: when he retired they would spend a year in America.

he did not know what to expect - and he was shocked. There was "no [AFL] footy news, no-one kicking the footy in the parks, and no one really knowing much about the Swans or the game".

The team won eight games that year. The following year, 1996, they made the grand final, losing to North Melbourne. Roos had planned to retire at the end of 1997. He stayed on one more year, then kept his word to Tami.

In 1998 the family left Australia. "He kept that promise and I think it made the transition for him a lot easier," Tami says. "No one really understands how hard retirement is from professional sport until you go through it."

The family spent 1999 in the US. Roos had turned down a series of assistant coaching positions in Australia, but there were other dreams to follow. In the US he conducted coaching clinics and worked for Channel Seven, covering major sporting events in the US and Europe. "It was a dream for Paul," Tami says. "With the exception of the US Masters golf he saw everything he had ever wanted to see."

And yet she knew there were unfulfilled ambitions. "My heart always told me Paul wanted to coach. He never seemed sure it would happen but I knew it was what he had to try."

When they returned to Sydney he was offered a part-time, assistant coaching job with the Swans. It then became full-time, and when the coach Rodney Eade resigned midway through 2002 Roos was given the job.

It seemed he had been preparing for it for years. When he retired four years earlier he had made notes in preparation for just this moment. If he ever did become a coach there were a few things he wanted to remember. Coaches, he believed, would sometimes forget what it was like being a player.

Most of the things on the list, he says, are "pretty basic and pretty private and I haven't let out too many of them, but I think it's just helped me understand the player group. Being positive is one of the things I wrote on there."

He could have added: stay calm. It's a word often applied to Roos, whether describing his demeanour at news conferences or in dealings with his players. Meditation helps. "Anyone who meditates benefits," Tami says. "All it is is some time for yourself."

And always there is his family to ground him. After the West Coast-Sydney qualifying final, Roos flew home to Sydney in time for Dylan's grand final. On Brownlow night last Monday Mr and Mrs Roos did not attend the Swans dinner. They were at Woollahra Public School, watching their sons in the school concert.

"We put so much focus into the Swans, I don't want them to ever think that what they do is diminished," Tami says. "You've got to share in these experiences."

Roos's sons are devoted; ditto his players. It is said that his greatest asset is that his players are willing to put everything on the line for him. As Michael O'Loughlin puts it: "Every individual player seems to have a bond with Roosy."

Roos responds: "I think the philosophy that the coach has to have a lot of distance between the players and himself is an antiquated philosophy. I'm not suggesting you have to be best mates with the players, but as long as you're honest and up front with them. I just try to be myself and treat them with respect. That they want to play hard for me, that's probably one of the greatest compliments a player group can give a coach."