Paul Roos coaches both his footy teams from the boundary line. But with respect to the East Sydney Bulldogs under-14s, his decision to direct the Sydney Swans from the ground level is the one people have noticed.

Is it innovative? Certainly. Part of a plan that will see John Longmire take over at the end of next season? Every chance. A controlled coaching handover is unfolding before our eyes. Want proof? Join the dots …

Exhibit A: September 2006. Sydney are safely booked into a preliminary final. Roos, just shy of his fourth full year as a senior coach, says: "Winning on Saturday night against West Coast, that's enjoyable, but there's a lot of the job I find quite mundane, to be honest."

At that point, Sydney's hierarchy was asking the AFL's reigning premiership coach to sign on until the end of 2010. Roos committed until 2008.

Last year, after a meal in a Chinese restaurant (if the memory of Sydney chairman Richard Colless serves him correctly) Roos extended his deal to 2009.

Exhibit B: October 2006. Roos's long-time friend and assistant of three years, Ross Lyon, is hired to be St Kilda's main man. Having missed out on the same job, Longmire controls Sydney's pre-season and coaches the Swans in all their summer games.

Exhibit C: Post-season 2007. Longmire is back in command again and a further change is made to Sydney's coaching structure. It's a case of reading between the brackets as well as between the lines. The Swans' 2008 coaching list, in the AFL's official guide, reads: Paul Roos (senior), John Longmire (coaching co-ordinator), John Blakey, Peter Berbakov, Mark Stone, Brett Allison (development), Daniel McPherson (development).

Exhibit D: Today, in Geelong. Roos will coach his team from what is quite possibly the worst vantage point for watching a game of football - boundary side - just as he has for the past four weeks. Longmire is the chief of the coaches box and, like every other senior coach, will view the match from on high.

Roos hardly flinched when asked who Sydney's match day coach was. "I'd say at the moment there's a real combination," he said.

David Parkin, whom Roos described in the same conversation as "ingenious" for the way he shared the Carlton coaching job with Wayne Brittain in the late 1990s, is expansive about what he thinks is taking place at Sydney.

"John Kennedy in 1976 allowed me to coach [behind the scenes]. Then, in the carpark in 1977, he put his arm around me and said, 'You'll be appointed coach of Hawthorn tomorrow'. I was able to do it with Wayne in the same way," Parkin said.

"To my knowledge, it's happened twice in the history of football, and is about to happen for a third time."

Roos is a great admirer of Parkin's, and while Brittain's hold on the main gig at the Blues was short-lived, Roos has thought about that transition.

"David was probably five, six, seven or eight years ahead of his time by saying 'I'll take the responsibility of being the senior coach here, I'll take the pressure, I'll do all the media stuff, I'll do all the marketing, the sponsorship, the talking and dealing with everyone within the organisation, and Wayne, you'll be the matchday coach and I'm happy for you to do that," Roos said. "In my opinion, every club will have that set up within the next five to 10 years.

"I almost think that there's a layer that we're [Sydney] getting to."

As it stands, the Swans' new matchday set-up has more to do with player-coach communication than coaching structure, according to Roos.

Its genesis can be traced back to the last 15 minutes of a tight round-two match between Sydney and Richmond last year. Electronic communication lines broke down and Roos headed for the bench. He saw that one of his players was especially fatigued, interchanged him and threw Darren Jolly to full forward. Jolly marked, kicked a goal and Sydney won.

This year, Roos says there have already been a dozen examples where the set-up has provided an advantage. Players can vent frustrations or concerns directly with him on the bench and he can react instantly.

Meanwhile, Longmire, who Roos describes as "our coaching coordinator that really runs our program pretty much 24-7 type thing", oversees the game from the traditional position of power. Flanking him are the line coaches, Stone, Blakey and Berbakov.

"It shows an absolute trust in those sitting in the box," Parkin said, "because they're seeing the game in a way that Paul can't from where he's sitting. That's why no other coach … would sit there."

Malcolm Blight has mused in his commentary this season that he would have struggled to sit outside the box. His ego, he said, could not have coped.

"I don't think you could do it if you had three junior or four junior assistant coaches," Roos said, "but I've got enormous faith in all our assistant coaches."

There may be quarters this season where he and Longmire physically interchange and, later in the year, Roos says he will sit down with football manager Andrew Ireland and chairman Colless to discuss how the coaching set-up will evolve further.

Colless, a man from footy's old school who has adapted to modern ways, admits that rotating captains, indeed multiple captains, and wired-up coaches on boundary lines were "probably not things that I would, as an individual, have recommended". But he has learned that when the men heading his club's football department want to try something, it has tended to work.

"I think I'd be more surprised if Paul wasn't trying things," Colless said before travelling to Geelong for today's game.

"I think he's genuinely one of the most innovative, creative, big-thinking people within the whole AFL system."

Roos has long believed that even the very best coaches have an expiry date that is seldom recognised, let alone acted upon, before it is reached.

"Six to seven years at one club seems to almost be the danger period… the period where things are most likely to go astray. The players get sick of the coach, the coach gets sick of the players, the board gets sick of the coach — all that sort of stuff," he said.

"So really, what I've been saying is this year will be my sixth year, next year will be my seventh year, and I don't ever see myself coaching for 10, 15 or 20 years of AFL football."

Significantly, something neither Roos nor Colless can envisage is Sydney's next senior coach coming out of a highly publicised, country-wide search.

"We probably tend to agree at this particular time that we've got some great people within this organisation, and personally, I don't think we need to go outside this footy club to appoint a match-day coach or to appoint a replacement for me if and when I leave," Roos said.

But both men are careful not to be passing batons ahead of time.

"I think it would be unfair to publicly anoint John (Longmire) at this stage because that hasn't been discussed," Colless said.

"Philosophically, I agree with Paul, I just don't want to publicly anoint the next senior coach at this stage … He (Roos) may, at the end of 2009, say, 'I think I've had enough', or he might say, 'I want to stay on but I want to restructure the job'."

Sydney's games record holder, Michael O'Loughlin, is as complementary of Roos as he is of the coach's second-in-charge and said that Longmire's development, particularly in the past 12 months, had been obvious.

"I've got no doubt that John can be a head coach somewhere. Here hopefully, if Roosy decides, whenever he decides. But also anywhere else," the veteran forward told The Age.

"His preparation and the way he prepares for opposition teams for the coming week is outstanding. And if you're not pulling your weight, he's quick to give you a spray if you need one. He's going to make a great coach. He's got all the attributes."

So, a month into this new season — the sixth he has begun at the head of Sydney's coaching tree — just what is Roos' job description?

"In season, at the moment, I'm a very hands-on senior coach that allows my assistants to do their stuff.

"Certainly, I'm watching all the games and preparing the team and all those sorts of things," he said.

"Now that may change with the demands of senior coaching. You may see the senior coach purely walking into the match-day coach and saying: 'How's everything going, what are the tactics, is there anything you want to discuss with me? No? That's fine, I'm heading off to Club Swans to do a club function.' "

He sounds like he knows someone who could do it.