Opposition coaches, rival sporting codes and business leaders have all long marvelled at the culture of AFL side Sydney, a club-first ethos that is credited in whole to Paul Roos.
Roos was at the forefront of it, but predecessor Rodney Eade, chairman Richard Colless, captains Stuart Maxfield and Brett Kirk and countless others helped change the identity of a club that was once the laughing stock of the league.
What separates Roos from those is his ability as coach to instil competitiveness and selflessness in all his charges, traits which breed success more than any other.
Traits which Dean Bailey and Mark Neeld could only dream of developing at Melbourne.
From the day Roos took over as Sydney’s caretaker, when Eade was sacked in 2002, he found a way to convince his players to strive in a way they hadn’t in the first half of the season.
He managed six wins from 10 games in an interim capacity, with fans’ petitions and player power getting him the full-time gig despite club honchos wooing Terry Wallace.
For the next eight seasons, Sydney made the finals on seven occasions and became a model of consistency as the mastercoach empowered his players and squeezed every drop of potential out of the list.
Ending Sydney’s 72-year premiership drought in 2005 remains Roos’ biggest achievement, but the legacy he left at the Swans was more than that.
In much-improved Canadian ruckman Mike Pyke, the reigning premiers are still reaping the benefit of an innovator with a global outlook.
Having married American meditation teacher Tami in 1992, four years after meeting her on an end-of-season trip, the United States was the logical place for Roos to lob after he retired in 1998.
Roos’ first coaching gig was overseeing the US national Australian rules football team in their maiden international match, against Canada in 1999.
Insights gleaned from various NFL and NBA franchises at the time stuck with him, especially when it came to their training methods.
But it was Roos’ tactical football nous, built as a student of the game over a 17-season career at Fitzroy and Sydney that netted 356 games, that was most remarkable.
The opposition always knew a Roos-coached team would provide an honest contest, mediocrity was not tolerated and blow-outs were incredibly rare – think the opposite of Melbourne in recent years.
He was one of few to regularly get the better of Leigh Matthews, coach of Brisbane’s triple premiership sides.
Matthews won just three of his 14 head-to-head contests with Roos.
In Roos’ first year in charge, the Swans trumped the Lions twice in the regular season but couldn’t do the job in the preliminary final – the club’s first home final at Sydney Olympic Park.
Long before Ross Lyon’s ‘boa constrictor’ was being booed at fields around Australia, Roos’ ugly ducklings were the bane of many.
Even AFL chief executive Andrew Demetriou chipped Roos’ dour methods, opining that “unless the Swans change that style of play, they won’t win many football matches”.
Four months later Roos held the premiership cup aloft after a four-point win over West Coast on the last Saturday in September.
Fittingly he bellowed out the words “here it is” on the MCG dais, speaking to the heart of success-starved supporters instead of admonishing Demetriou in the fashion Mark Williams had done to detractor Allan Scott the year prior.
One of a handful of AFL coaches afforded the option of going out on their own terms, Roos was still planning for the future when he headed for the door in 2010.
He helped bring about a smooth succession plan to promote right-hand man John Longmire, who won a premiership and was named coach of the year in his second season in charge.
No wonder it was the pitch of a similar model from Demons chief executive Peter Jackson that finally convinced Roos he should help out the league’s basket case.
Roos said the other factor in signing the red-and-blue deal was the end of his relationship with the Swans, who had given him a pension of sorts by installing him as a highly-paid junior academy coach.
Perhaps someone at the SCG acknowledged the size of the salary Roos pocketed for working with juniors was not financially prudent.
Lesser men would have dug in their heels and fought tooth and nail, knowing what a PR nightmare they could have cooked up.
That just isn’t Roos though. He’s embraced the next chapter of life, a return to his place of birth and the greatest of challenges.
It’s unthinkable the former Sydney mentor will complete the transformation from drama-riddled pushover to premiership contender in his time at the Demons.
But the 50-year-old will do a lot to put them on that path.