The Sydney Swans have gone down in an 11-point loss to the Western Bulldogs at Marvel Stadium in Round 3.
With the Western Bulldogs under siege in the final moments of Thursday night's clash with Sydney, and the Swans having cut back the Dogs' lead from 17 points to five with a minute to play, Bulldogs captain Marcus Bontempelli secured the victory for the home side.
The Bulldogs should have sewn this game up well before. But inaccuracy was costly and kept the Swans within reach throughout the 9.17 (71) to 9.6 (60) result.
Longmire said the Swans' start – they booted just one goal in the opening half having entered the game as the highest-scoring side of the season so far – proved critical.
"We were just right off. We fumbled a lot, missed tackles, all those things you need to be strong in the contest and the Doggies were the opposite end of that and that's what it looked like for a fair bit of the game," Longmire said.
"To their credit they were really hard and hungry and we didn't go with that."
"We expected them to play like that but we were off the pace."
"We will learn from it. We played last year's grand finalist who have been pretty good the last couple of weeks," Longmire added.
"They [Western Bulldogs] played last year's Premiers and a red-hot Carlton and they could have won last week. I was always confident we were going to learn coming out of this game."
"The reality is we always have to take steps forward all the time. It's a lesson for us."
He was unsure if the Swans had an emotional letdown following the euphoria of Lance Franklin's historic 1000th-goal game last week.
The Swans also lost ruckman Tom Hickey to a knee injury midway through the third term and he was substituted out of the game. Swans coach John Longmire said post-match Hickey had suffered a suspected medial ligament injury.
"Who knows? How do you know? We've got a young team and you talk about it and try to get yourself [up] but it's hard to put a finger on it. It looked like we were off the pace," he said.
"We didn't have that hungry edge that we needed to have like we did in the first two weeks."
The Swans lost the free kick count 31-14 but Longmire wouldn't be drawn on their impact and didn't say whether he would seek any clarification from AFL headquarters on any decisions.
