{"id":324436,"date":"2025-12-03T07:00:08","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T07:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/324436\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T07:00:08","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T07:00:08","slug":"afl-confirms-state-of-origin-assistant-coaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/324436\/","title":{"rendered":"AFL confirms State of Origin assistant coaches"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The support acts in the coaches&#8217; box for next year&#8217;s State of Origin game between Victoria and Western Australia have been announced by the AFL.<\/p>\n<p>Alongside <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/au\/afl\/geelong-cats\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Geelong<\/a> coach Chris Scott in the Victorian coaching box will be his preliminary final opponent Sam Mitchell from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/au\/afl\/hawthorn\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Hawthorn<\/a>, while Fremantle coach Justin Longmuir will coach alongside <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/au\/afl\/sydney-swans\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Sydney<\/a> coach Dean Cox for Western Australia.<\/p>\n<p>The decision means Mitchell will coach against his star defender Tom Barrass, while Longmuir will remain coaching his electric forward Shai Bolton.<\/p>\n<p>Both coaches expressed their excitement to be part of next year&#8217;s game.<\/p>\n<p>MORE:\u00a0<a target=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/au\/afl\/news\/tasmania-stadium-decision-devils-get-approval-allow-2028-afl-entry\/1854df8620f0d2eb7752eff8\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Tasmania stadium decision: Devils to get approval to allow 2028 AFL entry<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Having spent most of my playing and coaching career in Western Australia, representing WA means a great deal to me,&#8221; Longmuir said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We\u2019re a proud football state, and working alongside Dean (Cox) is an exciting opportunity to help bring Origin footy back \u2014 and hopefully knock off the Vics.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Mitchell was similarly excited to join Chris Scott in the coaches&#8217; box.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI am honoured to have the chance to work alongside Chris,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;He is a highly respected and credentialled coach, and to help build and coach a team that reflects the pride and tradition of Victorian football is a really exciting proposition.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Scott and Mitchell will be coaching a wealth of Victorian talent, which includes Marcus Bontempelli, Matt Rowell, Zak Butters, Jeremy Cameron and Nick Daicos.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Their opponents meanwhile will be led by both Barrass and Bolton, as well as fellow stars of the competition\u00a0Patrick Cripps, Aaron Naughton and Chad Warner. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportingnews.com\/au\/afl\/melbourne\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Melbourne<\/a> superstar Kysaiah Pickett has also reportedly been granted eligibility by the AFL to represent Western Australia, despite playing his junior football in South Australia.<\/p>\n<p>More players are expected to be announced over the coming weeks.<\/p>\n<p>The game is set to be played on February 14 next year at Optus Stadium.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The support acts in the coaches&#8217; box for next year&#8217;s State of Origin game between Victoria and Western&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[638,64,63,55,639,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-324436","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-afl","8":"tag-afl","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-australia","11":"tag-australian-football-league","12":"tag-australianfootballleague","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}