But rewind eight years, and Kelly was a very different coach.

Having grown up in Loxton, a tiny town located on the banks of the Murray River in regional South Australia, the 54-year-old learned to play Aussie Rules SA style: uncompromisingly hard.

"There's 80 blokes at training and you've got two teams," Kelly recalled. "And they [the coaches] were getting paid a lot of money. So they took it out a bit on the players."

Kelly channelled that mentoring style when he was appointed head coach of the Swans men mid last decade.

However, it did not translate well in the less intense AFL North West. And it was his son Tom, a former Swan and now a Sydney-based trainee police detective, who pointed that out to him.

"I remember Tom said, 'Dad, just back off a bit, just back off and relax and enjoy it. Muck around a bit more at training, and stuff like that," Kelly recalled.

"So I took that on. And yeah, all the boys just seemed to come back and had fun, and they brought their mates. So it definitely changed me: the way I look at footy now, to what I did when I first moved here."

After eight consecutive seasons as Swans coach, Kelly has stepped down - although he will assist his replacement Lachlan Bennetts-Inkster, who is also a player, in 2024.

Kelly's tenure was marked by abject lows: years of heavy defeats as the club teetered on the edge of oblivion, to a spectacular revival as the club emerged as one of the league's shining lights.

But after three straight grand final defeats, Kelly said the Swans needed to "change a bit of direction".

"Losing three grand finals in a row, you need to change something," the Dose Industries maintenance man said, adding: "Yeah, I'm happy, it's good. No pressure on me now.

"I'll just sit back and do what I'm told, and help out when I'm asked to."

Kelly, who played A-grade for Loxton and was a West Adelaide junior, regards his Swans coaching tenure as perhaps the highlight of his AFL career. It was definitely his biggest challenge.

"The first couple [of seasons] were a bit rugged," he said. "And every year you think, 'I can't do this any more'.

"But as time went by, it was fantastic. It was great." He added: "The club come from the bottom, to be one of the major teams over the last four or five years. So it's pretty good."

The Leader: How do you want to be remembered?

Kelly: "Just one of the boys."