While down here in marvellous Melbourne our Premier might have left at the top of his game, an even more important figure was eased out. For every column inch devoted to Steve Bracks going, there has been two devoted to Kevin Sheedy, the innovative, slightly eccentric coach of the Essendon Football Club, who led the club to four premierships over 26 years in the job. Unlike Bracks, however, there might be an ulterior motive behind the timing of the announcement that Kevin Sheedy’s contract won’t be renewed. Like several other AFL clubs who have recently sacked their coaches, Essendon apparently wanted to make sure that they had the chance to sign Michael Voss for the job.
Voss, for those who don’t follow Aussie Rules, was the captain of the team that won three consecutive premierships in 2001, 2002, and 2003, and were losing grand finallists in 2004. While certainly not lacking in skill, he was probably most reknowned for his toughness, and was regarded as the most inspirational on-field leader of the era. Since retiring from playing in 2006, he’s spent the year doing “expert comments” for the Channel 10 footy TV coverage. However, his coaching career consists of taking the Australian Institute of Sport under-17′s side to victory over the South African national team on a tour there.
In other sports, outstanding players have sometimes shown themselves to be great coaches. While Pele never coached, Franz Beckenbauer took West Germany to two World Cup finals as a manager, winning one, and Johan Cruijff was a successful manager at club level for Barcelona. But very few of the managers in the Premier League, for instance, would really be described as stars.
There are cases where it seems to work; Manchester United captain Roy Keane – a notably physical player and inspirational captain – walked into the management job at Sunderland in 2006. Sunderland was playing in the Championship – the next rung down from the Premier League. Keane took the team from the bottom of that competition ladder, thus facing further relegation, to the top and thus promoted into the Premier League.
But if you look at the top five clubs from last season – Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Arsenal, and Tottenham Hotspurs – none of their managers were superstar players. It’s hard to know exactly how good Alex Ferguson, manager of Manchester United, was, because he elected to stay in Scotland rather than accept a transfer to a Premier League club. Jose Mourinho, Chelsea’s manager, was an undistinguished player. Liverpool’s Rafael Benitez played in the Spanish second division. Arsenal’s Arsene Wenger played a dozen games over three years in the French top flight. Tottenham Hotspurs’ Martin Jol had a reasonable career, notably with West Bromich Albion in the early 1980s, but he was hardly a star – he was selected for the Dutch national team only three times.
Three of these coaches have university qualifications – Mourinho and Benitez in physical education, Wenger has a master’s degree in economics. All of them conducted a considerable apprenticeship managing clubs in lower-profile professional competitions, where they had a lot of success.
Maybe Michael Voss will make an outstanding AFL coach. But if you were the chairman of a footy club board, who would you prefer to take a punt on – the former star player, or the coach who’s demonstrated that he can do the job you’re hiring him for at a lower level?
I have always found it bizarre that in this cut-throat elite sport that the huge pay packets for coaches are constantly offered to complete novices.
From my biased – go the mighty North Melbourne Shinboning Kangaroos perspective – I can say I have witnessed the greatest player of the modern era, Carey, but would not wish him anywhere near my team as a coach.
The arrogance of a many great players does not necessarily have the core skills of a coach: teaching ability, team bonding & strategic nous.
For me Voss needs to prove his worth.
Indeed – I couldn’t agree more.
In recent years there have been a heft of coaches who had stellar playing careers transferred into coaching success – Roos, Matthews, Blight and Worsfold come to mind. Pagan, Sheedy and Malthouse were by contrast players who would now be largely forgotten.
I hope Carlton get Voss.
A gifted player often finds coaching difficult. Its simply hard for them to train other people in things that came very easily to them.
There is anothe function of coaches that is overlooked. They have to attract talent to the club. Players make decisions on who they play based in part on who their coach will be. A player that was highly looked up to can attract and retain talent, at least initially. Of course at some point he’ll have to show he can coach. Seems like short term thinking to hire him.
I take your general point, Robert – although I think you’re being a little unfair to Jol.
Not being able to force your way into a Dutch football team in the 70s hardly marks you out as a mediocrity – the fact that he made the team at all in that era should be a strong argument to the contrary.
And his time at Albion was very much towards the end of his ten year playing career – his on-field career also included a spell at Bayern Munich in an era when they were the dominant German club.
Jol may not have been one of the dominant players of his era (as Voss arguably is), but his top flight career certainly eclipses that of the other managers you’ve mentioned.
It would be interesting, I think, to look at the number of Dutch players from the era of ‘Total Football’ who went on to successful careers as managers, and compare them to their compatriots in the same era from other countries.
I’d suggest that there’s a greater connection between a successful’s club/country playing regime and success in management, than it just being as simple as Champion player =/= successful coach.
The Liverpool teams of the 70s and 80s for example, have arguably the best record in the UK of producing successful coaches down the track – Toshack, Daglish, Keegan, Souness etc.
Although the bootroom had its failures also – as I’m sure Celtic fans will attest, after John Barnes miserable spell there.
A coach is many things but he is not a player, the two aspects involve completely different skillsets. Players who have been hungry for knowledge and have increased their own ability have the potential to be good coaches but they still need well developed pedagogic, psychological and managerial skills, technical knowledge and the ability to analyze and synthesize large amounts of information to become good coaches. Good coaches think about the game on a whole different level in comparison to the vast majority of players who do not possess the same capacity or inclination to think about the game that goes beyond the kinesthetic knowledge and game sense that a player requires.
Some good points, crankynick.
John Worsfold did not have a “stellar” career, aside from being a 2x premiership captain. His claim to fame as a player, and what made him a good leader, was being tough and uncompromising. He was a consistant performer, but not particularly talented or skillful. He also has the university credentials being a pharmacy graduate. It is these characteristics that inspire respect and made him a good leader as captain, and similarly as Coach. You could argue though that his success is largely inevitable due to the fact that as captain and coach, he is surrounded by the most talented group of players in the league.
Take Carey on the other-hand – an excellent player, but he has zero charisma. He was a decent captain because of his inspirational skills, but would be a complete failure as a coach.
Voss has the best of both worlds. He shares the strong character of Worsfold and the skills of Carey. He is the kind of guy young players would want to join up to play for, and that attitude wouldn’t change once they got there.
Frankly I think the idea of “doing an apprenticeship” is just a myth the coaches perpetuate to discourage competitors from entering the market. I’m sure Vossy could pick it up over the off-season.
Footy at AFL level is a very complex and multivariate game.
At the fundamental level the task is to drill a team to play a game plan that is robust yet flexible enough to survive the strategic and tactical onslaught of the opposition.
The next level is the ability to juggle the difficulties of the salary cap and draft pick limitations to form a balanced list that is capable of reproducing winning form within the constraints of a team game plan.
Relatively few coaches achieve aim number one.
Very few coaches achieve aim number two.
Since 1990 only Malthouse, Matthews and Pagan have done it.
Sheedy failed to follow through on promising beginnings in 2000.
It’s a very tough ask.
The point with the AFL is that it is such an even competition, that there is very little strategy or skill-wise a coach can actually do.
The teams that win are the teams with the most amount of self-belief and mental toughness.
That’s why “untried” but inspirational players like Worsfold and Voss are so sought-after, because they can inspire a playing group to play above their abilities.
The only other thing a coach can do to help his team win is to be an astute recruiter, but most clubs have dedicated professional recruiters already.
Another point is that coaches like Pagan, Malthouse and Sheedy are overrated.
Pagan has never had a good season coaching a side that didn’t contain Wayne Carey – possibly the best player ever to pull on an AFL jumper, and certainly the most able to win a game off his own boot.
Malthouse won 2 premierships in 10 years coaching a side that had 17 priority picks from its own state when it started (West Coast). If anything, he should have won 5, considering how good their list was.
Sheedy is widely considered to have underperformed from 2000-2002, only winning 1 premiership in a period where Essendon were the undeniably best team in the competition.
The best thing about Sheedy was that, before the days when most clubs had mastered the draft, he had mastered the draft. And so he kept Essendon near the top or at the top of the ladder for longer than most other teams were capable of.
Yobbo, are you seriously suggesting there’s not an enormous skills gap between a full-strength West Coast and, say, Carlton?
Pagan was a massive tactical innovator – he sure had a good list but that is not all there is to it – as you said it was probably as much the competitiveness he infected his players with.
But he took a Collingwood side seriously short on talent to two grand finals.
99-2001 was their window, by 02 Brisbane were better.
Robert: Carlton is an exception, due to the fact that they were penalised in the draft for cheating the salary cap.
The draft ensures a fairly even level of skill between all teams. The only real randomising factor is that some players turn out to be better (or worse) than they appeared to be when they were 17.
For instance, Chris Judd. West Coast took a risk because they really needed a high quality midfielder at that stage, and the first 2 were already taken.
So they had a chance to take Judd at 3, who was overlooked for the first 2 picks because of a serious shoulder injury.
It could have turned out that Judd never recovered and was a wasted pick for West Coast, but it actually turned out that he is the best midfielder in history. Lucky them.
This is the exception rather than the rule. Most clubs are in agreement every year about who the best 20 17 year olds in the country are. The only place to gain an advantage is by finding a diamond in the rough in picks 21-100.
This used to be a lot more common 10 years ago than it is now, purely because clubs now spend a great deal more time and effort on researching talent.
For instance, in the first national draft (1997) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1997_AFL_Draft, you had late draft picks like:
Nathan Thompson (pick 82)
Richie Vandeburg (Pick 78)
Nathan Brown (Pick 66)
Ian Perrie (Pick 49)
Matthew Scarlett (Pick 45)
ADAM GOODES (Pick 43).
Now I think you can agree that pretty much all of those are huge coups, but especially Goodes and Scarlett. That would simply never happen now.
Then you’ve got Joel McKay and Ben Wolton who went in the first round. Who the hell are they?
Andrew Embley was pick 57 in 1998
Cameron Bruce 64 in 1999 and Ben Johnson 62 in a draft where Aaron Fiora went #3.
However by the 2001 draft (Chris Judd), pretty much nobody below pick 60 has made an impact at AFL level.
It is now a disaster for a club to waste an early draft pick, so they spend a huge amount of resources on ensuring they get it right. But back in the day, it was up to people like Sheedy to use their knowledge of junior comps to stack their lists with good players. And he was the best at it for a very long period of time.
Pagan’s main innovation was to put the best player in AFL history 1-out in the forward line. Not really a huge stretch there.
Like I said, without Carey he’s no good.
Goodes was a coup.
Matthew Scarlett was a father/son pick and therefore cannot be counted as a legitimate draft bargain.
ATM Geelong Football Club seem to have been the most astute at building a balanced and skillful list with unpromising picks.
Nick Malceski went at 64 in the 2002 draft. He is pretty good.
I didn’t realise Scarlett was Father/Son, I assumed 45 was too low to Father/Son. Have they changed it recently? Pick 45 isn’t the second round as I understand it.
By the way Katz, any other sporting draft you know of that uses a Father/Son rule like the AFL does?
It kinda defeats the purpose of the draft I think. Especially since a large amount of the players’ fathers never really played for that team.
I.E. Anyone drafted by non Melbourne-based teams. Jonathan Brown and Ben Cousins being the two most glaring examples.
Matthew Egan was a very low too pick too. So you might be right. Adam Selwood from West Coast was another. With Embley at 57, I think they are right up there.
As you can see here GFC had two Round 3 draft picks in 1997.
GFC used the first of these on their Father-Son pick, Matthew Scarlett.
Freo picked up Brian Peake’s son, even though Peake was captain of Geelong.
Cousins’ father played for Geelong.
No I believe you Katz, Im just saying that I thought you had to use your father/son pick in place of a 2nd round pick if you want to exercise it.
I’m guessing here that Geelong had already traded their 2nd round pick before they decided they wanted Scarlett?
As I understand it, if you have one father-son prospect, you need to use your third round pick.
If you have two, you need to use you second and your third round pick.
In 1997 GFC picked up Marc Woolnough in the second round on a father-son pick.
These rules have changed for 2007.
GFC have made many father-son picks since 1997.
I reckon it’s okay for father-son rules to be bent for new clubs. Peake senior did play 6 times more games for the Sharks, and won 6 B&F awards. This at a time when the difference between the comps was nothing like it is now.
At any rate, to edge back on-topic for a moment, if “doing your time” as an assistant is such a necessary apprenticeship, what explains Damian Drum?
Geelong are proud of bloodlines because it’s the thing that makes the Cats different. When nearly everyone in the town is at most two degrees of separation from someone at the club, and the “if I wasn’t from Geelong I’d probably hate footy” types get into it for the togetherness (call it tribalism), of course bloodlines are important. Remember, the western districts are just down the road, and breeding stock to order is a long tradition.
BTW: The traditional story goes that worforce productivity is 10% higher on a Monday after a cats win than after a loss. I wonder if anywhere else in the country gets so worked up.
I dunno about in Australia, but in Baghdad they go ballistic.
They’re huge on the father-son rule in Iraq, too.
Saddam and his sons.
The Sadr clan.
Do people in Geelong fire their AK-47s into the air when Geelong wins?
They’re keeping a lid on it.
[...] Robert Merkel speculates the motives for Kevin Sheedy’s sacking. [...]