A Flying Start, Then The Wheels Fell Off
The Age
Wednesday March 26, 2003
The former Saints coach explains how it feels to start at the bottom.
I kept a diary for the first year of my coaching tenure at St Kilda. I discovered it recently while unpacking some boxes. It's a painful reminder of difficult times and serves now to highlight how inexperienced I was.
The first pre-season went about as well as one would hope. We made the semi-finals of the pre-season competition after some strong performances and entered the season with a new game plan, which the players had embraced.
The only real low point of the off-season was the injury to Jason Cripps who, even in the brief time l'd seen him on the track, gave a glimpse of aggression not seen in many of his teammates.
The pre-season had given us time to fine-tune the workings of the coach's box and, as a group, we felt ready.
We boarded the plane for Brisbane for the first game of the 1999 season in good shape and confident. The flight was delayed but we made a decision on the run to stick with the original plan of going to the Gabba for a quick kick and stretch before hitting the hotel.
By the time we arrived at the hotel, we were two hours behind our planned schedule. The session was sloppy but gave no real sign of the disaster that followed.
Brisbane was to go on and thump many sides at home that year and would finish the season in fourth spot.
My diary entry read: ``What a way to begin a coaching career - an 89-point hiding, it's a feeling of helplessness, despair and loneliness never experienced in footy before.
``There was nothing pre-game to suggest the debacle that was to unfold. This was real and there was no magic formula, no eject button and, in the end, no sense of anything positive. That night was perhaps the most fitful sleep I have ever had. I awoke literally every hour suffering a nightmare.
``While we couldn't get our hands on the ball, my inexperience in the box also told I gave little or no direction. It was a paralysing experience."
Re-reading the diary, memories came flooding back of that match and its aftermath.
On the Sunday, we travelled to Sydney to watch the reserves team. I ran into Rodney Eade on the stairway landing. He said his coaching career started in a similar way.
Watching the seconds play was an invigorating experience; the youngsters really applied themselves with steel and vigour.
On the Monday, I came out to conduct training and was greeted by an enormous media contingent. Our loss had become the story of the weekend.
My inexperience showed again when I attempted to articulate the reasons for the loss. I accepted the blame totally, which, of course, is correct when you coach. Another AFL coach rang me to say, ``although that may be the case, it is a mistake to do this". He said it creates the impression you don't know what you are doing and gives the players an easy out.
It was an horrendous start. My confidence was shaken and the week was filled with not only team analysis but self-analysis. The win the following week against Melbourne was a huge relief.
I behaved badly in the news conference after the game. I was still shirty (unreasonably so, on reflection) about how that one loss had been interpreted. My answers were brief and the next day columnist Patrick Smith labelled my performance as ``childish and embarrassing".
On the same day, I agreed to be interviewed by him and others on Triple M. The interview turned into a slanging match between Patrick and myself, an undignified performance that was replayed over and over again.
After four years at Channel Seven, it appeared I'd learnt nothing about the media. Patrick and I later buried the hatchet. And after all that, I had to concede the pen was mightier than the sword.
That exchange, though, was quickly forgotten in week two. The media had already turned its attention to an AFL investigation involving Peter Everitt over racial remarks directed at Melbourne's Scott Chisholm. The investigation dragged on all week, Ian Collins finally brokering a deal acceptable to all parties on the Friday morning.
Spider was to stand down for four weeks and pay a fine of $20,000. Our ruckman, and perhaps our most damaging player 100 per cent free of any injury or ailment, would be unable to play for a month. As I wrote at the time: ``Welcome to the world of AFL coaching."
This year's rookie coaches, Paul Roos, Dean Laidley and Peter Rohde, are all better prepared than I was because they all have coaching experience.
It's a tough job, though, as they will find. There's no real start and no real end to a day, a week or a year.
© 2003 The Age
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