The Western Bulldogs Next Coach

[Reptilia]

Yebiga - as somebody who, at the beginning of this whole saga, was in favour of a senior, experienced coach, I can see where you're coming from on a number of points. Specifically, I understand your concerns about who we have surrounding the coach, and I too doubt whether there is enough support there for a rookie coach to develop and be successful. However, I do think your emotional attachment to the idea of an experienced coach is clouding your judgement a little bit.

My first point is simply that we are almost entirely in the dark about this process and the candidates. A month ago most of us had no idea who Luke Beveridge was. It's ridiculous to me that somebody sitting on the outside, having never had anything to do with him personally, can have such a strong opinion on the guy. I realise that your objection is more regarding his standing as a rookie, moreso than him personally, but your opinion is bordering on, "The club should ignore who it thinks is the best appointment and focus solely on appointing an experienced head coach." You were having a go at the club a few pages back for making decisions based on video interviews but to me your concept of rubbishing the positives of a coach because he's never been a head coach is much, much more unprofessional than an interview method that's used in a hell of a lot of organisations worldwide as an integral part of the appointment process. This is about finding the person that the club believes is the best man or woman to take us forward, and that can't be done effectively by immediately putting a line through 90% of the candidates before even speaking to them. For all we know the committee shared your views, but the experienced coaches interviewed poorly and did nothing to inspire them to believe they could take the club forward. Now if that was the case - as it seems it was - how on Earth can you justify selecting any of them? "These guys were all bad, and I don't think any of them can improve us as a side, but we have to choose one of them because they're the only available experienced coaches. Want to pull a name out of a hat?"

Secondly, there aren't a lot of quality ex-coaches around. A perusal of the poll turns up the following names: Mark Williams, Brett Ratten, Gary Ayres, Rodney Eade, Brenton Sanderson and Mark Thompson. The easy ones to remove are Rodney Eade - appointed elsewhere and it was never going to happen anyway - and Brenton Sanderson - sacked only this year because the players under him had lost faith in their direction; leaving Williams, Ratten, Ayres and Thompson. Ayres failed at two clubs and has been out of the AFL system for ten years - he's simply too far out of the loop and not good enough anyway. Thompson has a number of issues (that, according to some, have even led the AFL to caution certain teams), as well as having made it very, very clear that he's in it for Hird's job. Ratten never wanted the job. Williams appears the last man standing. Port finished on top of the ladder for three consecutive years and only got to one grand final - which they won. He was also on the wrong side of the biggest grand final loss in history, and the game appeared to go past him late in his tenure, before he was eventually sacked. I don't know about you, but none of these guys fill me with a lot of confidence - even if they are 'experienced'.

To address the concern I mentioned in the first paragraph about the team surrounding the head coach, I raise two points: 1) the club has already identified this as an issue and has moved on a number of support staff, and have also begun searching for an experienced head for the rookie coach to work alongside; and 2) this is mostly the work of the head coach himself. In my opinion this was one of McCartney's biggest failings - he was unable to surround himself with assistants that he trusted to take the workload, nor was he able to create a cohesive, successful coaching group. It's not a matter of the club just throwing random highly-rated assistants at the coach and saying, "Here, make this work;" it's very much a responsibility of the coach to find a system that works. Beveridge was appointed as the head of coaching altogether at St Kilda for next year, and has a successful history in business where organisational understandings and appointments are vital - if we appoint him head coach, I have no doubt he'll be able to find the right people to surround himself with. This is not something that Garlick/Gordon/Lowe etc can do by themselves.

I understand a lot of your concerns and even share some of them. I know you have little faith in the board and executive team given the circumstances of the past month or so and I don't blame you. I also think the likes of Gordon and Garlick have a lot to answer for and I have serious concerns about how McCartney's initial "review" was handled. But you can't argue the fact that, incompetent or not, they're privy to a lot more information than we are about both the candidates and the state of the club, and are in a much better place to decide upon the best way forward than we are.

Having an opinion on the coaching appointment is fine - but you're getting incredibly worked up and negative without really knowing a lot of the circumstances. It's just not worth it. I'm not at all sold on Beveridge, but at the same time, you've simply gotta trust the club to make the right call on this. They know much more than we do on the subject and only they can know why he won out against all these experienced guys. Time will tell, but for now, get excited by the fact that the club thinks he is the man to take us forward from here.

you are seriously second to none in the amount of effort you put into a post. Does it come easy to you? I have a lot of things I want to say but I just never have the time to put that much effort in. Nice work.

 

[Dannnnnnnnnn]

you are seriously second to none in the amount of effort you put into a post. Does it come easy to you? I have a lot of things I want to say but I just never have the time to put that much effort in. Nice work.

I attribute it to warped priorities and an active attempt to replace university work with absolutely anything else.

 

[yebiga]

Yebiga - as somebody who, at the beginning of this whole saga, was in favour of a senior, experienced coach, I can see where you're coming from on a number of points. Specifically, I understand your concerns about who we have surrounding the coach, and I too doubt whether there is enough support there for a rookie coach to develop and be successful. However, I do think your emotional attachment to the idea of an experienced coach is clouding your judgement a little bit.

My first point is simply that we are almost entirely in the dark about this process and the candidates. A month ago most of us had no idea who Luke Beveridge was. It's ridiculous to me that somebody sitting on the outside, having never had anything to do with him personally, can have such a strong opinion on the guy. I realise that your objection is more regarding his standing as a rookie, moreso than him personally, but your opinion is bordering on, "The club should ignore who it thinks is the best appointment and focus solely on appointing an experienced head coach." You were having a go at the club a few pages back for making decisions based on video interviews but to me your concept of rubbishing the positives of a coach because he's never been a head coach is much, much more unprofessional than an interview method that's used in a hell of a lot of organisations worldwide as an integral part of the appointment process. This is about finding the person that the club believes is the best man or woman to take us forward, and that can't be done effectively by immediately putting a line through 90% of the candidates before even speaking to them. For all we know the committee shared your views, but the experienced coaches interviewed poorly and did nothing to inspire them to believe they could take the club forward. Now if that was the case - as it seems it was - how on Earth can you justify selecting any of them? "These guys were all bad, and I don't think any of them can improve us as a side, but we have to choose one of them because they're the only available experienced coaches. Want to pull a name out of a hat?"

Secondly, there aren't a lot of quality ex-coaches around. A perusal of the poll turns up the following names: Mark Williams, Brett Ratten, Gary Ayres, Rodney Eade, Brenton Sanderson and Mark Thompson. The easy ones to remove are Rodney Eade - appointed elsewhere and it was never going to happen anyway - and Brenton Sanderson - sacked only this year because the players under him had lost faith in their direction; leaving Williams, Ratten, Ayres and Thompson. Ayres failed at two clubs and has been out of the AFL system for ten years - he's simply too far out of the loop and not good enough anyway. Thompson has a number of issues (that, according to some, have even led the AFL to caution certain teams), as well as having made it very, very clear that he's in it for Hird's job. Ratten never wanted the job. Williams appears the last man standing. Port finished on top of the ladder for three consecutive years and only got to one grand final - which they won. He was also on the wrong side of the biggest grand final loss in history, and the game appeared to go past him late in his tenure, before he was eventually sacked. I don't know about you, but none of these guys fill me with a lot of confidence - even if they are 'experienced'.

To address the concern I mentioned in the first paragraph about the team surrounding the head coach, I raise two points: 1) the club has already identified this as an issue and has moved on a number of support staff, and have also begun searching for an experienced head for the rookie coach to work alongside; and 2) this is mostly the work of the head coach himself. In my opinion this was one of McCartney's biggest failings - he was unable to surround himself with assistants that he trusted to take the workload, nor was he able to create a cohesive, successful coaching group. It's not a matter of the club just throwing random highly-rated assistants at the coach and saying, "Here, make this work;" it's very much a responsibility of the coach to find a system that works. Beveridge was appointed as the head of coaching altogether at St Kilda for next year, and has a successful history in business where organisational understandings and appointments are vital - if we appoint him head coach, I have no doubt he'll be able to find the right people to surround himself with. This is not something that Garlick/Gordon/Lowe etc can do by themselves.

I understand a lot of your concerns and even share some of them. I know you have little faith in the board and executive team given the circumstances of the past month or so and I don't blame you. I also think the likes of Gordon and Garlick have a lot to answer for and I have serious concerns about how McCartney's initial "review" was handled. But you can't argue the fact that, incompetent or not, they're privy to a lot more information than we are about both the candidates and the state of the club, and are in a much better place to decide upon the best way forward than we are.

Having an opinion on the coaching appointment is fine - but you're getting incredibly worked up and negative without really knowing a lot of the circumstances. It's just not worth it. I'm not at all sold on Beveridge, but at the same time, you've simply gotta trust the club to make the right call on this. They know much more than we do on the subject and only they can know why he won out against all these experienced guys. Time will tell, but for now, get excited by the fact that the club thinks he is the man to take us forward from here.

Always enjoy your posts Dannn. Unfortunately, My posts are less level headed and less tempered than yours. I am relieved that you share at least some of my concerns. I don't entirely agree with your dismissal of all the experienced coaches but respect the points you raise as valid concerns.

One of the problems with assessing experienced coaches is that our judgement becomes set - good and bad - we don't allow for the possibility that they have learnt and adapted from past experiences: pruned some of their bad and augmented the good. Whilst, rookie coaches will also all possess good and bad - but as there is little which has been exposed - we give them the benefit of the doubt. We are even prepared to accept a period of learning.

Human beings do change and learn from experiences. Whilst, I am not a big fan of Rattens, he does have certain strengths and a resilience. arguably he got the best of what that carlton list could give. i don't know whether he has learnt much from his Carlton days but I would want to talk to him. It is concievable that he has a new fire in the belly, has learnt a lot which may have been lacking whilst with Clarkson.

Ditto Williams and Thompson. They both offer such a wonderful marketing coup to the club that we should be dead sure they are not right for us before dismissing them.

In short if the club has sat down with these guys and decided no, not for us - I can live with that. But if we have decided not to interview them because of some rumour or the latest AFL wind change then I will be very very disappointed.

Finally, there is too little respect on this board for these guys. Dismissing them as nutters, out of touch, unstable etcetra is undignified. All of them, including Ayers have achieved an enormous amount in the game. If you were a betting man, you would get very long odds that one of the short listed rookies we appear to be destined to pick, is ever going to have the stature these guys have - long in deed.

So, I too am not entirely convinced about anyone including Williams but I really find it contemptuous when they are dismissed as nut jobs out of touch ... Based on what. Dwayne Russell was on 5AA last week and talking about Williams and why he appears to be passed up for head coaching jobs. His assessment was that Choco is just too obsessed with football and it scares people. I kind of reckon that is a good thing.

 

[Dannnnnnnnnn]

In short if the club has sat down with these guys and decided no, not for us - I can live with that. But if we have decided not to interview them because of some rumour or the latest AFL wind change then I will be very very disappointed.

I agree with a lot of this - especially the above. If we have just gone about our business without approaching these guys I'd be disappointed too. I'd be similarly disappointed if it was the other way around and we'd just thrown all the rookies out and looked solely at experienced coaches.

I guess my point is that we just have no idea what the committee has done and it's pointless to get so worked up without knowing the details. At this stage we just have to back Garlick/Darce/Gordon/Lowe/Worsfold to pick the right man for us; otherwise it'll just do your head in and make you have doubts before the coach is even appointed.

 

[Dogman17]

I have it on good word that out next coach will be someone who has not been mentioned on this page, a former AFL coach from SA..... Been interviewed twice and has seriously impressed...

 

[VitalDread]

Annoucement on thursday
Just a heads up

 

[Dale4captain]

I have it on good word that out next coach will be someone who has not been mentioned on this page, a former AFL coach from SA..... Been interviewed twice and has seriously impressed...

I think I know who you're talking about and I thought he was closer to the mark for senior assistant

 

[Dale4captain]

Annoucement on thursday
Just a heads up

Beat you to it a couple of pages ago, mate

 

[JTCWBFC]

I have it on good word that out next coach will be someone who has not been mentioned on this page, a former AFL coach from SA..... Been interviewed twice and has seriously impressed...

Might Yebiga get his wish? or are we talking about Ayres/Craig?

Wait! Is it Primus!

 

[VitalDread]

Beat you to it a couple of pages ago, mate

I waa watching doc who my bad

 

[Dogman17]

Haha well played, work with a bloke whos father was one of his former assistant coaches... said that he is going to be at our footy club in 2015 i was told as head coach but you may be right with senior assistant. Was not my first choice but there could be a lot worse...highly regarded by a few people i spoke to about this...

 

[JTCWBFC]

Annoucement on thursday
Just a heads up

Do you know who is going to get appointed VD?

 

[Dogman17]

Not Chocco Williams either..

 

[DexterTan]

Neil Craig?

 

[VitalDread]

Do you know who is going to get appointed VD?

I dont know but i believe that beve look set to have the role

 

[Dogman17]

 

[BRG93]

It's looking more and more likely a Director of Coaching will be appointed at the club from who I've spoken to

I have it on good word that out next coach will be someone who has not been mentioned on this page, a former AFL coach from SA..... Been interviewed twice and has seriously impressed...

I think I know who you're talking about and I thought he was closer to the mark for senior assistant

Mark Bickley?

 

[JTCWBFC]

View attachment 91516

Great acquisition, has a lot of experience and can only help out Beveridge (assuming he is appointed).

 

[dish licker]

Don't understand this love for Beveridge, he is coming from further back than Macca, even Monty has achieved more, Tudor, who know's. This short list would not be the short list at the bigger clubs. Not sure whether I should say it but Monty beats them both. 200+ games, premiership player, hard nose and assistant coach of the year 2014, knows the players. Am I wrong?

 

[Dale4captain]

It's looking more and more likely a Director of Coaching will be appointed at the club from who I've spoken to


Mark Bickley?

Director of Coaching, Senior Assistant, Coaches Mentor, all pretty similar roles tbh. Just a name change depending on what club you're at. I know Neil has been in for a couple of interviews. Would think that they'll appoint the senior coach then look to fill the support roles around him as I said a few days back.

 

[BRG93]

Director of Coaching, Senior Assistant, Coaches Mentor, all pretty similar roles tbh. Just a name change depending on what club you're at. I know Neil has been in for a couple of interviews. Would think that they'll appoint the senior coach then look to fill the support roles around him as I said a few days back.

Basically what Gold Coast have with Malcolm Blight is what we are after. Worsfold would be my pick for it just from an outsiders POV.
Would love the club be bold again and grab Jason Dunstall as Football Manager as unlikely as that sounds

 

[fronkalicious]

Yep

The drink had the gig almost 2 weeks ago.

 

[JTCWBFC]

The drink had the gig almost 2 weeks ago.

Do you think they have been waiting to lock in this second 'senior assistant/director/mentor' appointment so they can announce both at the same time?

 

[fronkalicious]

Do you think they have been waiting to lock in this second 'senior assistant/director/mentor' appointment so they can announce both at the same time?

Lots of reasons for the delay. Will go into more detail after its official

 

[ivan rassmussen]

In short if the club has sat down with these guys and decided no, not for us - I can live with that. But if we have decided not to interview them because of some rumour or the latest AFL wind change then I will be very very disappointed.

yebiga - I'm sorry, but are you suggesting we would or wouldn't interview candidates solely based on rumours?! Seriously!?

You are investing far too much into the comments of posters on BigFooty. So people on here think some experienced ex-coaches are nutters. So what? This is a forum where people post opinions, and absolute garbage, and - very rarely - something remotely resembling actual events or decisions.

And no club - no club - will sit down with every available candidate to gauge their interest and/or suitability, it is just not logistically possible. If the club had a list to start with, and no-one on here or in the media seems to have the faintest idea of who definitively has been on any list, they may well have had some of the names you are obsessed with on there. Then again they may not.

And I'm not sure whether you're joking or not, but this obsession about Beveridge being an auditor (at an extremely senior level) just makes me ignore the majority of what you post these days. There may be something worthwhile in your posts, but they appear unbalanced and too emotionally involved. We are all emotional (to varying degrees) about the club we support, but we need to be pragmatic too.

We all seem to think there were, and probably still are, issues with how the club has been managed. But for goodness sake, take a break, step back, and try and look objectively at some of the stuff you post.

I know last time I posted something like this as a reply to you, you told me I was condescending and trying to give you tips on life. If that's the way you take this post, that's your prerogative, and I'll leave it be.