AFL 2023: Mark Robinson on Ken Hinkley, Andrew McQualter and what really makes a good senior coach
It’s not a simple science picking a coach, but one AFL great is mystified as to why the Suns are so keen on Damien Hardwick. Mark Robinson asks what really makes a great AFL coach.
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They are football’s age-old questions: How do you pick a new coach and how do you know when to retain or sack the incumbent?
Richmond is in the midst of the former, and to a lesser extent Gold Coast, while West Coast coached by Adam Simpson absolutely has to contemplate the latter.
Port Adelaide’s dithering around Ken Hinkley had raised eyebrows up until this week and even though Hinkley is assured of a new deal, no one really knows if it will prove to be the correct decision.
He’s earned the new contract, so personal reward and, to be frank, not upsetting the apple cart, is as good a reason as any.
Port chairman David Koch said this week: “We said … that we’d start discussions in August. I think it would be silly not to do it before finals, because you just don’t want that distraction.’’
Yep, Kenny’s got the job. It would seem it’s only a matter of how many years on the contract.
They’ve lost their past four matches and play the Giants (at home), Fremantle (away) and Richmond (home) to close the home and away season. Now lacking personnel, three consecutive losses wouldn’t change Koch’s mind.
Or would it?
Stranger things have happened in footy.
“We look at the data and we make decisions based on the data and what is for the best of the club going forward,’’ Koch said.
“And we just don’t think week to week. We think (in) four, five, 10-year plans. And what could eventuate during them.’’
Port would deny it, but we’ll run with it — Josh Carr was recruited back to the club as the potential successor to Hinkley.
It had the trademarks of Hawthorn enticing Sam Mitchell home to replace Alastair Clarkson, and while it might be the same playbook, it clearly will be a different outcome.
A phone call from Collingwood — who had sacked Nathan Buckley — to Mitchell set in motion Hawthorn’s greatest football upheaval since the almost-merger of the Hawks and Melbourne at the end of 1996.
That one phone call from Pies boss Graham Wright to Mitchell culminated with the Hawks getting jumpy, Mitchell getting the senior gig and Clarkson, the three-peat premiership coach, getting the heave-ho, directly or indirectly.
You suspect a similar phone call was made to Carr by Richmond to ask him to apply for the Tigers job. And you suspect Carr told Port of the development. And we know that instead of Port getting jumpy about potentially losing Carr — their next coach for however long — they have stuck fat with Hinkley.
It might mean Carr is Richmond’s next coach and Port may have missed out on a beauty. Who knows?
Currently at the Tigers, McQualter, the stand-in coach, has a 6-4 win-loss record since replacing Hardwick after round 10.
To have the Tigers marginally in contention for finals is a tick, but arguably the group is still rolling on the fumes of Damien Hardwick instead gulping in the freshness of a new game style, so what’s really changed?
To explore the depths of the situation, the Tigers need to consider that the era was over last year, there’s a need to restock and that the new coach has to be aware of game trends, and their future, and that he has to initially educate and eventually empower, which take us back to the answer to the very first question: What do you look for in a new coach?
Asked recently by colleague Sam Landsberger what the club was looking for in its coach, Tigers chief executive Brendon Gale said: “There’s clearly attributes that you want to see in all elite sporting coaches. There’s some that are more specific to this environment and also we’ve got to understand where the game is evolving and how coaching is evolving and what that looks like in five or 10 years’ time.”
“You’ve got to have a technical understanding of the game and game plans and communication. But I think more than ever probably emotional intelligence. Being highly intelligent and having great empathy and understanding and the ability to build relationships is becoming more and more important,” Gale said.
The gold dust theory doesn’t work
Jordan Lewis was a part of the Essendon coaching selection panel alongside AFL great Robert Walls, Bombers football boss Josh Mahoney, Simone McKinnis OAM and Bombers director Dorothy Hisgrove.
His role was to help find Ben Rutten’s replacement, a task initially that had him anxious.
“Speaking from my experience,’’ Lewis said. “I liken it to, let’s say you and I are having a conversation about ‘Mick’, and you say ‘you’ve got to meet Mick, he does this, he does that, he’s a great fella’, and in my head I get a picture of what he looks like.
“Then when you meet him, he’s totally different from what picture you had in your head.
“When I got asked to be on the panel of the Essendon Football Club to find the coach, it goes through your head, ‘what’s it going to be like, is it a complex and complicated process, is it this, is it that’, but when you get in there, for me, it was a really simple process.
“Maybe it was made easier because the coach we selected was head and shoulders above the rest of the candidates.”
So, what made Brad Scott ideal?
“Knowledge of the game, the trends of the game which he might’ve had more input (because of his role at the AFL), you need to have presence and that can come through the presentation and if you present really well I think your presence grows and you feed off that,” Lewis said.
He said “emotional intelligence’’ was hugely important.
“I also think vulnerability is big. If you open yourself up to mistakes you’ve made in the past, if you open yourself up to family and the struggles you’ve been through … you’ve got to show a human side as a coach because you have to be relatable,” he said.
“If you’re not relatable, you’re basically just reading from a book, so you have to be relatable.
“If you were going to sit in a room and have five coaches to present, it’s relatively easy to pick the best candidate, especially when they are head and shoulders above the rest of the candidates.’’
Gale has said the Tigers were looking for the next Damien Hardwick.
The Bombers went tried and tested.
The Tigers seem to be looking for young and bold.
Collingwood went with the softer personality of Craig McRae.
Gold Coast are besotted by the messiah complex in Hardwick, whose three flags and huge name makes him a prized asset, although it remains to be seen if he can even go close to the same success with the Suns.
Denis Pagan couldn’t make it happen at Carlton after North Melbourne. Nor Mick Malthouse at Carlton after Collingwood, although Malthouse eventually saluted at Collingwood after West Coast.
There’s more. Like, Malcolm Blight at St Kilda after Adelaide, Robert Walls at Richmond after Carlton and perhaps the most famous being Ron Barassi at Melbourne after Carlton and North Melbourne.
AFL legend Leigh Matthews was an outlier. He coached Collingwood to the 1990 premiership and then Brisbane to the three-peat (2001-03) with, he has said many times, a team crammed with talent.
Lewis, and similar Matthews, believes good players make good coaches.
He cites Richmond under Hardwick in 2016 compared to Richmond in 2017.
“The coach allowed them to unlock themselves and they became a great side. Is that the coach? Yeah, but it’s mainly the players,’’ he said.
He’s mystified why the Suns were all-in on Hardwick.
“This is what I don’t understand with football clubs,’’ Lewis said. “Gold Coast has only gone down that path (Hardwick) because they need a big name with a good track record to buy the club more time. He might not be any better than the next coach.
“We praise these coaches, we build them up, but they are only as good as his players, as good as his assistants, and as good as the board and stability of the club. If that’s no good, you could have Leigh Matthews come back and coach the club and they’d still be no good.
“Is Damien Hardwick the right appointment? I don’t know, but they haven’t exhausted all options to see if he is the right appointment. They’ve gone for the biggest fish in the seas and they’re hoping and praying it works.’’
Simpson is a premiership coach (2018) and a runners-up coach (2015), so does that automatically mean he is a great coach, or was he coaching a great team?
Simpson has won three games in 45, while even Clarkson finished 12th, ninth and 15th in his last three seasons at the Hawks. The point is the gold dust theory doesn’t work.
So, what really makes a good coach?
All coaches have their quirks.
The Scott brothers like to coach from the box, as do Ross Lyon, Justin Longmuir and Luke Beveridge.
Matthew Nicks is upstairs and downstairs, the same with Adam Kingsley, John Longmire and Adam Simpson, while McRae, Hinkley and Goodwin prefer ground level representation.
Goodwin is never without headphones on, while Hinkley rarely wears headphones.
In Hinkley’s case, the game-day coaching is left to the assistant, which allows Hinkley to try to graft improvement individually from the bench while also barking orders old-style to on field.
The question that has been pondered is, who is coaching Port, Hinkley or Carr?
Lewis says it’s a ridiculous question.
“Everything before the game is planned,’’ he said. “If there is a scenario which plays out, it is planned for. It’s called what-ifs.’’
Like, the Pies had a plan for Hawk James Sicily last week, but it wasn’t executed correctly. The players were at fault largely, but McRae took the hit.
“As a coach you take responsibility for that, we had a few plans and I take full responsibility for that,’’ McRae said.
“The plans didn’t work and in hindsight I should have been stronger in a few things.’’
Lewis: “Coaches on the boundary line don’t have to coach tactically because it’s already talked about and planned, so he’s the emotional coach on the ground.”
“Assistant coaches are there to see trends of the game, where they are getting beaten and what they will do about it. They’ve already got the plan,” he said.
“There’s also that ability to empower the players and be able to create clarity.
“The resurgence from Carlton is because the players have got clarity in their roles, there’s been a little bit of a tinker with their game style, and they get confidence from feeling it and playing it.’’
By extension, Carr, for example, knows footy, but it’s unknown if he has the emotional and vulnerability bolts required to be the senior coach.
McQualter is coaching the easiest period for a coach — as an interim without expectation — but his 10 games at least gives the Tigers a sighter, and an advantage over Carr, or any other assistant in for the job for that matter.
To the age-old question, the Tigers need a quirky, forward-thinking and patient coach — and board. Because, as Fox Footy’s David King has previously highlighted, the rebuilding coach in recent seasons (Brendon Bolton, Rutten, Stuart Dew for example) rarely gets to see the job through.
Lewis sees rough seas ahead for whoever gets the job at the Tigers.
“I seriously think Richmond is five or six or seven years from contending and they have to make a drastic decision to cull and trade out and take draft picks,’’ he said.
“In five years, they will be anywhere from eighth to 12, maybe they will jump up to sixth, maybe they won’t, but they are about to go through a period where they won’t be a premiership contender.
“I said when I left in 2016, Hawthorn might as well drop down the bottom of the ladder. They wasted three years or four years trying to compete. They wasted it. Extraordinary.
“So, if Clarkson is the greatest coach ever, how come he couldn’t get a team to finish above 13th in three of four years … so what makes a good coach?’’
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