Crows AFLW new head coach Matthew “Doc” Clarke excited by opportunities of burgeoning competition
He’s replacing a premiership-winning coach, but Matthew Clarke isn’t interested in changing the culture that has already been established inside the Crows’ AFLW side.
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His numbers alone are impressive: 15 AFL playing seasons; 258 games; 4600 hit outs; 1206 handballs; 1094 kicks; 127 wins; one coveted rising star nomination.
But it’s not always about the numbers.
There’s football nous. Experience. A knowledge built up over time. And these things can’t always be conveyed through statistics.
And for former Adelaide ruckman Matthew Clarke it’s that unseen stuff — all those bits and pieces in between the numbers — that matter most.
Perhaps that’s what makes him good coaching material and perhaps why — when the AFLW coaching position at the Crows was vacated by premiership-winning coach Bec Goddard last year — he put his hand up for his first head coach role after 10 years as an assistant at his former club.
“I’ve been in footy for a long time, over 25 years, and what the AFLW and our women’s team has done for the Adelaide Footy Club are among the best things I have seen happen in footy in that period of time,” he says.
“AFLW didn’t exist two years ago, so I certainly hadn’t contemplated (such a role) before two years ago, and in a large part, it was seeing the impact and effect that the team has had on our club in a lot of respects that made me put my hand up.
“Footy at its core, is a really great game and the fact that the women have embraced it so wholeheartedly — in that first year, it was hard not to get swept up in it all.
“The next 10 years will see a really dramatic increase in the standard and it’s exciting to have the chance to be involved at this particular time.”
Clarke — known as “Doc” around the club thanks to his veterinary degree — says he’s now leading a team that in its first two years had already established a great culture, enjoyed success and built up a solid fan base.
So his aim is simply to consolidate it all.
“My coaching philosophy is to make sure the culture is really sound, make sure we look after our people, that the values of the group are consistent and then just try and create an environment that enables them all to be as good as they can be and to get the most out of themselves and ultimately have success — not just in terms of winning, but developing and getting better,” the 45-year-old says.
And that philosophy started on point in November when he held his first AFLW training session at West Lakes.
He stood in front of the 20-odd players assembled for day one of pre-season and pointed to a large screen on which was projected the acronym: “SFW”. Remember those letters, he told the team, they will be the basis for the club’s season.
Simple. Footy. Wins.
Three words. One message. With no messy formulas or numbers getting in the way.
Reigning club champion Chelsea Randall was at that first training session (her fellow co-captain Erin Phillips was absent due to WNBA coaching duties overseas).
She said being back training for “Season #3” of the AFLW felt like Christmas and she’s looking forward to seeing what their new coach brings.
“Matty Clarke has played a lot of footy himself and having been through the men’s program is able to share with us his experiences and we’re just looking forward to what he can bring to the side and what we can learn from him,” she says.
Doc’s experience comes in all its forms; not just the successes that he’s been a part of, but the seasons that have been less so. Including season 2018, which will surely go down as one of the Adelaide Football Club’s most difficult, and during which he was ruck coach.
Clarke’s not expecting to transfer anything he’s specifically learnt from 2018 into the club’s AFLW side, rather he’s going to bring to the women what he’s learnt on his 25-year football journey.
“Clearly, you learn all the way along,” he said.
“There’s a great saying in sport; ‘It’s never as good as bad as it seems’ and that’s true of our last season and even true of the year before when we made the grand final.
“Sometimes, it can seem like the world is crashing down, but I don’t get too flustered one way or the other … I stay pretty steady through the middle.
“The learnings just go into the melting pot of all the other learnings and I don’t think I’ll take any more out of last season than I did out of the year before or the year before that.”
Clarke agrees there are challenges facing the competition: its rapid expansion among them (2019 will see two new teams in Geelong and North Melbourne and another four will be added in 2020).
“The AFLW has exploded,” he says.
“Clearly there will be a lag in terms of all those players coming into the game, upskilling and developing physically to be ready to play at the top level, but the expansion has been so great that there is capacity to add teams, certainly, four in one year next year will be a challenge … we need to get them ready at all levels, not just AFLW.”
Then there’s the debate about the competition’s fixture. The AFL disappointed some in the football community when it revealed that despite two new teams, there would be no extra minor rounds of games, instead a splitting of the 10 teams into two conferences. However, there will be one extra round for a semi-final (previously the top two teams have played off in a grand final).
“I think everyone would like to see more games, but we need to be mindful of the stage of the development of the competition,” Clarke says.
“Clearly, the players are keen for more football and in time, if they’d have given us nine games, that would have been awesome, but seven is still pretty good. The extra round of the finals is a nice progression … that’s a positive move and the league is ready for that.
“Ultimately, there was no pathway, now there's a pathway with an elite competition and we’ll collectively, be driven to make it as good a competition as possible and if we do that then the opportunity for more football will come.”
He also expects the one-team town here in South Australia to be over sooner rather than later.
“We’re creating (the pathway) for any young girls in SA at the moment, but ultimately, I’d envisage that there will be two of them.”
And he’s counting down to game one against the Western Bulldogs at Norwood Oval on February 2.
“I saw the role as a destination role,” he says. “If you’re interested in coaching it’s like the perfect mix at this early stage of a competition, so there’s a big upside in potential for the athletes and really highly committed athletes who want to get better really quickly.
“I’ll do it for a period of time, but I’m not really locked on what that tenure will be.
“I’ve been in footy for a long time, but I’ve done a few other things along the way and at some point I’ll stop doing footy and start using some of the other bits of paper that I’ve accumulated.”
But for now, it’s one club; 30 players; seven games. And one hell of an opportunity.
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