From the Crows best-ever captain to the club’s best coaching disciple, Simon Goodwin is defying all concerns from the abandoned Melbourne camp
SIMON Goodwin carries the tag as the Crows “greatest-ever captain”. He is building his reputation as the club’s greatest entry to AFL senior coaching ranks.
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SIMON Goodwin, according to long-serving Crows coach Neil Craig, is the best captain in the Adelaide Football Club story.
He could become the best AFL coach to come from the club’s stocks.
When Craig made his call on Goodwin, Adelaide had followed five captains since its start in 1991 - Chris McDermott, Tony McGuinness, premiership skipper Mark Bickley and Brownlow Medallist Mark Ricciuto.
The field of Crows players to coach in the AFL is just as thin. Bickley had six games as a caretaker coach after Craig’s end in 2011 - with a 3-3 win-loss record, including a 32-point win in a Showdown in his first match.
Brenton Sanderson, who played just six AFL games at Adelaide before being worked in a trade to Collingwood at the end of 1993, achieved a 39-30 win-loss record in his three seasons as Crows coach (2012-14) - including a preliminary final appearance in his first year at West Lakes.
But Sanderson’s chapter in the Crows story is bizarre in how it written so differently inside and outside the club’s four walls.
Outside the AFL, there are SANFL premiership success stories with Nathan Bassett and Martin Mattner at Norwood and Sturt and a grand final appearance for Shaun Rehn.
Goodwin’s commitment to Melbourne - when he was asked to consider a return to Adelaide in 2015 - highlights his personal character that drew Craig’s admiration when he was Crows captain for 76 games until he retired in 2010.
In delivering Melbourne to AFL top-eight finals for the first time since 2006 - and the first time in his two years as Demons senior coach - Goodwin has written an impressive opening chapter to his resume.
And Goodwin has silenced those who wondered what was to be read in the Melbourne players defiantly rejecting a pre-season camp in their preparation for this season. Some left no doubt in their fear of player power over-riding a novice coach.
To playback former Richmond coach and former St Kilda defender Danny Frawley: “The Melbourne Football Club at the moment, it is a bit of a laughing stock. If I’m Simon Goodwin driving to work today, I’ve got a real shitty feeling in my gut.”
Goodwin, many months after the camp was cancelled, had to dismiss reports he offered his resignation - and expressed his dismay at how the camp saga “has been such a big story but such a small piece over our journey over the summer”.
And with a finals berth confirmed - finally with a win against a top-eight rival and on West Coast’s new home deck - the pre-season camp becomes a meaningless sideshow rather than a millstone for Goodwin.
When Malcolm Blight arrived at West Lakes in the summer of 1996-7 and put faith in a new generation of Crows players - Goodwin, Ricciuto, Andrew McLeod and Tyson Edwards - who would have imagined Goodwin would become the messiah’s greatest disciple in AFL coaching?
Bassett is still to emerge. Mattner could as well. But today Goodwin’s rise is one of football’s great storylines ... even if it dismantles all the fuss from an abandoned pre-season camp.
michelangelo.rucci@news.com.au