No AFL senior coach will change in this off-season, but where will the assistants — such as Josh Francou — finish up?
JOSH Francou crossed the “great divide” from Port Adelaide to the Crows — and now wants to try the big challenge at the Gold Coast. But will he get to join the coaching carousel.
ST Kilda coach Alan Richardson appears to have survived, giving the AFL its first off-season without a senior coaching casualty since 2005-6.
Rather than sack senior coaches — and cop a penalty with the new tax on football department spending — AFL clubs will swing the carousel with assistant coaches. Richmond’s refit around Damien Hardwick at the end of 2016, followed by Collingwood doing the same with Nathan Buckley last year, has started a trend.
Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley will have a new-look coaching panel with the exit of senior assistant Matthew Nicks (to GWS), forwards coach Brendon Lade (to St Kilda where Richardson also has gained former Carlton coach Brett Ratten) and development coach Aaron Greaves (to North Melbourne).
Crows coach Don Pyke also appears destined to work with a new panel. He has gained Sturt premiership coach Martin Mattner and retained defence coach Ben Hart after moving on Ryan O’Keefe, Adelaide’s SANFL coach.
And there is the intriguing case of Crows forwards coach Josh Francou, a year after crossing the “great divide” between Port Adelaide and the Crows (after an apprenticeship at Sydney) to start a three-season coaching contract at West Lakes.
Is Francou to answer the call of his long-time friend and former Power and Swans colleague, Stuart Dew, at Gold Coast? Or will he be forced to walk away from AFL coaching — as the Crows hold Francou to his contract and the order he not move to an AFL rival to work a similar job — to become a teacher again?
Francou’s move to the Adelaide Football Club last summer carried intrigue from the start. Considering his reputation as a fierce warrior against the Crows on the field from 1997-2005 — he won three Showdown Medals — it always was to be an interesting transition to a club Francou had learned to dislike as a rival.
Crows chief executive Andrew Fagan last week on radio TripleM offered this eye-raising response as the question of Francou’s future — amid Gold Coast’s interest — deepened: “Josh Francou’s first year with us has been a challenge.
“He’s decided that’s not for him. I think he’s going to take some time now to explore opportunities.”
Francou has never been one to run from challenges. Indeed, the prospect of joining Dew in the “Bermuda triangle” of Australian sport at the Gold Coast suggests he will grab any challenge with both hands rather than use his feet to run.
This is the reputation Francou built up in his 156 AFL games that were played with such a determined focus to establishing Port Adelaide as a true AFL power that his physical and mental strength when challenged was recognised in the 2002 Brownlow Medal count as the runner-up to Brisbane midfielder Simon Black.
It surely is not the challenge of reinstating the Crows attack as a high-scoring pacesetter that overwhelms Francou, particularly when his coaching resume in the SANFL with North Adelaide and at the Swans reads well.
Adelaide can certainly hold Francou to the letter of his contract at West Lakes — and with a two-year absence from the AFL probably end his big-league prospects. But when so many assistant coaches change AFL clubs from year to year, is there any real gain for the Crows in stopping Francou taking up a big challenge with the Suns?
michelangelo.rucci@news.com.au