Why David Noble could be the perfect fit to fill Adelaide Crows coach vacancy
Adelaide’s chase for its next AFL senior coach to replace Don Pyke might be answered by a man who sat on the last search party — and knows the Crows very well.
Michelangelo Rucci
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Just as fascinating as Adelaide’s choice for Don Pyke’s successor as the Crows’ senior coach is the search party being assembled at West Lakes.
So far, Crows chief executive Andrew Fagan has declared he, football director Mark Ricciuto, a second Adelaide Football Club board member and two voices from outside the club will be on the panel.
This almost repeats the process the Crows followed in 2015 when they chose Pyke with four internal men: Fagan, Ricciuto, football chief David Noble and long-time club mentor Alan Stewart. They criss-crossed the nation to finally complete the interviews with the Perth-based Pyke in Brisbane after Pyke had cleared his assistant coaching duties with West Coast.
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It will not go unnoticed that current Crows football chief Brett Burton, who at the end of 2016 replaced (to be surprise of many) Noble in a swap at the Lions. Many will read the absence of Burton from the current Crows search party as the clear indicator he will not survive the findings of the “external” review of the Adelaide football program.
Burton’s absence from this four-person panel is telling of what is to come at West Lakes when the review process ends in the next fortnight.
The search for Pyke’s successor — to become the fourth full-time coach (following Brenton Sanderson, the late Phil Walsh and Pyke) in the past nine seasons — carries further intrigue for just what the new senior coach will find at West Lakes. Who remains on the list — and who is part of the revamped football program?
Can only a South Australian — such as former Collingwood captain Scott Burns — cope with the demands that fall on the shoulders of a Crows coach who influences the emotions of most South Australians with greater power than Premier Steve Marshall?
Is there a damaging perception — of the “boys’ club” — in seeking a return to West Lakes with Port Adelaide assistant Nathan Bassett and Essendon coach-in-waiting Ben Rutten, both former Crows full backs?
Does the job demand a coach with strong experience such as recently dismissed North Melbourne coach Brad Scott or the polarising Ross Lyon?
Crows chairman Rob Chapman emphasised the profile of Adelaide’s next coach would be a mentor with strength in “man management” — and this will have to extend beyond the player group to include the fans, a theme Pyke never grasped.
Former Western Bulldogs and Richmond coach Terry Wallace might have hit on the “unexpected” but quite sensible candidate — one of the men from the Pyke search party, David Noble.
While Noble has declared his dream of being an AFL senior coach has become superseded by the want to be an AFL club chief executive, Adelaide cannot dismiss the merit of putting the Brisbane football boss on the other side of the interview panel.
Noble has worked at Adelaide in recruiting, as an assistant coach, football chief and at times in the chief executive’s office. He knows how to re-establish football programs, as proven by his work at Brisbane. He knows the SA football landscape, both from the SANFL and AFL sides of a testing divide in Adelaide.
“He would be absolutely sensational,” Wallace says of Noble. “He’s coached a VFL premiership, he’s coached local football in Victoria and won premierships, he’s coached at under-18 level, he’s gone to Glenelg.
“So in that marketplace they know exactly what he’s like as a coach.
“He’s done every single role from interim chief executive through to list management through to head of footy. He’s done every single role as Chris Fagan had done at the Hawthorn Football Club.
“He’s gone up to Brisbane and been able to, with Chris Fagan, resurrect something and turn it around. He will say, ‘I’m not in that marketplace, I’m in the marketplace of becoming a chief executive. I’ve done all my courses for that’.
“There is no reason, with what he’s done in football, that he could not go into a coaching position and then go back to head of football or chief executive roles. He’s got that broad brush.
“I think they would be negligent in not picking up the phone and going and meeting him.
“My knowledge of David Noble after working with him at the Western Bulldogs a long, long time ago, is that he wanted to be a coach. I still believe in his heart of hearts he’s a coach.
“He would be the one I’d go after.”
Noble left Adelaide three years ago to rebuild Brisbane. He is now needed back at Adelaide to do the same task. And it is more and more doubtful that Burton can stay at West Lakes.