Luke Beveridge sent Simon Goodwin a text message inviting him over.

Not specifically for a chat about footy, but as it turned out, for a singalong.

The two AFL senior coaches were in Bali over summer when they crossed paths at a beachside restaurant, exchanged numbers and arranged a catch-up the following day.

But instead of sharing footy philosophies, Beveridge and his surfing mates whipped out their guitars.

And for a blissful few hours, the two men who locked horns in the 2021 grand final, Goodwin’s wife Kristine, and Beveridge’s mates spent the afternoon belting out some classic tunes in one of the best days of their off-seasons.

“He (Goodwin) was there having dinner with his lovely fiancee at the time and we had a chat and I just said, ‘You both should drop around for a beer’,” Beveridge said.

“So he texted me and a few of my mates who I was with who play the guitar are really good, and I’m really average. But we had a beer and a sing, and it was fantastic.

“We had a ball together.

“But it was a really enjoyable time and when it came up (in a report) about me (replacing Goodwin next year) I just felt compelled (to quash it).”

The report last week linked Beveridge to Goodwin’s job for next season, but Beveridge shut it down largely out of respect to his new mate, saying if he didn’t earn a contract extension at The Kennel beyond this year he would take a breather from the game.

Beveridge also sent the same personal text message to all of his players three weeks ago to make it clear to them where he stood, as speculation about his future heated up.

Beveridge’s contract combined with the absence of his young star forward Jamarra Ugle-Hagan and a severe injury toll at the Whitten Oval, has been one of the biggest stories of this season.

But for all the adversity the Dogs have faced in 2025, Beveridge is not only completely at peace with his coaching mortality, he has perhaps never come across as more relaxed, or felt more capable in the coaches box than season number 11.

And he is convinced the Dogs can yet make something special of this season, nine years after the magic carpet ride to the 2016 premiership.

“I have always had this really strong internal self-belief in what I am capable of as a coach, and I don’t think it has changed,” he said.

“I am a better coach than when I started.

“But I am not white-knuckling it.

“I think there is a world where a club – and I use John Longmire as an example because he has been an amazing coach – but there is a world where Sydney win the flag last year and John still finishes up. I think that can still happen.

“So the club and I are on the same page about my tenure.

“It could be me making the call and it could be the club making the call, but I think we are both comfortable with that.”

In a wide-ranging interview in his bayside home this week, Beveridge pulled back the curtain on his deep devotion to his playing group, his belief in their ability to overcome the latest injury blow to superstar Sam Darcy, and a sophisticated computer system he spawned which measures players’ contributions in different roles in stunning detail.

What is clear is that the 54-year-old’s left-field moves aren’t just gut feel.

Beveridge tracks players’ impacts per minute, efficiency of ball use relative to time and space, and phase-running intensity in the specially-engineered software program.

No coach in the AFL spins the magnets more, or has made as many big selection calls as the man with the 56 per cent winning record over 236 AFL matches.

And this week, there was another tough selection conversation, dropping Liam Jones for debutant Jedd Busslinger.

“It is always a difficult conversation (dropping players) and I really hate doing it but you have got to do it,” he said.

“The experienced guys – they get it. They know when they are not going so well.

“But you can’t trade culture for talent and there is no replacement for the health of the system.

“If anyone compromises it, any individual, you need to mitigate it pretty quickly or you eliminate it.

“It doesn’t matter who it is. A 10-year player or a first-year player, you can’t deviate.”

Beveridge has always been unafraid as a coach from the days at St Bedes-Mentone when he played five under-19 players in each of the C, B and A-grade premiership sides.

We saw the innovation in 2016 when he turned veteran onballer Matthew Boyd into an All-Australian half-back, and again last year when Beveridge pulled one of the positional switches of the season, flipping Rory Lobb from attack to defence.

Plus, he moved premiership stars and best-and-fairest winners Caleb Daniel and Jack Macrae out of major playmaking roles from the get-go last season, in part, to help the growth of Ed Richards and second-year chameleon Joel Freijah, who has emerged as one of the most exciting and versatile players in the game.

On Sunday night, Freijah racked up 24 touches against St Kilda at a razor-sharp 88 per cent efficiency and booted two goals in only his 19th game.

“He has been incredible,” Beveridge said. “I was really bullish on him (Freijah) in an inside mid role because he was just such a quick learner.

“His game on the weekend, I mean talk about head over the footy, competing, time with the footy, agility and skill.

“But when you are talking to young players in the infancy of their AFL careers, we say pretty quickly we need you to influence outcomes.

“It is not just about you feeling your way through it and experiencing your boyhood dream.

“We tell them what they can do and that instils belief.”

Beveridge is clear his 3-3 Dogs have come a long way over the past 12 months after punishing the Saints by 71 points.

And it has come despite missing as many as five of their most important players at one time including superstar captain Marcus Bontempelli, Adam Treloar, Cody Weightman, Ugle-Hagan amid one of the toughest draws in the caper.

But some of the hard decisions last year on Daniel and Macrae and Lachie Hunter two years ago appear to be paying off.

“Look at how much we have improved since we have evolved and changed and made some challenging calls,” he said.

“I know we get criticised for some of it, but we won 10 of our last 12 games before the final (against Hawthorn).

“Another thing we did was strip 20 minutes of game time from our rucks and forwards in totality so we are better in defence, and we end up the number one defensive team in the competition (in 2024).

“Tim (English), Aaron (Naughton), Sam (Darcy) and Jamarra (Ugle-Hagan) playing five less minutes each game so the (Lachlan) McNiels and the (Laitham) Vandermeers and the (Rhylee) Wests could play more and add to our defence and counter defence, so you could see where we were evolving.”

And, this week, he will redesign the forward line without Darcy for at least the next two months after fracturing his knee at the weekend.

This is where Beveridge goes back into spare parts mechanic mode to find the tool for his new forward mix.

“You move to the next group or opportunists who will have to play varied roles,” he said.

“They can’t replace Sam, but they can do it differently.

“They can still help the team be a formidable, just in a different way.”

The plan is to spread the load, just like in the 2016 finals series when the leading goalkickers through that magical September were Tory Dickson (10 majors), Liam Picken and Clay Smith (eight).

But this is almost an entirely new team.

Only four players remain from the 2016 premiership squad – Jason Johannisen, Bontempelli, Bailey Dale and Tom Liberatore – and only 10 players are left over from the 2021 grand final team.

But the premiership coach’s creative flair stretches beyond his tactical moves and into a realm of storytelling which has provided weekly hooks and motivation for his group across 11 seasons.

And he is proud the team has reinvented itself, if not rebuilt, while finishing lower than 10th only once.

“We have gone not right down, but to the mid table and then back up again,” he said.

“There hasn’t been a huge downturn since ’21, but we have lost elimination finals again and that, to be frank, has been frustrating.

“Other than 2019 when we got beat up by GWS – we weren’t equipped to win that game – but every other elimination final we were totally equipped to win.”

And last year the preparation was knocked off track, in part, by the uncertainty over Ugle-Hagan who missed the bulk of the week training after the round 24 37-point win over GWS Giants in Ballarat.

The Dogs were the form team in the competition in the back half of last year.

But a cloud descended over Ugle-Hagan’s selection, and indeed over the whole club, as part of a challenge the No.1 draft pick is still yet to overcome.

Clearly, the Dogs are moving on in the belief they can be the best team in it in 2025 despite some devastating injury blows.

But the adversity they confront can also be a unifying and driving force.

Sitting on Beveridge’s kitchen table on Tuesday night, next to the contraption he has invented and trademarked for potential sale next year, is a stack of books he has been recently dipping into.

Every game, and indeed every new season, can have its own theme at The Kennel.

In 2016, there was a Willy Wonka gobstopper theme at one point, and for the grand final win over Sydney Swans, there was the rock band.

This year, Beveridge found the theme for the club’s 2025 season in a book called “The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life”, by Boyd Varty.

The book explains how the ancient art of tracking can help people live more purposeful and meaningful lives.

Beveridge said he would sometimes spend up to 20 hours each week developing the 15 or 20-minute pre-game theme.

“There are so many angles you take. Whether it is philosophical. Whether it strategic, tactical, whether it is the essence of the game, where do you go?” he said.

“How do you get under their skin or tug at their heart strings?

“How do you help them understand?

“I have made so many speeches, taken so many angles, and so many story boards and pictures and diagrams and poems so I have got to make sure I never confuse them.

“And I just think players believe me. That is as simple as it is. If I didn’t I wouldn’t have lasted.”

But a couple of times over the journey his emotions have boiled over.

He has reflected and learned from a couple of those tense moments, but at his core Beveridge says he will always defend his people.

However, the criticism of his club and his troops has on occasions, he said, tipped him over the edge.

For balance, he swims up to 2km every second day or so in Port Phillip Bay without a wetsuit.

He says it is meditative amid the intense pressure and scrutiny of AFL coaching.

“Maybe my demeanour and personality could be construed as a bit volatile. I think it is a protective mechanism,” he said.

“In one or two personal conversations it has gone too far as far as the words go, that is the guardianship.

“I’m ultra-protective of my people who don’t have a right of reply.

“Sometimes it (criticism) is unreasonable and I haven’t been concerned about the fallout if perception painted me a certain way, and I’m still not.

“But if I have come across as abrasive or too serious on the external front, I haven’t always found that was the way I was thinking or that it reflected my emotional state.

“So, occasionally my wife, Dana, says to me, ‘smile today’.

“I say, ‘yeah, righto’, so I need a bit of coaching (too).”