Malcolm Blight’s 50 years in league football — from yeller, to teacher, to Messiah
MALCOLM Blight started his journey in league football 50 years ago, and has left a significant mark on the game. In the second part of our series, Michelangelo Rucci looks at Blight’s extraordinary resume in the coaching game.
- Blight’s 50 years in football Part 1: The playing days
- 10 things to love about footy today: Blight
- SA legends to join Blight in EJ Whitten coaches’ box
- The Blight Files: Parts 1-6
GREAT players don’t always make great coaches.
But Malcolm Blight always is the exception to any rule.
Two AFL premierships, five VFL-AFL grand finals and the remarkable lifting of Woodville from SANFL cellar dweller to the team to watch in the 1980s made Blight the “messiah” of coaching in Australian football.
“And when I started playing,” Blight recalls of his SANFL beginnings at Woodville in 1968, “everyone would have said, ‘Blighty the coach? You are kidding!’ I was a billion-to-one chance of being a coach. All I wanted to do was play.
“And that is the way it should have been. If you were analysing the coach at the start of your playing career, you had it wrong.”
Blight had 15 SANFL-VFL-AFL seasons as coach — four (at North Melbourne in 1981 and Woodville in 1983-1985) as a playing coach. He mentored teams in 364 league games. And he could have achieved Australian Football Hall of Fame status for his coaching record alone.
The moment that turns Blight from his total focus on playing to wonder about coaching is in the HSV Channel Seven studios in South Melbourne in the mid-1970s on the prompting of Ron Casey, the legendary pioneer of Australian sports’ coverage on television and future North Melbourne Football Club president.
“On Thursday nights,” recalled Blight, who joined North Melbourne in 1974 to become one of Ron Barassi’s disciples, “Ron Casey would have us at the Channel Seven studios looking at the tapes of the North Melbourne games or our next opponent.
“I’d sit there quiet, mesmerised by what you could see. I was learning about the game with depth I had never known or seen before. I was 24 — and the game was grabbing my attention in a way I had not known before.
“And on Sundays, all that was being stirred by those Thursday night sessions, would come up in ‘fruitful discussions” with (team-mate and future coaching rival Wayne Schimmelbusch) over a few beers. Wayne was Barassi — straight down the line with all that Ron taught us. I was wondering the ‘what if we try this ...’.”
Blight has five chapters as a coach.
NORTH MELBOURNE (1981). He replaced Barassi, after North Melbourne was tempted with grand options such as Richmond premiership coach Tom Hafey, but decided it was best to stay within the new winning culture at Arden Street.
Blight became the last playing coach in VFL-AFL history.
Injuries, six games lost by 14 points or less — and 12 new faces in a once-settled line-up conspired against Blight who was forced to re-evaluate his future after the Kangaroos lost to Richmond at the MCG on June 27, 1981 by 43 points.
“At the end of that game, I felt something was not right — and I needed to teach the younger players how to improve their kicking under pressure,” Blight recalled. “But that was going to be difficult when I had kicked 4.8 — and had run one shot through the behinds. It was obvious the days of the playing coach were numbered.
“When we were out of the finals race at Round 16, Ron Joseph left me with three options — 1. remain a playing coach; 2. stop playing to concentrate on coaching or 3. just get back to playing. It was the talk I needed to have — with a man who was not going to burn me.”
Blight chose option 3 and kicked 103.66 in his last season with the Kangaroos in 1982.
WOODVILLE (1983-1987). Blight returned to his home club of Woodville to not only give the Warriors their greatest on-field era before amalgamation with West Torrens, but also to cast away the doubts created at North Melbourne.
“I wanted to coach — I had this head full of knowledge,” Blight said. “And (Woodville chief) Bill Sanders kept asking why would I not play as well? I learned from North Melbourne that if I was going to be a playing coach again, I would have a solid team around me — that is where Bill and John Reid’s experience counted.”
This also is where the “Blight style” emerged with the notable statistic from Woodville’s 1986 season in which the Warriors broke the watershed 100-point barrier in 15 of 22 home-and-away games.
“It became my way — and it stuck,” Blight said of the high-scoring theme. “There are some coaches who are pleased in devising tactics that stop a goal. I prefer to score them because that it what pleases everyone else in the game — the players, the fans. I wanted to kick goals quickly — it was a good way to play your footy. It was how (famed Victorian coaches) Norm and Len Smith thought the game should be played.”
GEELONG (1989-1994). “It was hard to leave Woodville,” said Blight, who returned to Melbourne in 1988 to be the national manager of a transport giant. “I probably needed the break, however. I’d been spending hours looking at tapes to understand why we had lost games. I could never let go of that question: ‘Why did we lose that game?’ That will wear you our eventually.
“By the end of 1988, John Devine was finished at Geelong and the phone rang with Ken Gannon asking if I was prepared to have a chat. I was on my way back to coaching. But I was moving from that gospel style of Ron Barassi to wanting to teach the players. Don’t worry, I could still go off. But I had learned a fair bit at Woodville what coaching was about — making players better.
“Teaching Gary Ablett senior, who thought he was a half-forward flanker, to be a full forward was part of the teaching from coaching that I was enjoying more and more.
“We built an incredibly exciting team at Geelong. To score 3057 points in 1992 — a record that still stands and think about that total against the high-scoring Adelaide team from last year with 2415 — still has people speak in awe of our scoring power.”
ADELAIDE (1997-1999). “The success with the Crows would never have happened had I not had that shift to teaching rather than yelling at Woodville and Geelong,” Blight said. “And when we were playing well, I could sit on my hands and not interrupt the flow the players had for the game.
“When we didn’t win, it was about pulling the right levers to achieve change. Find out what was wrong and assist the players to get it right. And I learned how different the players were — and how complicated that could make coaching.”
ST KILDA (2001). “I had a year off and St Kilda came with the chocolates while I needed to be wanted — and they made an offer that was financially handsome,” Blight said.
“But after 15 weeks, the men running a club that had won just two games the year before felt they knew more about coaching than I had learned in 15 years. And after all the innuendo that followed, today we know how dysfunctional that St Kilda board was. Danny Frawley, who is St Kilda through and through, says that board should hang its head in disgust. (Former Saints captain) Nick Riewoldt notes successful clubs have every part of the club right — and that was not the case with that board.”
THE COACHING YEARS: THEN AND NOW
FIRST GAME AS COACH: Round 1, March 28, 1981 with North Melbourne v South Melbourne, Arden Street (won by 48 points).
VFL: 16 games, 1981 at North Melbourne.
VFL-AFL: 145 games, 1989-1994 at Geelong.
74 games, 1997-1999 at Adelaide.
15 games, 2001 at St Kilda.
SANFL: 114 games, 1983-1987 at Woodville.
RECORD — Two AFL premierships (Adelaide), five grand finals (Geelong and Adelaide).
364 games coached, 180 wins
COACHING SALARIES
THEN: Carlton premiership coach David Parkin says: “I coached at Carlton for 10 years from 1991-2000 and I was paid $200,000 a year whether we won flags or didn’t.”
NOW: Hawthorn premiership coach Alastair Clarkson is considered the league’s best-paid mentor at $1.2-1.4 million a season.
LANDMARK MOMENT: Sydney premiership mentor Paul Roos took the record salary paid to an AFL coach close to $2 million in 2014 — and at least $1.5 million — when he took charge at Melbourne.
MATCH-DAY STAFF
THEN: Malcolm Blight had just one just assistant coach — Darel Hart — and one “sounding board” with chairman of selectors Terry Moore in his panel in Adelaide’s 1997 premiership season.
NOW: Richmond premiership coach Damien Hardwick has seven assistant coaches, a head of coaching and a “wellness coach” in the box.
PLAYING COACHES
THEN: Malcolm Blight was the last of the playing coaches in the VFL-AFL when he was at North Melbourne in 1981.
Blight continued as a playing coach on his return to Woodville in 1983 when the SANFL had Russell Ebert (Port Adelaide) and Graham Cornes (South Adelaide) in the same role.
NOW: No playing coach, either in the SANFL or AFL.
LAST PLAYING COACH: Tony McGuinness at Glenelg, 1998.
UNION
THEN: None.
NOW: AFL Coaches Association was formed in 2002 to represent all senior and assistant coaches.
THE COACHING GAME
THE FIRST MENTORS
NOEL TEASDALE (Woodville, 1968-1971)
BARRIE BARBARY (Woodville, 1972-1973)
“With Noel (the former North Melbourne ruckman who had tied for the 1965 Brownlow Medal) I was mesmerised by “The Coach”. ‘Teaser’ carried a fair bit of awe with him — and quite a personality.
“Barrie had a lesser profile and had a tactical side to his coaching. He was more clinical in his approach.”
THE LEGEND
RON BARASSI (North Melbourne, 1974-1980)
“Ron Barassi left me with one strong impression: It was all about winning. It was the only thing that mattered. Nothing else matters. I am sure Ron hated losing more than I did. I enjoyed the way he wanted to educate his players to be better — and to be winners.”
THE RIVALS
In his four VFL—AFL coaching stints with North Melbourne, Geelong, Adelaide and St Kilda, Blight worked against 50 coaches. His longest-running rivalry was with Michael Malthouse (21 games).
“I never thought it was ‘me against him’ with any coach. I never took it personally. It was always about what is the team doing to win. I never felt I won a game over another coach. My job was to help the players win against the other team. I could change the players’ mindset. I could change player positions on the field. But it was never personal — not even with Mick (Malthouse).
“I always have had the view that you d not bad mouth an opponent. As a coach I saw no win in poking the bear.”
KEVIN SHEEDY
Blight coached 18 times against “Sheeds” for a 9-9 win-loss record — 8-8 in home-and-away football and 1-1 in finals.
“Now ‘Sheeds’ was different. From the moment he put James Hird on Gary Ablett senior I was left to think, ‘Hello, what have we got here?’ To be fair to ‘Sheeds”, I was just as likely to put Gary Ablett on (Hawthorn full forward) Jason Dunstall one day ... It could have become who out of ‘Sheeds’ or Blight is going to do the silliest move?
“Kevin Sheedy did like to move the pieces on the chess board — and quickly. This is where I feel for today’s coaches. Rotations have taken that part out of match-day coaching to make AFL coaches more focused on what edge can they find during the week.”
ends
NEXT: The media game
michelangelo.rucci@news.com.au