Michael Voss is completing the apprenticeship he wish he did 12 years ago in readiness for next senior AFL coaching job
Being dumped as Brisbane coach was one of the toughest moments of Michael Voss’ football career – but it also prepared him for what lay ahead.
Port Adelaide
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Michael Voss had just turned 33 when he was appointed Brisbane coach in 2008 and 38 by the time he was sacked 107 games later.
If he was starting out now that would make him the youngest coach in the competition by four years, 15 years younger than premiership coach Damien Hardwick and 21 years younger than Ken Hinkley who was the AFL’s ‘coach of the year’ this season.
But Voss had always been ahead of his time or a young man in a hurry.
It started in 1992 when he starred in an under-17 representative game for Queensland and debuted for the Brisbane Bears the next week against Fitzroy at Princes Park, just 11 days after his 17th birthday.
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There was no stopping him after that, notching 289 games, three flags and a Brownlow Medal by his 31st birthday and that was even despite missing 12 months with a badly broken leg.
Voss wouldn’t have many regrets about his playing career but it’s what he did after retiring that he admits he would do differently if he had his time again.
“As a new coach and without necessarily that experience, I didn’t go down that path, and I wish I actually did do that,” Voss said in 2014.
But now he does have his time again.
In a coaching sense, Voss is serving the apprenticeship that he wished he did 12 years earlier and now at 45 has positioned himself as an ideal senior coach in waiting, even though he’s already sat in the hot seat for five years previously.
Voss is not in the running for the vacant North Melbourne job by choice, declining offers to be interviewed after being somewhat stung by both the Kangaroos and Carlton last year.
When the Blues were looking to replace Brendan Bolton, at Carlton’s request Voss flew to Melbourne to meet with the selection panel and North Melbourne made the same advances in their search to replace Brad Scott.
But both clubs made contact despite appearing to have already committed to appointing their interim coaches in David Teague and Rhyce Shaw, and the ‘sounding out’ of other candidates was seen as a way of justifying their due diligence.
So when the North Melbourne job became vacant again last month, Voss indicated that he was not interested and re-signed at Port Adelaide as Hinkley’s senior assistant coach for 2021.
It’s not that Voss is not interested in being a senior coach again, he has made his ambitions very clear, but just not at North Melbourne or not right now.
But when he does decide the time, club and environment is right, the case for Voss Mk II is even more compelling after Brett Ratten – who was sacked after 116 games as Carlton coach in 2012 – took St Kilda to the finals in his first season back at the helm at the age of 49.
The case for older senior coaches in general is growing across the competition.
Chris Fagan is the oldest in the league at 59 and took Brisbane to a preliminary final this season, as did the second oldest coach in the league in Hinkley who at 54 was named the AFL Coaches’ Association (AFLCA) ‘coach of the year’.
AFLCA chief executive Mark Brayshaw said Australian football would do well to learn from European and US sporting codes like soccer, baseball and basketball.
“We suffer in comparison to the sports in the northern hemisphere, which seem to be much more comfortable employing older coaches with more experience and particularly those who have ‘failed’ in previous jobs,” Brayshaw said.
“That’s not a hallmark of AFL coaching, however believe it or not, we are a tiny sport in comparison so the pipeline (of candidates) is minuscule which you cannot overlook.
“But in respect to Michael Voss, I have found him to be an extremely engaging, ambitious coach who will have learnt a lot at Port and I am sure is watching Brett Ratten’s reintroduction to the role and thinking ‘that could be me one day’.
“And the reason I think both of those two will succeed is because, of course, you get better as a coach with experience, but they are not sitting on their hands, they are aggressively learning and developing themselves.
“The first thing that Ratts did (after being sacked by Carlton) was he went to one of the big universities in the US and did a management/professional development program.
“He deliberately got out of his comfort zone and actively observed the way things happen at another club like Hawthorn with a ringside seat next to Clarko (Alastair Clarkson).
“And every time I talk to Michael Voss he is very keen to explore anything anyone thinks about getting better, so I have no doubt whatsoever that Vossy will be a much better coach second time around.
“But what’s important is to get the right fit.
“Chris Scott and Adam Simpson were pretty inexperienced when they were hired and Chris won a premiership (at Geelong) in his first year and Adam has rarely missed the eight (at West Coast), and that’s because they’ve gone to exceptional football clubs with wonderful structure and stable, experienced leadership.
“Talking to him (Voss), I don’t think he’s in a hurry, but when the moons align he will be very, very good and that’s exactly what the industry needs.”
Voss retired as a player in 2006 and held TV commentary roles while coaching the AFL-AIS Academy and had accepted a position as an assistant at West Coast under John Worsfold when the Lions appointed him.
“He took on a hard job at the time, he was pretty much the senior coach, footy manager and his workload was through the roof,” said Power midfielder Tom Rockliff, who played under Voss at Brisbane.
“You look back and he was only 33 when he took the reins which is so young in the modern era, it’s almost like a playing coach at that age.”
Five seasons later Voss was gone with a 42-64 win/loss record and in 2014 told a documentary titled ‘The Chosen Few’ that the club’s decision to sack him hurt.
“I decided to get out of the country, first opportunity I went to New Zealand and remember sitting on top of one of the mountains looking across Queenstown and just sitting there – that was the most emotional and I don’t mind saying I shed a tear through that time,” he said.
“We always try and put messages in for our kids and I could look them in the eye and said ‘hey guys, there’s going to be a lot said about dad, some might be right, some might not be, but I can let you know this, dad gave his best and it didn’t work out, and sometimes that happens’.”
Voss returned to TV and worked on Fox Footy’s ‘The Recruit’ before joining Port Adelaide as its midfield coach in 2015, and he held that role until 2019 when he was named Hinkley’s senior assistant where his role has morphed into being more responsible for the overall environment than the ‘x’s and o’s’ of the game plan.
The past two years Voss was responsible for planning and executing the Power’s Queensland pre-season camps with a focus on building trust and connection.
Each day he would brief the players before the training session or activity to explain what they were doing and why, and then lead the debrief that evening.
During the week in-season, his day-to-day role involves helping co-ordinate training and managing the connection of the players, coaches and staff.
On game day he sits on the bench with a direct line to the box where he relays information back to football manager Chris Davies, and if Hinkley has an urgent message for the team then it goes through him on the boundary.
If there are two distinct types of AFL coaches now – the Chris Fagan-type who is big on building the environment, relationships and standards, and the Justin Longmuir-type who is better known for being tactically astute with game plan and strategy – then Voss is leaning towards the Fagan mould.
That’s not to say Voss doesn’t see the game tactically.
Nick Vlastuin hadn’t even been KO’d for a minute in last month’s AFL Grand Final when the Channel 7 commentary team threw to Voss.
“What they’ll be deciding right now is who goes back to relieve the defence, you effectively go into man management,” Voss said.
“What we have seen early is the ball on the floor so it becomes a tactical battle; can Richmond use their numbers on the way through and create enough forward pressure to be able to keep the ball in?
“But the ball is going to spend a lot of time on the floor today.”
Luke Hodge replied with: “You’re spot on Vossy, before the injury we had seven minutes of play and there were only two marks, there were a lot of mis-kicks, rush-ons, kicks off the ground to take metreage.”
Four-time premiership coach Alastair Clarkson and games record holder Michael Malthouse believe Voss will be better placed as a senior coach at his next opportunity.
“Vossy is very articulate, understands the game very well, and I’m sure there’d be things in his coaching he’d do differently if he had his chance again. Proper development pathways is the way to go for coaches,” Clarkson told ‘The Chosen Few’ documentary.
Malthouse added: “We’re seeing far too many people fail, and they’re failing because they don’t have the experience, our game gobbles people up and spits them out and football boards do not get it.
“I think it’s a classic one with Michael Voss, he’s the first one to say he should have done an apprenticeship and maybe James Hird should have done an apprenticeship.”
Having seen Voss close-up both at Brisbane and Port Adelaide, Rockliff believes the 45-year-old is “more ready now”.
“I think he’s just developed and understands everyone prepares differently and there is a personal aspect to it. Players crave that a lot more these days compared to what they used to,” Rockliff said.
“He’s always found ways to motivate but perhaps because he was such a champion player, initially he struggled to understand why players didn’t think about footy 100 per cent of the time, where I think he understands that now.
“You hear similar stories with lots of coaches now.
“He’s really good at adapting to different learning styles and understands the personal connection between players and coaches and the footy department is so important and strong and he’s been a real driver of that at Port Adelaide.
“He’s ready-made to go again if the opportunity comes.”
Voss told SEN in October that while his senior coaching ambitions had not changed, he was committed to Port Adelaide for now.
“I love what I do here, I love the role I’ve played and really, really enjoyed working with the players and what I do in that space so will continue to do that,” he said.
“I think the big thing here is whenever you announce you want to be a senior coach, most people think that means tomorrow.
“We all have ambitions, I don’t think there would be too many coaches out there right now who wouldn’t take the opportunity of a senior coach in the right circumstances.
“For me that has been stated well and truly, I don’t think I need to repeat myself again, that doesn’t mean that that’s tomorrow and there’s a lot to consider to be able to take a step like that.”
When he does take that step again, he will be a very different senior coach to the 33-year-old who first took the reins in 2008.
Originally published as Michael Voss is completing the apprenticeship he wish he did 12 years ago in readiness for next senior AFL coaching job
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