Port Adelaide assistant coach Stuart Dew on a fresh start at Alberton after Gold Coast sacking
Premiership hero Stuart Dew is back at Port Adelaide – but a lot has happened since he was last at Alberton. For the first time, the new Power assistant speaks on his Gold Coast departure.
New Port Adelaide assistant Stuart Dew says he still harbours senior coaching aspirations and revealed how he moved on after being sacked by Gold Coast.
Dew along with fellow new assistant coaches Luke Webster, Darren Reeves, director of coaching Andy Collins and development coaches Jacob Surjan and Mitch Clisby reported at Alberton on Monday as new senior coach Josh Carr and his team reported for duty.
It is a return to Alberton for the club’s new senior assistant and midfield coach, who played 180 games for the Power and was part of its 2004 premiership side.
After finishing his playing career, which also consisted of a stint at Hawthorn in which he won the 2008 premiership, Dew spent six years as the senior coach of the Suns.
While his focus is on helping Carr and the Power, the 46-year-old said he believed his senior coaching journey was not closed yet.
“The short answer is yes but my focus is on here,” he said.
“I have to get to know a whole playing list here and a whole footy club.
“That is the beauty of changing footy clubs, you get that freshness itself.
“But I don’t think that journey is closed, but again I haven’t thought too much about that in recent times.”
Dew comes to the Power after 18 months as an assistant with Brisbane, in which the Lions won two premierships.
That was his first role in footy after the Suns sacked him in July 2023.
Days after this he was in England, as he spent time with the Australian cricket team in their Ashes campaign.
“My time with the Aussies was amazing, I found out Monday night and I was on a plane the Wednesday night,” he said,
“That probably says a bit about how much notice I had of what was coming, had that flight ready to go.
“So that was great that it fitted in and to go to the Ashes was a bucket list thing.
“Andrew McDonald and the lads there were really welcoming, I went to go to one training session there and spent three weeks in the inner sanctum.
“So pretty lucky to be in that scenario and be in a different environment.”
He said this helped him get over his disappointment of how it ended at the Suns.
“You do at the time but actually jumping into a different environment was fantastic,” he said. “All the players were unreal. A lot of conversations with Travis (Head) and Pat (Cummins). I couldn’t be more impressed with how he led as a captain.
“There is a big gap between a captain of a cricket team and of a footy team, they are almost GM’s, the captains they deal with a lot.
“That environment was so welcoming so I got over it pretty quickly, how could you not being in the Aussie dressing room about four days after being sacked?
“Sometimes the best gifts come wrapped poorly and that is what happened, and going there was great for me.”
Originally published as Port Adelaide assistant coach Stuart Dew on a fresh start at Alberton after Gold Coast sacking
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