MPNFL 2019: Frankston YCW appoints former player Paul Goonan as coach

Paul Goonan says “it’s a weird sensation’’ to be returning to Frankston YCW — as senior coach.

Paul Goonan coaching at the Frankston Dolphins this season. Picture: Diggle Photography

Newly appointed Frankston YCW coach Paul Goonan says it’s a “weird sensation” but overwhelmingly “fantastic” to land the Stonecats’ top job.

The 49-year-old was unveiled as Wayne Capp’s successor earlier this week.

Goonan grew up as a YCW footballer — he played in two senior premierships (1989 and 1993) — but didn’t have ambitions to coach the club.

In fact, he reckons his former YCW coach Josh Kendall would have thought he’d be last player to turn out to be a coach.

A latecomer to coaching, Goonan coached his kids in underage teams at Mt Eliza, winning three successive premierships, and this year he joined the Frankston Dolphins VFL coaching panel as defensive line coach.

“That was a massive opportunity for me,” Goonan said.

“It was a seriously fast learning curve.”

Paul Goonan with his son Luca at the Dandenong Stingrays’ jumper presentation.

When the opportunity came up to coach his original club, Frankston YCW, Goonan grabbed it.

“That’s the big thing for me. I get to go back to where I played as a seven-year-old kid until I was a 30-year-old man,” Goonan said.

“I get to go back 20 years later and coach the club. Josh Kendall text me to congratulate me. I said to him, ‘I’m the last player you coached that you’d think would turn out to be a coach’. We had a bit of a laugh about it. It’s a weird sensation to now be going back there as a coach, having thought I’d never be there (again), it’s just the way things have evolved.

“It was mainly through my kids that I got back into it and now here I find myself coaching a senior club. It’s fantastic.”

Goonan says he has his own calm, measured coaching style that he intends to implement at the Stonecats.

“I’m certainly not a ranter and a raver or an inspirational screaming coach,” he said.

“I’m going to be more of a teaching coach and that’s been my style all the way through.

“Parents when they watched me coach they used to come up to me afterwards and say, ‘mate, can you raise your voice just once? We want to hear you give these boys a spray’.

“Even at Frankston I think my reputation was I was a bit too calm and relaxed but that’s sort of my style.

“I’ve definitely got my ideas on a game style, on how I’d like the game to be played and we will do an awful lot of work on that. And that doesn’t always require skill, it requires workrate.

“I hope my footprint on the club as a coach will be that we fast-track the game style development of some young players.”

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Frankston YCW president Andrew Schneider said Goonan was the perfect man to steer the Stonecats.

“We’re just rapt,” he said.

“What we try and do as a club is we try and find the right person and we’ve done that. We are really pumped that Gooch is the man.’’