Milestone men: Gary Ayres and Andy Collins on verge of 250 VFL games
Gary Ayres and Andy Collins achieved so much together as players at Hawthorn. Now, as they near a major mark as coaches, the pair reflect on the influence the great Allan Jeans had on their careers.
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They go back a long way.
They played together at Hawthorn for the first time in 1987, and became part of one of league football’s great last lines of defence.
It read — Backs: Andy Collins, Chris Langford, Gary Ayres.
But Collins was a Hawthorn Under 19 player when he met Ayres, who by then was established as a fine senior player with the Hawks and well on his way to the Australian football hall of fame.
“Gary wouldn’t have known me, wouldn’t remember it. I do,’’ Collins said.
Overlooked for the senior list after coming out of the Under 19s, Collins went from the Hawks to Sandringham in the old VFA and played in its 1985 premiership.
He returned to Hawthorn in 1986, with “chips on my shoulders’’ and a point to prove.
At a one-on-one, off-the-fence drill at training at Glenferrie Oval, he paired with Ayres, eager to show he had played against men in the VFA and could mix it with the best.
Ayres, built like a bread van, put one on the up-and-comer’s jaw.
“I never trained one-on-one with Gary Ayres again!’’ he said.
But, having been coached by Ray Biffin — “(genuinely a hard bloke’’) — in the Under 19s, Collins had learned to take a hard knock.
After a season in the reserves, he made his debut in 1987, at the Western Oval, which is where Ayres had taken his senior bow for the Hawks in 1978, kicking three goals as a 17-year-old.
Collins, creative and combative, gradually assumed from Ayres the role of minding the resting rovers, allowing his more seasoned teammate to roam further up the ground, where his punishing approach complemented the skills he’d honed back in Warragul.
In the 33 years since Collins joined Ayres in the senior team, they have followed a similar path in football.
They played in three premierships together: 1988, 1989 and 1991.
Each won a Hawthorn best and fairest and played for Victoria.
Both went into coaching at a young age and had immediate success, Ayres with Geelong, Collins with Sandy.
Ayres has two VFL premierships and so does Collins.
And both have coached 245 senior games and will reach the 250 milestone in the shortened VFL season that kicks off on August 1.
It would be superb if the VFL could massage the fixture so that they do it on the same day, with Ayres’ Port Melbourne clashing with Collins’ Williamstown, two of Victorian football’s most historic clubs extending their stirring rivalry.
Ayres, a 269-game Hawk, has tallied his 245 matches at one club, Port.
Collins has been at four clubs — Sandy (1997-98), Box Hill Hawks (2004-05), Coburg (2006-07) and Williamstown (2014-2020). His state league coaching experience also takes in six seasons in the SANFL.
The former Hawks had eggs and coffee for breakfast as The Hill Pantry in Wheelers Hill on Monday, mentioning the milestone, but mainly reminiscing on those golden days at Hawthorn, the great players they called teammates and the influence of Allan Jeans, not only on their playing and coaching, but their lives.
Ayres was 19 when he lost his father in a farm accident. He came to regard Jeans as a father figure.
He joined Port Melbourne in 2008 and over the years has regularly mentioned Jeans in his after-match interviews.
Ditto for Collins. “My old coach used to say…’’ he says, often enough that he has no need to identify Jeans as his old coach.
Sausages? Well, you can boil them, you can fry them, you can grill them, you can curry them, but they’re still sausages. That was a Jeans favourite and Ayres has used it a few times.
They can tell some great stories about “Yabbie’’. Collins once pulled out of a game with the flu. Jeans made him wait four weeks to get back into the team.
Ayres woke up one day feeling poor and asked his former wife, Jackie, to ring Jeans and tell him he could not play. “Look, give him half an hour, feed him some eggs and get him out to the Western Oval,’’ the coach responded. That was the last thing Ayres felt like. But he ended up playing.
Ayres felt he was “floating’’ in his football when Jeans told him in 1981: “Son, we’re going to find a position for you and that’s the back pocket, because let’s be honest, you can’t go any further back.’’
Ayres is also grateful for the advice Jeans gave him at the same time. He had an offer to go to Glenorchy and was tempted to take it.
“I told ‘Yabbie’ and he looked me straight in the eye and said, ‘Son, that’s going to be the greatest sporting mistake you’ll ever make’,’’ he said. “That put me back on my heels. Long story short, I decided to stay. And thank Christ I did.’’
He calls Jeans “the greatest influence on me, outside my family’’ and believes that “whatever I’ve got out of footy, I owe it to Allan Jeans’’.
Ayres and Collins think Jeans was ahead of his time with the way he nurtured relationships with his players.
“He was a great man-manager years before man-management become a buzz word,’’ Collins said, recalling the thrill of going to Jeans’ house for the first time.
They also remember his willingness to try players in different positions and let them express their talents.
Collins played on Brian Royal in his first game for Hawthorn “and he gave me a footy lesson’’. The following week Jeans put him into the middle.
“He had the happy knack, didn’t he?’’ Ayres said.
“Yeah, he threw the kids in,’’ Collins replied.
“But he could be very ruthless, too,’’ Ayres said. “We had this guy by the name of Gary Ablett playing in the reserves. ‘Yabbie’ would make sure he would deal with anything that could potentially upset the culture of the team.’’
“But he lived the values himself,’’ Collins said. “Respect was big. But trust within the whole organisation was the biggest thing for him. I don’t think Allan was a great technical coach — he was a man manager — but I learnt my technique from Gary and Chris Mew and Russell Greene.’’
Collins played 212 AFL matches and was an outstanding back pocket, equally adept at running off and attacking as locking down on opponents.
But he said he viewed himself a role player around “great’’ players like Ayres, Jason Dunstall and John Platten.
“That’s what makes a great team; you allow your great players to express themselves, and your role players understand the influence of playing their role,’’ he said.
“’Ayresy’ was a great player. He was my captain and my mentor.
“Everyone talks about Dermott’s (Brereton) toughness. I think Gary’s the most physical player I encountered. He could turn a game with it, go into the middle and turn it our way.
“I always remember that game at Princes Park in ’89 against Geelong. We had our next captain after that, someone to take over from ‘Tucky’ (Michael Tuck). He just had a presence about him. I always said he was the toughest and most reliable player at the Hawthorn footy club.’’
He added with a laugh: “I always say I saved his career because I came in and played on the little blokes and he played on the bigger blokes and never showed them any respect.’’
Collins still remembers taxi trips to Tullamarine for interstate games. With Tuck living at Berwick, Ayres at Rowville and Collins at Glen Waverley, they would share a cab, Collins filling the front seat while old hands Tuck and Ayres sipped through a six-pack of beer in the back.
Ayres said Collins came back from Sandringham determined to play league football.
“He knew what he wanted to do, and that was to play VFL footy,’’ he said. “He was very well prepared, very professional, and when he arrived on the scene his toughness, his durability, his very good skills, gave the team another point of strength. We formed a wonderful relationship. The more you play with someone the more you get to understand them, know who they are, what they are, and there’s that chemistry, that camaraderie.
“I always felt comfortable when Andy was in the side. He was amazingly competitive; in those days you had to be to get a game at Hawthorn.’’
After their stellar careers, they went into coaching, Ayres taking over at Geelong in 1995 at the age of 34. Collins was 31 when he began coaching Sandringham in 1997.
Ayres, of course, went on to coach Adelaide, where it ended messily. When he returned to Melbourne he cast around for another senior job, but the call never came, despite years of excellent results at unaligned Port Melbourne.
Collins served as an assistant at St Kilda. Successful in the state league, he has not had an approach from an AFL club for 12 years, nor has he sought contact. He’s always liked the idea of coaching his own team.
Last year Port Melbourne visited Williamstown, and as Collins drove to the ground he noticed Ayres walking in. He gave him a lift, the former Hawks sharing a short drive ahead of going head to head an hour or so later.
Allan Jeans might have called them both good drivers in heavy traffic.
They go back a long way, and soon the VFL life members will be going on to 250 games, together.
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