AFL 2022: How Chris Scott won the Geelong coaching gig on the back of an AFL overrule, launching an incredible career
In another world, Chris Scott would be coaching a different club and another person leading Geelong into the Grand Final. This is the story of his rise and the club that chose a different path.
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It was the AFL overrule that helped to launch a senior coaching career which has produced one of the best winning records in league history.
As part of the game’s 150th birthday celebrations, the AFL staged a Hall of Fame Tribute match between Victoria and the Dream Team in 2008.
Reigning premiership coach Mark Thompson was the Vics’ coach. He wanted his trusted Geelong lieutenants — including highly-rated assistant Brenton Sanderson and footy bosses Neil Balme and Steve Hocking — to oversee the team.
The AFL acquiesced, but insisted Thompson had to include one assistant coach from another club.
One person close to those discussions has revealed it was then AFL administrator Rod Austin who nominated a first-year assistant from Fremantle, who had just started his coaching apprenticeship after a premiership-winning playing career at the Brisbane Lions.
Sanderson, who sat in the box alongside Thompson that night in 2008, told the Herald Sun: “Bomber did the state game … all the Geelong coaches sat in the box and there was Chris Scott down on the bench. He was so impressive. You could see that straight away.”
The Vics won the contest, and Balme and Hocking walked away with the belief that Chris Scott was going to make a senior AFL coach in the future.
“Balmey and Steve came back to the club from that experience and said ‘This bloke (Scott) is going to be awesome … we need to watch out for him’,” one insider recalled. “They came back thinking ‘this bloke is going to be a star’.”
CAT EMPIRE THREAT
Fast forward to late 2010 and Geelong’s stunning era of success looked over — at least from an external point of view.
Having won flags in 2007 and 2009, split by a shock 2008 grand final loss to Hawthorn, the Cats limped out of the 2010 finals with a preliminary final thrashing from Collingwood.
The game’s best player, Gary Ablett, was headed to Gold Coast on a deal he couldn’t refuse. Thompson, under contract, shocked the football world by quitting as Cats coach to ultimately join new Essendon senior coach James Hird.
“Gary walked out; halfway through the third quarter of the preliminary final it was 85 points the difference; and Bomber was leaving,” an insider said.
“It wasn’t as if we looked like we were on our way to another flag.”
The Cats had to find a new coach with the selection panel consisting of chief executive Brian Cook, Balme and Hocking, and board members Gareth Andrews and Diana Taylor.
Balme’s view was nowhere near as pessimistic as the rest of the football world.
He recalled: “Steve and I, and Cooky, didn’t feel we were in trouble. Bomber (Thompson) had done a terrific job but everyone gets to their point where they probably should give it away. It was pretty positive (inside the club). We started to look for someone else.”
MISSING THE PORT JOB
Scott hadn’t always envisaged a coaching future for himself, despite being a member of Brisbane’s famed teams under Leigh Matthews.
But having been offered an assistant’s job at Fremantle following his retirement after 215 games at the end of 2007, he relished it.
Yet if it hadn’t been for Port Adelaide’s process to find a replacement for Mark Williams in the second half of 2010, he might not be coaching Geelong in Saturday’s AFL grand final.
He threw his hat into the ring and narrowly missed out to caretaker Matthew Primus.
Scott told the Pickstar’s Off Field podcast in 2017: “Port made a coaching change early in the year, so I had this long period of time to work through the detailed process.”
“I was going through it, to be brutally honest, for the experience because I had no idea how to go about it or what was involved.
“I was really raw. I wouldn’t have got the Geelong job if I didn’t go through the process at Port.”
Primus won the Port Adelaide job on September 8, 2010 — two days before the Cats defeated Fremantle (with Scott alongside Mark Harvey in the box) in a semi-final.
There was no vacancy at Geelong, but there would be in a matter of weeks.
CANDIDATES
Geelong had 120 applicants for Thompson’s role, but in reality, there were only three candidates in line for the job.
Cats best and fairest winners Brenton Sanderson and Ken Hinkley were considered the most likely options, while externally Scott was considered an outside hope.
Sanderson had won rave reviews as a deputy to Thompson; Hinkley had played and worked with the Cats before moving to Gold Coast.
Cameron Ling, Geelong’s skipper at the time, said: “I remember it came down to Kenny, Sando and Scotty. Cooky came to us as a leadership group. We said to him ‘We love Kenny‘ and ’We love Sando’, but we trust you and the panel to make the right decision’.
“As part of that discussion, we explained how we felt like we could still compete, but we also appreciated the new coach would have an eye on the future as well.”
“We felt like we could still do something.”
Cook had a close affinity with Sanderson, whose No. 27 jumper adorned the wall of his office.
If the players had voted on the vacancy, it would likely have gone in Hinkley’s favour, narrowly from Sanderson.
But Scott’s presentation, and Balme and Hocking’s memories of that 2008 Hall of Fame game, gave the former Brisbane Lions player a decided edge internally.
“The whole thing was led by Balmey and Steve Hocking, there were other people involved in the process, but I can tell you those two were pushing for Chris Scott,” an insider recounted.
“There was also a consensus that an outside voice was the preference.”
THE DECISION
Geelong’s criteria included an emphasis on the coach having been a part of a successful environment, who was under 40, and who was a premiership leader.
Ironically, it had been a similar list of requirements that had helped Thompson win the job.
“He really impressed me,” Balme said of Scott. “I thought he knew what he was doing, he had a strong personality, we felt he got the game pretty well and got people really well.
“I thought it was a no-brainer …”
Scott was only 34. To put it into context, he was the same age then as Joel Selwood is now.
Was that a concern?
“Not at all,” Balme said. “You try not to take into account age or anything like that.”
As part of Scott’s pitch, he guaranteed he would play at least four players under 40 games in every game the following year.
It was music to the panel’s ears, They believed in the now, but they had an eye on the future.
A month after missing out on the Port job, Scott won the Cats’ role.
One of the first things he did was to call Sanderson to ask him to stay.
“We caught up for a coffee and away we went,” Sanderson said, explaining that Cook also told him the best career move was to remain. He did, and won the Adelaide senior role the year after.
A letter to the editor in the Adelaide Advertiser at the time from Dennis Reid, from Glenunga, read: “Great Scott! Geelong footy club have installed Chris as coach. Will Port Adelaide live to regret their decision in not hiring him?”
Primus was gone from Port Adelaide after two more seasons; Scott is now into his 12th season with the Cats, and his 285 games have come at a winning percentage of 70.18 — the highest of any coach who has led his team in 100 games or more.
Scott pledged to make Geelong his home at his first press conference — and moved down the highway. He still lives down there.
Ling said: “It wasn’t a shock to us … we were like ‘Chris is the new coach, let’s get to work’. I remember thinking I had better come back to pre-season training in good shape.”
“He told us: ‘I believe you guys can do it again. I’m not going to gift players games, but if it comes down to a 50/50 call, I am going to err on the side of the younger player.’
“We were comfortable with that. The guys thought ‘We just won’t make it a 50/50 call.”
Ling said the Geelong players of the early 2000s worshipped the Brisbane Lions’ three-peat sides (Scott played in two of those flags).
Cook said at the time: “We fell in love (with Scott) over a two-week period. It was a short honeymoon; now we have the marriage.”
Three hundred and 52 days later, Scott coached Geelong’s ninth premiership — and the club’s third in five seasons — in his maiden 2011 season as a senior AFL coach.
If he can get his 200th AFL win as a coach on Saturday, it will also provide him with his second AFL premiership as a coach.
Ling said the notion Scott had been presented with a premiership team 11 years ago was patently wrong.
He was precisely what the Cats needed at the time — and still is.
“He just managed the team brilliantly,” Ling said. “He brought new ideas to the table, he pushed the buttons that needed to be pushed and gave us a real nudge along.
“He said, ‘I love what you guys do and I am going to keep backing you in … All I am going to do is to ask you to buy into a couple of these new ideas and keep bringing through some emerging players. If you can keep doing that, you can be right there again’.”
The same thing applies more than a decade on.
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