GWS coach Alan McConnell says coaching women is a lot like coaching in the 1990s

GWS AFLW coach Alan McConnell first become a senior coach way back in 1995 when he was handed the reins at Fitzroy. 23 years later, he finally notched up his first coaching win and says coaching women feels a lot like the 1990s.

Alan McConnell says there are great similarities between coaching AFLW and leading Fitzroy in the 1990s. Picture: Phil Hillyard

THE more things change, the more they stay the same.

For Alan McConnell, his coaching life has just about come full circle.

The Greater Western Sydney AFLW coach’s first tilt as a senior coach came in 1995, when he was appointed caretaker coach of struggling outfit Fitzroy following the sacking of Bernie Quinlan.

There was three games at the helm that year, then eight in the following season when Michael Nunan stood down.

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In those 11 games, there were no wins. Fitzroy merged with Brisbane to become the Brisbane Lions the following year.

On Sunday, McConnell enjoyed the fruits of his first victory as a senior coach, with the GWS disposing of Collingwood by 13 points.

The obligatory Gatorade shower followed, naturally — it had been a long wait for the 60-year-old.

Alan McConnell says there are great similarities between coaching AFLW and leading Fitzroy in the 1990s. Picture: Phil Hillyard

But he said there is a lot that is similar between his mid-90s coaching stint and coaching the Giants in the second year of the AFL Women’s competition.

“What this is like a little bit is like going back to that time, because the money that’s involved, the resources you have at your disposal, the girls work all day and go to training — that’s what it was like when I played and it’s how actually exactly what it was like in my first year at Fitzroy,” McConnell said.

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“I was a full-time teacher and a part-time coach. Meetings finished at midnight. Match committee would finish at 11 o’clock at night over pizza for dinner.

“There is a lot about this, as strange as that is, that’s quite familiar.

“And I can understand when I test my memory a little bit what the girls go through, on the end of a long day finding the ability to get up to turn up to train and be scrutinised.”

GWS coach Alan McConnell with Jodie Hicks at the 2017 women's draft. Picture: Getty

GWS players celebrate their first win of the season. Picture: Getty

If you’d told McConnell in the mid-90s that he’d end up senior coach of a women’s team, he would have said there would be “zero chance”.

The biggest challenge his female charges face is “self talk”, he said, and “the little voices in their head” that he said male players face, but not to the same degree.

That, and the plethora of information at hand.

“The only difference now is there were no video cameras that captured everything you did — even at training,” he said.

“The notion that you’d videotape training in those days is hideous. When I first started, we were working off the VHS tape, so it would take so long to code the game or the training session, you wouldn’t get to training the next day.

“Things are a bit different, but they’re also awfully similar.”