AFL line coaches must be matched to their areas of expertise, writes Dermott Brereton

YOUNG St Kilda forward Rowan Marshall faces a daunting task against Richmond champ Alex Rance as DERMOTT BRERETON ponders whether AFL players are getting the best advice from their coaches.

ASSISTANT coaches, line coaches, development coaches, whatever you want to call them, they all do their very best under the direction of their senior club coach.

They formulate drills to complement the head coach’s philosophy and thwart the opposition’s strengths.

They prepare their players both analytically and physically for the next challenge.

And match day they will pretty well watch only their players, so that the feedback to the coach can be accurate and instantaneous.

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They have a very difficult job and footy is a famously inexact science. I do not envy them.

Especially those line coaches who are tasked with coaching an area that was outside their own immediate area of knowledge as a player.

This area of coaching game craft, as opposed to tactics, is worth exploring.

I am talking about a coach who might have been a champion midfielder who might now be coaching as a backline or forward line coach, which is common enough.

How does he handle a young key position player who comes to him and asks him about body positioning in a flat-footed test of strength against an opposition behemoth?

That coach may well have played 300 games, but he also may never have been in a marking duel like that in his entire career.

How does he tell his young forward to play, stand, run or even start against someone like Jeremy McGovern?

He can give him the information about what McGovern can achieve through his playing strengths, but can he give his charge tricks of the trade and little bits of information that are learnt by only being in that position?

Can he increase his players chances of beating his direct opposition by the experience of that scenario in his playing days?

Carlton great Steven Silvagni was awful to play against.

Trapped flat-footed against him, he would have a 100 per cent spoil rate against you. So you would get on the lead and attempt to mark out in front.

But his final lunge at the spoil with his long, seemingly never-ending arms was huge and he would often be able to spoil in that scenario as well.

But after a while I worked out that he only ever spoiled with his right fist, so I developed an earlier leap at the ball when on the lead and would rotate anti-clockwise in the jump.

This meant that his right arm, his spoiling arm was going the long way around my back to get to the ball.

No coach — not even Allan Jeans — taught me that. I had to learn it through trial and error.

That is just one little trick of the trade that no midfielder is ever going to be able to pass

on.

Rowan Marshall is likely to be matched up on Alex Rance on Friday night. Picture: AAP

Stephen Silvagni marks over Dermott Brereton in 1987.

It’s not a criticism of the coach, it is just a fact that we are all a product of where we

have been.

If you were to ask me about the craft of midfield stoppage work, I would run up the white flag and admit that I know more about the mating habits of the Australian Gouldian finch.

But the craft work of playing as a mobile marking key forward, then we can chat.

For instance, if young Saint Rowan Marshall asks his line coach about how to start against Alex Rance on Friday night — apart from viewing videos of Rance and what has mildly worked against him in recent times — would he be asking someone who truly knows what it is like to play against and beat a champion like Rance.

Former Carlton forward Rohan Welsh is the St Kilda forwards coach, so he has the advantage of having lived it.

Before Welsh, it was Aaron Hamill for a number of years, a guy eminently qualified to comment on the nuances of forward play.

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But before that it was Adam Kingsley, now “transition coach”.

Kingsley is very well regarded but it is most unlikely he ever stood in a one-on-one marking contest with anyone more than 90kg.

It just has to be an advantage as a coach having played the part yourself.

Marshall will need all the help he can get from someone who can tell him about the little angle changes in his leads, the distance that he starts away from Rance, whether or not to play in front, side on or behind?

A coach who at halftime will truly know that Rowan has done everything right with his leading lines, his early jumps, or his body checking from in front when on a lead.

This is not a criticism of any particular coaching panel but there is a case for the creation of another coaching role, one purely assigned to the “game craft” required for roles that are, in reality, a specialist position.

Given the level of professionalism in the AFL, I can’t believe that we do not have these positions already.

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