Jon Ralph: Extraordinary array of coaches up for grabs puts monumental heat on AFL coaches

There’s never been a worse year to be an AFL coach under pressure, writes JON RALPH, with the spectre of several modern greats looming large over the 2025 season.

Footy’s ‘blood sport’ has started so early this year.

It was Terry Wallace who so strongly – and rightly – kicked back against coaches being described as a Dead Man Walking when they were under the pump.

In his last days coaching Richmond, Danny Frawley comically brought in an actual pump and lifted it above his head as a prop to break the tension, stating: ”What am I boys … I am under the pump”.

His tragic death shows why that expression about besieged coaches is grossly insensitive to the AFL’s 18 men in charge.

Football should be many things, but not life or death …

The 2025 season hasn’t started and we have a coaching change. Picture: Mark Brake/Getty Images

And yet footy’s game of ‘Coaching Survivor’ will start with the most extraordinary array of coaches available to line up on the starting grid in round 1 next year.

This week after the Herald Sun’s exclusive story about Port Adelaide’s coaching handover, Ken Hinkley joins the likes of John Longmire, Nathan Buckley and Lions football boss Danny Daly as coaches available for 2025.

Adam Simpson will spend on the year in the media polishing his reputation and will surely join them as a contender.

Never before have we had such a line-up of premiership coaches (and those like Buckley and Hinkley who have come close) sitting on the coaching carousel observing the action.

It only adds to the intense focus on the men seen to be leading teams into make-or-break seasons that includes Luke Beveridge, Matthew Nicks, Justin Longmuir and to a lesser extent Michael Voss.

It comes at a time when the AFL’s 18 coaches are demanding more respect for their role in the game from AFL House.

On Wednesday, Hinkley backed Chris Fagan’s comments to the Herald Sun about how integral the coaches and their football departments were to the look of the game and the state of the code.

Fagan struck a chord with his senior cohort.

The pressure is on at the Bulldogs. Picture: David Crosling

Expectations are high at the Crows. Picture: Sarah Reed/AFL Photos via Getty Images

“There is a lot of talk about who is most responsible for the on-field product,” he said.

“The players obviously play but the football departments are most responsible. For me the AFL could look after the people responsible a little better. We are in the firing line and had a lot of money taken away through covid and some came back but nowhere near all of it.

“We can service players better if we have more money to spend.”

Damien Hardwick has similar feelings about how senior coaches who should be the game’s most respected figures are instead marginalised when it comes to the state and shape of the game.

Bottom line – they want more respect.

They want to believe that if they do fail it was with enough resources to fund their football departments properly; to be coaching without a hand tied behind their back.

St Kilda dumped Brett Ratten only months into his contract for Ross Lyon, who in his quieter moments might realise that Ratten did quite well to get 12 and 11 wins out of a mediocre list before he was sacked.

North Melbourne’s David Noble didn’t last two years after five wins in 38 games, replaced by coaching genius Alastair Clarkson – who has six wins in his 38 games at Arden Street.

Collingwood moved on Buckley not long 56 games after he got them into a grand final and 32 games after a lost preliminary final.

So this year’s greatest certainty is that clubs will waver and then break, with the media far from an innocent party in building the pressure.

Of course it is tawdry.

Just witness Ange Postecoglou’s months-long battle to keep his job at Tottenham as an example of a story that just keeps giving.

And so the best that we can hope for is that those coaches are judged on their win-loss records each week instead of allowing the focus to turn to their character flaws and personal failings as human beings.

It might not save a handful of them this season but it might allow those who are sacked to depart with more dignity than they have been allowed in past years.