Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley fears game will suffer with clubs forced to cut coaches due to financial impact of coronavirus
Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley has warned cost-cutting in football departments will affect the quality of the game as clubs prepare to come to grips with the financial impact of the coronavirus crisis.
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AFL clubs will be granted the autonomy to restructure their skinnier football departments as they wish.
But Collingwood coach Nathan Buckley has warned the cost-cutting was certain to take same of the gloss off matches.
Buckley started 2020 with seven lieutenants — assistant coaches Robert Harvey, Matthew Boyd and Brenton Sanderson, strategist Ash Collins and development coaches Hayden Skipworth, Scott Selwood and Garry Hocking — and it is highly unlikely all of their jobs will all survive.
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“A lot of (vision the players watch) is in one-on-ones with coaches,” Buckley said.
“This would be the argument around football department investment going forward — the smaller the ratio, the more effective the learning, because you tailor the information to the individual.
“So we’re actually optimising … the product itself.”
In the wake of the coronavirus shutdown, most clubs are budgeting for a $3 million reduction from the $9.7 million soft cap, which would see hundreds of jobs perish across the industry.
Carlton’s Sam Docherty spent two seasons as a quasi-assistant coach as he recovered from knee reconstructions, but he is no longer banking on a future in the box.
“The soft cap is accepted that it will be reduced, but there hasn’t been a figure landed on,” AFL boss Gillon McLachlan said.
“It has been discussed about being prescriptive in that. I don’t think that will happen.
“Whatever the cap number is, the clubs will be able to spend within that and have the autonomy within that how they want to.
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“If people want to put more money into recruiting or high performance or coaching or development, that’s part of the competition of football and different views and different end levels of expertise.”
Speaking on Fox Footy, McLachlan stressed that “change doesn’t mean less … it just means we need to look at the whole industry and the game to make it as efficient as possible”.
The freedom will allow, for example, clubs near the foot of the ladder to invest heavily in scouring the talent pool or accelerating development.
Richmond boss Brendon Gale said recently his challenge was to identify the programs critical to the Tigers’ competitive advantage and “fight as hard as we can” to protect them.
The Tigers, for example, have tapped into mindfulness recently and were one of the league’s biggest spenders in 2019, at the upper end of the $9.7 million soft cap.