Sacked podcast 2022: The coaching offer that nobody could convince Rocket not to take
Rodney Eade promised his wife he wouldn’t accept the job as coach of the Sydney Swans and yet less than a year later he was two hours from premiership glory. Rodney Eade reveals how his senior coaching career began on SACKED.
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RODNEY Eade woke up in a Sydney hotel room one morning in late 1995 believing he was close to being appointed the Swans’ new coach when his wife threw him an unexpected curveball.
Eade revealed to the Herald Sun’s Sacked podcast: “I said to her: ‘I think I am going to get this job’. She started crying and said ‘I can’t do this, I can’t come’. So I said to her ‘OK’.”
After being courted by the Sydney hierarchy the previous day as a likely replacement for Ron Barassi, Eade and his wife “did a runner”. They headed to the airport and flew back to Melbourne on the next available flight.
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“On the plane on the way back she was in tears … she made me promise to not take the job. I said ‘I promise, no worries’,” Eade said.
“So I get to the airport, go to the long-term car park and on the way back, (Swans CEO) Kelvin (Templeton) phones me and says ‘I would like you to offer you the (coaching) job.
“I said: ‘Yep, no worries. I am in’.
He turned to his wife and said: ‘Listen darling, I’m sorry I have got some bad news’.
So began the senior coaching career of Rodney Eade, which would take in three clubs, the best part of 17 seasons and 377 games – a Grand Final in his first season at the Swans, three preliminary finals at the Bulldogs and a shorter, more difficult tenure at Gold Coast.
Not bad for a guy who never envisioned embarking on a coaching career when he was a four-time premiership player at the Hawks who had to be coaxed into his first assistant coaching role.
The man known as ‘Rocket became one of the most tactically astute coaches of the modern era.
On that journey he worked with some of the famous, colourful names in Australian football including Tony Lockett, Warwick Capper, Jason Akermanis and Gary Ablett Sr. and Gary Ablett Jr.
GLENORCHY TO GLENFERRIE
Eade left Hobart for Hawthorn in late 1975 with the intention of staying a few seasons before returning home.
He never quite made it back.
“I had to get a bus and a train to school in my first year, then a bus and a train to get to training,” he said. “Then I got a ride home with Brian Cook, who was playing at Hawthorn at the time, in his two-blue FC Holden, which had smoke coming out of it.”
His ninth game was in the 1976 premiership side, wearing the No. 26 made famous by Peter Hudson, who recommended him to the Hawks in his role as Glenorchy coach.
Eade won flags under all three of his Hawthorn coaches – John Kennedy Sr, David Parkin and Allan Jeans. Each had an impact on the footballer he would be and on the coach he would later become.
“I only had ‘Kanga’ (Kennedy) for one year, but he had an enormous impact on me,” he said. “John was the greatest orator I’ve ever heard. Jeansy was a close second.
“He was a white collar worker. He was a (school) principal and was head of the Teachers’ Tribunal. He was on the Telstra board. He was chairman of the AFL. But he was a blue singlet coach. He was hard and tough.”
Eade believes Parkin isn’t afforded the same sort of adulation as other four-time premiership coaches including Ron Barassi and Tom Hafey.
“He changed the game … (with) the review process and the science to the game. David’s been underrated as a coach. People talk about Barassi and Hafey … but David’s up there.”
NEAR NORMIE
Eade’s worst and best moments in his playing career came in the same week a year apart.
On the eve of the 1985 premiership playoff, he was preparing for a team meeting at Glenferrie Oval following the Grand Final parade when Jeans delivered a bombshell.
“I got votes in the preliminary final in the best and fairest (count) and the media,” he said. “We (went) to the Grand Final parade and we got back to a meeting at Hawthorn. Then Yabby pulled me aside and said ‘We’re not going to go with you, son’?
“I was just stunned. I was in complete shock.”
Eade went on to play in the Hawks’ reserves premiership side the next day, elevated to the captaincy as “a token gesture” as the Bombers destroyed the Hawthorn senior side.
“I went through a whole range of emotions,” he said. “I got angry, I got shitty and said bugger them ‘I am not going to turn up’. Fortunately my dad was pragmatic and said you are the only one who is going to lose out.’
“I will be really honest, I was hoping they wouldn’t win.”
The next year Eade played one of the most significant matches of his career, winning 26 disposals and restricting his Carlton opponent Craig Bradley to only nine in the Hawks’ 1986 victory.
Six of the seven Sun newspaper votes voted him best afield ahead of Gary Ayres. But Ayres pipped him by one vote in the Norm Smith Medal.
“The great Teddy Whitten didn’t give me a vote,” he recalled. “Perhaps I didn’t wear Adidas.
“I always say (to Ayes), ‘Is there any chance of giving me my Norm Smith back’.”
WIZ AND THE BAD NEWS BEARS
Eade maintained the worst footy decision he ever made was leaving Hawthorn for Brisbane for the 1988 season. But he insisted it was the best career decision as it led him to coaching.
He played 30 games across three seasons, discovering how tough it was with a new team set up in what was then a non-footy state.
“It was a culture shock,” he said. “We know now that the AFL set it up incorrectly with discards but a lot of the discards could play a bit. (But) some weren’t motivated enough.”
Eade recalled one day he came across two star players who were discussing “waxing” possessions pre-game.
“I challenged them and said: ‘Hang on guys, we are here to win, not here to pick up stats.”
Sydney star Warwick Capper was recruited on big money to Brisbane which upset some teammates.
“It wasn’t Warwick’s fault that some of the jealousies came out … that was really disappointing.”
There was talk some players refused to kick the ball to Capper.
“Warwick’s ex-wife challenged a couple of players after a game,” he said.
“(She) was just attacking one player with a few swear words and the player challenged her back, so it was on for young and old.”
But after Eade’s ex-teammate Peter Knights was sacked and stand-in coach Paul Feltham was moved on, Norm Dare took over and ultimately convinced him to take on the reserves coaching job.
Eade coached the Bears reserves to the 1991 premiership.
“That was my big break in footy,” he said.
He ended up as an assistant coach at North Melbourne – where he also won a reserves flag – before winning the Sydney coach role for 1996.
BIRTH OF THE FLOOD
Eade’s footy nous was his calling card, and he was the architect of the modern flood.
“We trained it in the preseason … (to have everyone) push up a line,” he said. “In Round 1, we got belted by Adelaide; in Round 2 we lost to Freo at home when no one lost to Freo.”
So he brought in his new style and it worked a treat as the Swans became hard to play against, with buy-ins from the players, including Tony Lockett.
“At times Tony would chase up to the wing and I would say ‘We can’t kick a goal with you up there’. (The flood) worked a treat and we got a few scores on the rebound.”
LOCKETT, ‘96 SWANS AND HIS COMEBACK
Eade, Lockett and the Swans swept into the 1996 Grand Final off the back of the spearhead’s famous after-the-siren behind to sink Essendon in the preliminary final.
It was, Eade said, the night Sydney truly fell in love with the Swans.
But he says no one realised how close Lockett came to missing that match with a nagging groin injury.
“There was some doubt (about Lockett playing),” he said. “I remember someone in the (coaches’) box saying ‘Has he got the leg for this?’.
“I just think it shows how mentally tough he was.”
The Swans led North Melbourne by almost five goals in second term of the 1996 Grand Final, but were overrun.
Eade enjoyed working with Lockett.
Lockett retired at the end of 1999 after breaking Gordon Coventry’s goal kicking record but he shocked the footy world – and Eade – with his comeback three years later.
“It was all done without my knowledge that they (Swans’ administration) were talking to him, but I had to be the final tick off,” he said.
“They said ‘this is happening’. I said ‘That’s OK but I need to talk to him first.’”
Eade quizzed the 36-year-old about how he would handle it if his comeback failed.
“He looked incredulous, like ‘that’s not going to happen’,” he said.
Lockett got a bad cork in his comeback game and missed more than a month and failed to get continuity in training and game time.
He retired for a second time after his comeback yielded three goals in three games.
Eade was sacked soon after Lockett’s retirement, knowing some were working against him behind the scenes.
“You get a bit dirty on it, all the subterfuge and the politics and the backgrounding and the people you think you can trust,” he said.
“Because even if they are going to move you on, they can at least be honest and upfront. That’s the part that hurts the most.”
BAD NEWS SUNS
Eade thought his senior coaching career was over after he left the Bulldogs in late 2011, having moved to Collingwood to work under Nathan Buckley.
But an opportunity arose at Gold Coast in late 2014, which he took up with some hesitation.
If he had known then what he knows now, he wouldn’t have accepted it.
“I didn’t realise what it was going to be like when I got there,” he said. “You hear that it has been set up and people are saying it’s a Ferrari ready to be fine tuned and ready to win finals.”
In the end, at that time, it was more like a gas-guzzling paddock bomb than a purring Ferrari.
Eade is reluctant to apportion Blame for the culture issues that have dogged the Suns almost from their birth, but says it was even worse than publicly stated.
“There has been a lot more of that than what has been said publicly,” he said.
Harley Bennell’s sacking in late 2015 at the end of Eade’s first year reduced the player to tears.
“He (Bennell) cried when we cut the ties. I didn’t really want to (do it) because he was a talent (but) unfortunately we make excuses for talent and the club made the right decision.
“He said ‘I didn’t think I would ever be cut from here’. In other words, he was saying ‘I didn’t think you could do without me’.
Eade was sacked by the Suns late in 2017, having told the club’s hierarchy he was prepared to stay on and weather the storm.
“I said to (CEO) Mark Evans when he sacked me, ‘Listen, I am happy to be here for another couple of years to take the brunt … you identify someone to take over, but I wear the public and media backlash of not being successful because the next couple of years are going to be tough’.
They sacked him anyway.
Eade is still trying to drive improvement as director of coaching at Scotch College and coach of Balwyn.
GAZ ONE, GAZ TWO
Eade had the rare distinction of playing alongside Gary Ablett Sr. at Hawthorn and coaching Gary Ablett Jr. at Gold Coast.
Ablett the elder played only six senior VFL games with the Hawks before going onto establish himself as one of the game’s greats at Geelong.
Eade recalled: “Doodles was his nickname … the family always said he was the best of the lot, but it was difficult to get him down.”
The Hawks senior players started to come to the reserves games earlier than usual to see Ablett’s talent.
“I remember at Princes Park one day … It had rained a bit. He was on the wing side of the centre square and he kicked a left foot torp with a wet ball that landed in the square and went through for a goal.”
Eade also detailed a story of Gary Ablett Sr.’s first game with Geelong in 1984. He had been selected but hadn’t fronted shortly before the first bounce. So someone was dispatched to Ablett’s house and found him sitting back unaware of the time, watching a fishing show. He made it to the ground on time and dominated.
He said Gary Jr. was a leader by example at the Suns and almost coached the young players on the field.
“He had a fair few ticks for the captaincy … but he probably wasn’t a confrontational guy,” he said.
“Gary was very professional in getting himself up (when injured). He knew his body really well. He didn’t believe in painkillers. I’ve got no issue with that, it probably frustrated people, and probably myself at times.”
Aker’s handstand should never have been banned
Former Western Bulldogs coach Rodney Eade says the club made an error in banning Jason Akermanis from his famous handstand celebration in the prelude to his 2010 sacking.
And Eade says the crucial free kick paid against Brian Lake for pushing Nick Riewoldt in the 2009 preliminary final was a “crock of garbage” and “bulldust”.
Eade enjoyed a brilliant seven-season stint at the Western Bulldogs as he helped build an immature team and guided it to a trio of preliminary finals.
He told the Herald Sun’s Sacked podcast his time at the Bulldogs was the most enjoyable of his time in football despite winning four flags as a Hawthorn wingman and taking Sydney to the 1996 grand final.
One of Eade’s famous rants at ruckman Will Minson in 2019 went viral on an audio clip and Eade admitted to Sacked that while it was his voice it was a heavily edited minute-long package of a full 150-minute game.
But Eade’s legacy at the Dogs was his tactical nous and capacity to build up a young side desperate for self belief rather than his strong emotions which occasionally spilled over.
Eade realised early the lightning quick Bulldogs kids were beautiful ball users and he tailored his game style around their particular skills.
Renowned as a master tactician, Eade said at times he made moves only to see how his opposition coach reacted: “I think as a historian of the game I always asked questions. Why do you do this, what are they trying to achieve? Sometimes we made moves not knowing what the effect would be.
“One game something was thrown around in the box and someone said, ‘What is going on here?’ I said, ‘I’ve got no effing idea’. But the bloke next door has got no chance”.
Eade never won a premiership in his 377 games as coach of Sydney, the Western Bulldogs and Gold Coast but said after four playing flags he can still sleep well at night.
“That’s what happens in footy, it doesn’t stick in your craw,” he said.
“I was asked the question at the Bulldogs and I said I would love to win one more for the players and the supporters rather than myself.
“It might have been different if I hadn’t won one as a player, it wasn’t a personal thing driving me, my coaching was more about the team and the club and trying to get each bloke getting the best out of themselves.
“Don’t get me wrong, I would have loved to have won one. But probably at the Bulldogs, I enjoyed coaching the most and maybe even my footy the most other than the premierships. It was a terrific club to be a part of.”
AKER CONTROVERSY
Akermanis has long felt the Leading Teams model in which players get strong 360-degree feedback only allows for players to be bullied and the triple Brisbane Lions premiership player was told he “looked content” in one Dogs session.
Akermanis told Sacked in 2019 the club’s “A-Team” of players was “more powerful than I ever thought” as they banned his trademark handstand which had been so powerful in bringing young fans to the Lions.
“They were like, ‘It’s too individual, we don’t want individuality here’ … d***heads. It was a huge collective of very, very weak individuals allowed to get away with it,” he said.
Eade told Sacked this week Akermanis’ 77 games at the Dogs had been full of positives but it was not a surprise his tenure ended in acrimony.
“He is his own person, as we know. I thought our group handled him really well, they gave him a lot of rope which people don’t realise,” Eade said.
“2007 was the first year, he didn’t have a great year, but after that he played some good football. At times he was getting tagged by (Jared) Crouch and we would get him to play a different role. He would accept that.
“I think the issue was when he retired at the end of 2009, he was going to finish and he had a job at Channel 7 and radio and they all fell through so he came back and said, ‘Can I keep going?’ but we had no more (salary cap room) left so he got some sponsors to get extra money.
“He was fading and (injured) and he got frustrated so it was as much my fault to agree with him to go on that extra year.”
Of the handstands Eade was adamant: “I didn’t mind it.
“We had (leadership facilitators) Leading Teams at that stage. And Leading Teams was quite raw and open. And obviously he didn’t like the feedback he got as a group at one stage.
“That was the second (instance). But the first one was brought up by one player about the handstand.
“If they’d asked me, I had no issue with it, and some of the players didn’t either, but the players spoke about it.
“And then I took a vote on this and the facilitator from Leading Teams extrapolated it out and they got blokes to have their opinion and they as a group said we would rather you not do it.”
Asked if that was like a red rag to a bull, Eade said: “I agree.”
THE ARRIVAL
Eade said despite the accepted narrative, he was not beaten to the Hawthorn coaching job by Alastair Clarkson.
Instead on the day before his Hawks interview the Dogs refused to allow him to leave their own meeting until he signed on as coach.
“With the Hawthorn job, Dermott (Brereton) called me and flew to Sydney and said, ‘I’m really good mates with Ayresy (Gary Ayres) but I’d like you to get the job’.
“I said, ‘I am going to interview with the Bulldogs’, so he said they would get me an interview on the Monday.
“So on the Sunday I went for an interview with the Bulldogs with Rob Walls and Jose Romero and a couple of others in the interview and I think they had made their mind up on me beforehand, it’s what I pieced together later.
“They said get your manager in, we don’t want you to leave the building. Ricky Nixon came in and worked a deal out. So I never got to be interviewed by Hawthorn.”
LET’S RUN
The Dogs had five 200-gamers at the club in Chris Grant, Luke Darcy, Rohan Smith, Brad Johnson and Scott West (all went on to play 300 games) but then a big gap to the next generation including Lindsay Gilbee, Daniel Giansiracusa, Bob Murphy and Daniel Cross.
They desperately lacked self belief.
“I remember one Saturday morning I said, ‘Can the senior players go to my left. And the rest go to my right’. Eight players went to my left,” Eade said.
“And it included the five who had played 200 games. I remember even ‘Murph’ going to my right. I said even if you haven’t played a senior game you should think you’re a senior player. So that told me.”
In his early sessions the club’s skill level stood out, as did the 21 players who could peel off sub-three second 20m sprint times.
“So they have some pace. They can kick it. Let’s change the game plan,” he said.
“Let’s run and bounce the ball. So the average bounces the year before per game was five. We took it to 40. Run and carry the ball.”
The Dogs were 6-10 in 2005 then surged to win five of their last six games to miss the finals by half a game.
FREE KICK
AT one stage in the 2009 preliminary final against St Kilda the Dogs led 2.6 (18) to 0.2 (2) as Brian Lake and Nick Riewoldt went at it in a clash in which a battered and sore Saints skipper kicked four matchwinning goals.
At the bounce to start the third quarter, and after plenty of first-half skirmishes, Riewoldt went down with what the Dogs believed was little contact.
He kicked a goal from a momentum-turning free kick.
“Brian Lake had been into him a bit in the second quarter and got warned and it was a typical over reaction. Obviously Riewoldt had heard (the umpire),” Eade said.
“They get a goal before the bounce and then a goal out of the bounce. Two goals and it’s game on. So yeah, it’s one that got away.”
Did he think his Dogs could have beaten Geelong?
“Yeah, we did. They were a fantastic team but we thought with our run and carry and speed, we might have been a chance,” Eade said.
TIK TOK KING
EADE famously labelled the cerebral, deep-thinking ruckman Will Minson as the “dumbest smart bloke” going around — but they shared a strong relationship.
In 2019 someone posted what was essentially a supercut of Eade sprays from a single game into a one-minute audio package.
It was utterly hilarious as then-assistant Leon Cameron attempted to calm Eade, who kept responding with “OK mate”, before seemingly launching again seconds later.
As Eade said, veteran Robert Murphy said his sprays at players were often overplayed, but this was a doozy.
“When they played it, I thought it doesn’t sound like me. It went rapid fire. It was done over two and a half hours of play,” Eade said.
“They have edited it and put that in and Will wasn’t the only player I said those things to in the box and I am not the only coach who has done that, too.
“I felt for Will and I felt it was not totally applicable. The biggest indicator was Leon says, ‘Rocket, will you shut up’ and I go, ‘OK mate, no worries’.
“It was what it was like in the box. Yeah, no worries. That’s not the way it really happened. Because when someone said pull up, yeah OK, I did.”
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