Luke Beveridge took time out of his coaching career to chase criminals

LUKE Beveridge did something unusual after helping guide Collingwood to a premiership. He packed away his clipboard and took up crime fighting.

AFL Round 19. Western Bulldogs vs Port Adelaide at Etihad Stadium. Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge talks with Jarrad Grant pre game . Pic: Michael Klein

LUKE Beveridge did something unusual after helping guide Collingwood to a premiership.

The man who has overseen one of the most remarkable footy club transformations at Western Bulldogs this season temporarily quit assistant coaching at the end of 2010 to rejoin a high-powered financial intelligence agency.

At the time, Beveridge was enjoying the afterglow of helping the Magpies to become one of the youngest premiership teams in recent history and had Alastair Clarkson opening doors at Hawthorn. The secret was getting out that Beveridge, who coached St Bedes to three-straight amateur flags, was a footy gun.

But first Beveridge, who worked as a tax man before that, wanted to keep his word to “work on a couple of projects” for a former boss in the public service.

So the man who is vying to become “Coach of the Year” in his first year in the role, packed away his clipboard and took up crime fighting again, helping to disrupt the flow of money in and out of the country that fuels drug and other crime-related activity.

“I liked working for AUSTRAC and what it stands for. It’s a really powerful little agency,” Beveridge told the Herald Sun.

“Most of our drug busts are detected though the intel that comes out of AUSTRAC and the laundering of money through different means, the placement of it and the investment of it along the way.

“So, I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to give that up for the uncertainty of the AFL and lack of security in coaching.”

Luke Beveridge has a word with Luke Dahlhaus. Picture: Michael Klein

After about six months back in the public service, the footy bug got him again.

Clarkson didn’t give up calling either and, after winning two more premierships as Hawthorn defensive coach, Beveridge, 45, walked into the kennel last season to take on a club that was in crisis mode after the sacking of its coach and departure of its captain.

No one, really, gave the Dogs a chance of reaching the finals.

Yet, in nine months, the former tax man and father of two, who has a passion for surfing and occasionally skateboards, has equipped the fourth-youngest team this season with one of the league’s most damaging and flexible game plans.

The Bulldogs are more like chameleons on the field, the way they can switch ball-movement methods to suit the tide of the game, from scoring from stoppages, or kick-ins, or forward half pressure.

“That’s been the really big eye-opener for me, that we have been able to get it done without any sort of (single) template,” Beveridge said. “That’s it, we do try to be a chameleon.”

But maybe the more compelling story behind the Dogs’ success this season isn’t the on-field innovation, but rather the deep connection between players and the coaching staff.

Beveridge, perhaps above all else, is a master relationship builder.

Luke Beveridge has guided the Bulldogs back to the finals in his first season. Picture: Michael Klein

Whereas some of our coaching forefathers thrived on an intimidating edge, Beveridge is warm, patient, genuine and inviting.

“To be honest, I just generally love people. I really do,” Beveridge said.

“I’ve got a fuse that is pretty long. If someone lights it, they get a few chances.

“There is another (more serious) side there, but it takes a while to get to that.

“So, I trust and I have faith and people need that. I do see the young five-year-old kid in all our players who wanted to be an AFL player.

“Here is a part of them that is living their dream and I’m trying to help them continue on with it.

“So there is that romantic part of it for me.”

Beveridge respects the coaching legends of the past, and some of their hard-edged ways, but he suspects the coaching game has changed. In a way, Beveridge has become the face of that change.

The Bulldogs have become one of the most exciting teams in the AFL. Picture: Michael Klein

Beveridge said of his troops “they are obviously someone’s sons and as a father you have a responsibility” to care for them and nurture them. And to be their friend, too.

Instead of thunderous pre-game rants, Beveridge relishes the lighthearted moments in an environment that can be ruthless on young men and says that “laughter is crucial”.

After one of their worst halves of the season recently, Beveridge thumped his first into the magnet board for affect, but then made fun of himself when all the magnets fell off “like Mr Potato Head”.

“You see the John Kennedy’s and the Ron Barassi’s and I think a lot of us are thinking ‘that’s the way you have to be as a coach’,” he said.

“Those men were unbelievable leaders and had real strengths with the discipline and the way they went about things.

“And, I know at least one of my AFL coaches modelled themselves on (NFL legend) Vince Lombardi. But was that who he really was?

“You’ve got to have enough courage to be yourself. Otherwise the players, who are really street-smart these days, will see straight through you.

“They’ve got no patience for it in the end. And I suppose some of the raw tirades and even that revered figure that has been there in the past, I just don’t know if that gels with the current generations.”

Luke Beveridge helped Hawthorn to back-to-back premierships.

Sipping on a coffee during an interview this week, Beveridge took the temperature of the room as a steady stream of his players bounced along past him in the club cafe.

One could sense the energy and confidence as they prepared for the club’s first finals campaign in five years.

“Everyone gets an enormous amount of satisfaction knowing that people are enjoying their working life and their involvement with the club,” he said.

“And that they (players) see that there is still a lot of growth in us and the promise of what we can be like, and that lure and that intrigue around it.

“It just creates an atmosphere and you can feel it in the cafe at times. It’s really healthy and that’s our challenge to nurture that and to maintain it.”

It has been another buoyant week at the club, as the Dogs prepare for an away game against Brisbane today.

Despite six changes and a six-day turnaround from a trip from Perth a fortnight ago, the Dogs galloped home to beat North Melbourne last Sunday, keeping them in the race for a top-four spot.

Beveridge believed that their “team defence was as good as it has been (last weekend) … and that tells us the core of our systems can just keep working” regardless of personnel.

So, the absence of captain Robert Murphy, Matthew Boyd and Dale Morris today will faze no one as they attempt to notch their 15th win, more than double last year’s seven victories.

When Beveridge arrived at the kennel, he didn’t have a number in mind.

He simply challenged his men to “reach for the stars”.

Twenty-three weeks in, Beveridge must know what the clouds feel like, having beaten everyone except Fremantle and Hawthorn this season.

“We tried to teach a particular style of team defence, some application in terms of how we want to move the footy in different areas of the game, with a fair appetite for risk,” he said.

“And all the while changing our stoppage structure from what it was, and, we thought that was a lot. That is the core of what we do or what we were now going to do.

“So, we went on a pretty significant learning curve as players and as coaches and when we said we want to ‘reach for the stars’, I had a picture of what that would look like and how that would play out if our group were able to get their heads around it, and execute it.

“Much to our glee and our supporters’ delight, our players have been able to do it really, really well.”