The starkly different journeys of Craig McRae and Chris Fagan to the 2023 decider

Craig McRae is the three-time Lions premiership player, Chris Fagan never played footy at the top level. Now the two unlikely coaching heroes are set to square off in the ultimate occasion.

McRae and Fagan read Macca

Craig McRae spends a fair portion of his week working alongside Collingwood’s five premiership coaches.

How can that happen, given three of them are no longer with us?

Well, as part of the remodelling of McRae’s office within the AIA Centre in June last year, the club added wallpaper images of the Magpies’ flag-winning coaches – George Angus (1910), Jock McHale (1917, 1919, 1927-30, 1935-36), Phonse Kyne (1953, 1958), his former Brisbane coach Leigh Matthews (1990) and Mick Malthouse (2010).

As he said at the time: “New office wallpaper, honouring all Collingwood premiership coaches … inspiring for future success.”

That future success could be one win away – in Saturday’s AFL grand final against Brisbane Lions, the side he won three flags with as a player.

McRae is about to coach his 51st AFL senior game, but he has spent more than a decade and a half toiling away to get to this point.

Craig McRae and his Pies have made a rapid journey to the top. (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

Chris Fagan has had a different coaching pathway than most. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

A decade ago, retired greats including Nathan Buckley, Michael Voss and James Hird stepped out of footy and were almost thrust into coaching roles, perhaps before their times.

But McRae has had to be patient to disprove some who erroneously pigeonholed him as a development/assistant coach.

He was about to turn 48 when he won the Magpies senior role.

The same could be said for his grand final counterpart Chris Fagan, who has come from an even more unusual coaching pathway to get to this point as the oldest coach – at 62 – to make it through to a VFL-AFL grand final.

He is also the first since Jack Worrall early last century to reach a VFL-AFL grand final as coach without playing a game in the competition (Worrall was a star player in the VFA).

Fagan was 55 when the Lions called on him to take over in late 2016 off the back of an impeccable coaching career at Hawthorn, Melbourne and in Tasmania.

As Lions chief executive Greg Swann said this week: “Both of their journeys have not been conventional and it is certainly a testament to their persistence. They probably always wanted deep down to be AFL coaches, and probably thought ‘s---, who is going to give us a chance?’. Now they have got it, and they are in the grand final.”

BLACK BUFFALO

It was the interview in the most unusual of locations that launched one of the most unlikely yet successful AFL coaching careers.

After his retirement from a successful football career with Hobart, Sandy Bay and Devonport, Fagan was teaching but was keen to dabble in coaching.

It led to an interview in early 1991 with former Geelong player Mark Yeates, the man who had crunched into Dermott Brereton in a grand final two years earlier.

Yeates had been appointed as North Hobart’s playing coach and needed a ‘bench man’.

They met at former Cat John Devine’s Black Buffalo Hotel in North Hobart. The more they chatted, the more Yeates knew he had his man.

The teaching element has been a key part of Fagan’s coaching. (Photo by Michael Willson/AFL Photos via Getty Images)

“He was the first bloke I interviewed for the position and I realised as soon as I spoke with him that I didn’t have to look too far,” Yeates said.

“He was driven, he had a great footy brain and he was the good cop to my bad cop.”

North Hobart won the flag that year and again the next season after Fagan had to step into the main role for six weeks when Yeates was crook.

Fagan then took over as senior coach at Sandy Bay and was Tassie Mariners’ inaugural under 18s coach.

Then came a series of interviews that changed the course of his life. He sent out a series of resumes to AFL clubs, one which piqued the interest of Melbourne coach Neale Daniher, who asked him to compile a dossier on development.

It was so good he was almost hired on the spot, as he spent nine seasons with the Demons.

Such was his loyalty to Daniher he knocked back an approach from Hawthorn to join Alastair Clarkson … until Daniher left the club.

He started with the Hawks in 2008 and in his nine seasons (for four premierships), he was head of coaching and development and general manager of football.

But deep within a burning desire to be a senior coach flickered away.

A call from Lions CEO Swann in late 2016 stirred the embers even more.

“Peter Schwab and I had a list and we just started ringing a few blokes. I rang him (Fagan) and said, ‘I’m Greg Swann’, and he said: ‘I am a coach, you know’. I said ‘That’s good because that’s what I am ringing about’,” Swann said.

They interviewed Fagan at his Box Hill home and the job was all but his.

Never once did it worry Swann that Fagan hadn’t played AFL football. He knew his teaching skills and his coaching nous suited the young Lions.

Fagan arrived with the Lions down and out. Pic: Lyndon Mechielsen/Courier Mail

Yet there were a few critics who pegged him as ‘home and away Fagan’, suggesting he lacked the modern tactical nous to get his team to the premiership playoff.

That theory has now been smashed.

“Hutchy (Craig Hutchison) was saying it, but that’s a myth,” Swann said. “You can’t keep finishing in the top four and not be a good coach.”

“The whole club changed when he came in.”

Fagan has taken his team to a grand final against the backdrop of the Hawks’ racism storm dating back to his time at the club, allegations that he vehemently denied.

“Being at the footy club was a bit of a sanctuary for him (during that time),” Swann said. “His ability to compartmentalise and concentrate on what he was bringing to the club was amazing. It’s been a burden on him, but he has been able to retain his focus through it all.”

LEARNING TO FLY

Richmond was chasing leadership and substance at the end of 2006 when Greg Miller sat down with the respected Brisbane triple premiership hero Craig McRae.

Coach Terry Wallace needed help and fast.

McRae had been a teacher but was looking for a role in footy coaching or development.

“It was a difficult time in the club’s history,” Miller said this week. “‘Plough’ could be a bit polarising at times and we needed someone to help pick up the pieces (at times).

“’Fly’ (McRae) came in and he was a part of the era where we started to get some quality people into the club. We realised how good he could be with people.”

He had various roles at the Tigers and even took over as the VFL affiliate coach when Wallace departed the club in mid 2009.

Craig McRae and Michael Voss celebrate the Lions’ premiership three-peat. Pic Kelly Barnes

Then he was poached by Brisbane for a year in development before being recruited by Collingwood where he worked under Mick Malthouse and Nathan Buckley from 2011-2016, as an assistant and development coach.

Part of that was helping a young Texan called Mason Cox – fresh off a plane – – to learn to kick.

He returned again to Richmond where he honed his skills even further and in a four-year period further enhanced his senior coaching aspirations where the Tigers won three AFL flags and he led their VFL side to a premiership in 2019.

He was the AFL’s assistant coach of the year that season, but he wanted to be a senior coach and that’s what led him to Hawthorn to work under Clarkson for a season.

But he wanted more.

Then came the phone call from Collingwood in late 2021 and the chats with Magpies footy boss Graham Wright and vice president Paul Licuria which guaranteed him the job as senior coach to replace Buckley.

The man he beat to the role was Adam Kingsley and the pair squared off in last week’s preliminary final.

As an elated Licuria said in the Magpies rooms after that match, McRae had wowed the coaching selection from the moment he started speaking about connection and culture.

Did he blow you away during the interview process: “Absolutely.”

Given his modesty, it wouldn’t have dawned on McRae that the club might have to change the wallpaper on his office walls after Saturday, if the Magpies win, to add himself in as a Pies premiership coach.

But it would be a fitting reward for his perseverance and work ethic, just as it would be for Fagan and his many coaching interviews which started more than 30 years ago at the Black Buffalo Hotel.