Wellington Phoenix coach Mark Rudan embraces toughest job in A-League

One of the A-League’s best-ever defenders is ready for the fight to save the Wellington Phoenix.

Mark Rudan is the sixth Phoenix coach in less than two years. Picture: Getty Images

Try telling Mark Rudan it is the worst job in the A-League.

Try telling him there’s hardly a football person outside of New Zealand who doesn’t believe Wellington Phoenix won’t finish with the wooden spoon this season.

Worst still, try finding anyone outside of Wellington who believes Phoenix deserve to be in the league or will still be in existence in two years when their A-League licence expires.

Try telling the new Phoenix coach that and you’ll get the sort of response you would expect from a man who played the game with a passion and ferocity that made him one of the best and most feared defenders during a career spanning 17 years both here and overseas.

As we speak over the phone after a day of meetings and planning, you can sense Rudan bristling, the jaw tightening, muscles tensing as if he is about to put one of those pesky strikers he used to face on the seat of their pants.

Mindful that “it is what it is”, the response is more circumspect.

“It’s pretty predictable, isn’t it? The naysayers can say what they want, but it doesn’t bother me,” Rudan tells the Weekend Australian. “I’ve never been worried about what people say. If anything it helps buy into the siege mentality we are creating at the club. No one wants us around, we are a foreign team, we’ve got two years until we are dead, a team of no hopers … all those things get bandied around all the time.

“It makes me work harder and the players want to work harder. We have nothing to lose.”

Rudan, however, understands that words alone won’t work. Phoenix fans have almost been conditioned to failure over the past three seasons, having narrowly avoided the wooden spoon several times.

The coaching merry-go-round hasn’t helped, either. Rudan is their sixth coach since December 2016.

“We need to change things with our actions. The fans expect and deserve better,” he says. “I understand the frustration, the disappointment, the anger.

“I have been there before as a player and a coach. At Sydney United we were a point from relegation at one stage but within a year we turned it around and won a championship.

“I have a good knack of assessing where things are at and knowing the important things to improve. You need a plan B and C. You need to be innovative, you need belief.”

It was at Sydney United where Rudan cut his teeth as a coach, winning the NSW NPL title and the Australian NPL title twice.

Off the back of those results a coaching stint in the A-League beckoned. But, for various reasons, it never eventuated and he was forced to cool his heels.

The self-belief, however, never deserted him as he patiently waited for his chance. It looked like it had come several years ago when he was approached by the Newcastle Jets.

“But something didn’t sit comfortably with me about that job. I assessed it after 10 days and knew it wasn’t the right fit for me,” Rudan says. It was a risky decision to walk away, given A-League coaching jobs are difficult to come by.

Four years on and Rudan knew there was no turning back when the Phoenix job came up.

He says: “I asked my son, Luka, what he thought and he said to me ‘it’s your time Dad, go for it’.

“When I spoke to (Phoenix chairman) Rob Morrison I felt the fighting spirit and the fighting words. I knew we were on the right path. I am a fighter and everything I have got in my life I have had to fight for, nothing has come easy.

“This job won’t be easy, I know that. I am a realist and I know what I have got. We will work towards a system that suits us best.

“When you talk about who we are and what we stand for I ask the players because it becomes a much more powerful statement coming from them.

“The players will find those answers. They will tell me what they want to stand for. How they are going to be perceived by other people.

“It’s all good and well me standing up and saying ‘this is what we are going to be’ but my experience tells me when I have flipped it around and put that question on the players it has become a much more powerful statement.”