Inside the rise of Andrew McQualter from first round pick to the likely next coach of Richmond

Grant Thomas compares Craig McRae to NFL coaching great Vince Lombardi – and believes Richmond’s coach-in-waiting is cut from the same cloth. This is Andrew McQualter’s story.

Richmond AFL training Richmond player Assistant coach Andrew McQualter & Ivan Maric Picture: Wayne Ludbey

As a leader of men – and likely Richmond’s next senior coach – Andrew McQualter has a rare combination of relationship building and tactical wizardry.

As the team manager of The Gators, his Wednesday night basketball team, McQualter’s recent failures could be about to put his team out of business for good.

That motley crew of mates plays midweek at Albert Park’s Melbourne Sports and Aquatic Centre and includes McQualter, Brendon Goddard, Leigh Montagna and former Melbourne player James Magner.

And yet with McQualter’s thoroughly divided focus this past month as the quasi-organiser of that side they have barely scraped together a team.

“‘Mini’ was the organiser. We have joked that he got too busy and for some reason he has chosen Richmond over the Gators,” former St Kilda teammate Montagna said this week.

“We might have to throw in the towel because we have forfeited three of the last four weeks.

“He was the one who made sure everyone was playing. He was on the group chat about who was in each week and who was putting in the team sheet. I actually think we might be done.’’

It won’t surprise anyone that amid his massive workload as Richmond’s assistant coach – coding vision, coaching players, scouring opposition games for tactical tweaks – he was still the connective tissue of that group of friends.

But as McQualter said this week, life as an interim senior coach comes at you fast.

Andrew McQualter is now the favourite to take on the Richmond coaching job full time. Picture: Michael Klein.

His week is full of back-to-back meetings that mean he doesn’t have time for a chinwag in the Punt Road corridor or quick coffee that has helped him build such rock-solid relationships with so many people.

Heck, it has even ruined his pre-match routine of finding a quiet moment to grab a Four ’N’ Twenty pie in between responsibilities as the club’s midfield coach.

And yet life could be about to get even more crazy for the husband to Jane and father of three daughters, who has already packed so much into his 18-year football journey.

As he said on Saturday about a career that saw the No.17 draft pick dumped despite a contract after three seasons, before a second chance that took him to the 2009 and 2010 grand finals: “I have thought about this a lot. And one of the things is I have actually done every part of footy.

“I was drafted and delisted and then became a rookie and had to fight my way back and forged out a few games and started as a development coach, moved up to an assistant coach and am now doing this job. I have seen it from a lot of different angles and understand how bloody hard this game is. It is only easy for a few guys right at the top.

“The rest of it is very difficult so maybe that part has been one of the things I have taken out of it.”

McQualter will be the prohibitive favourite to replace Damien Hardwick as Richmond’s newly formed selection committee sets about interviewing candidates in coming weeks.

Like replacing Tommy Hafey, Ron Barassi or Kevin Sheedy, finding the successor to Damien Hardwick – a titan of Richmond history – would normally shape as practically impossible.

Yet in eight weeks in charge McQualter has quickly converted any sceptics and only solidified the opinions of the senior Richmond stars who lobbied for him to become the club’s interim coach.

Former Tigers coach Damien Hardwick with then assistants, current Giants coach Adam Kingsley and Andrew McQualter in 2020. Picture: Michael Klein

He has done it as a curious contradiction – at times channelling Hardwick’s methods after six years under the master coach and at others in significant contrast as the anti-“Dimma”.

After consulting with the players he has kept most of Richmond’s game plan but remarkably turned the club’s forward-line efficiency from footy’s worst to a weapon again.

Despite joking he cries himself to sleep bemoaning Tom Lynch’s season-ending foot injury.

He is neat and concise without being overly verbose in press conferences where Hardwick was sprawling, untethered and frequently hilarious.

He could give a little more insight – his post-match revelation that Dion Prestia had drilled game-simulation scenarios that led to the win over Hawthorn was an excellent start – while Hardwick was a press conference over-sharer.

And as he told ABC Radio this week a large part of his theme these past eight weeks has been about doing it together rather than as a “Dimma” disciple.

“Just a little bit of freedom is the word, in a sense,” he said about what he had tweaked.

“When players played for ‘Dimma’ for so long they were so desperate to win for him all the time because they loved him so much.

“It probably released the shackles in that mindset and they just went out and played for each other. That is probably the biggest thing we have focused on, bringing it back to each other.

“It’s a team game ultimately and more fun when you do it together.”

EARLY MATURITY

Montagna might be biased, but he says his friend’s feat to turn around Richmond’s offence is something to behold.

“To turn Richmond from the 18th-best team at converting a score into the best team is pretty significant. I have looked at the vision and whether it’s because they are kicking the ball in deeper or slowed it down a bit, it’s hard to see, but he has worked it out,” Montagna said.

“He is part of a close-knit group who played in a successful era and he’s always been witty and loved a joke. How would you describe him? Very popular and easy to get along with but he had a balance of being serious and hard-nosed and being light. He was good at knowing when to be aware of his place and when he needed to say something in meetings, when he needed to contribute.”

Premiership Tiger Josh Caddy played in McQualter’s final AFL game in a year in which Gold Coast rookie-listed him in 2012.

Andrew McQualter the Suns rookie.

Even then he was part of the leadership group as they shared the field in the last of his 94 AFL games – a 64-point loss to Hawthorn.

“Looking back he would only have been in his mid-20s but he was just wise beyond his years,” Caddy said.

“He was very young, but you could just tell by the way he presented himself and the way he spoke, he was very mature.

“Because he is young and has played recently, he knows the modern game and the pressures for players.

“He was a good player, but he has been through some adversity. So he understands players at all ends of the spectrum.”

As McQualter joked this week, he wasn’t too fussed when young forward Maurice Rioli initially rejected a coaches’ box phone call when subbed off against West Coast because it was assistant coach Xavier Clarke on the other end of the line.

But he knows the pain of being dropped or subbed or demoted.

He nipped what could have been a controversy into the bud – sharing his pain but telling him he still needed to bring the energy while on the bench – then reprogrammed him as a midfielder in the VFL last week.

On every step of his journey the Traralgon raised tyro has accumulated the wisdom from successes – but often failures – that have instructed his coaching journey.

From his first days as a St Kilda midfielder the Gippsland Power star stood out for his willingness to speak up and his ease at building connections.

The Herald Sun’s write-up on the day after the November 20, 2004 draft was short and sweet: “A small inside midfielder with clean hands, good vision and goes in hard.”

McQualter played in the 2010 Grand Final loss to Collingwood.

Within months coach Grant Thomas had identified the off-field qualities that would take him far if he could mix them with the football gifts that St Kilda saw to take him so high.

“He’s unbelievably competitive. An enormous will to win,” Thomas said in early 2005.

“He won’t be compromised by anything; he won’t die wondering. He sets an unbelievably high standard. He knows his limitations but he will give you an almighty crack. He doesn’t care what other people think, a quality I really like about him.”

Thomas recalled a kid who found a way to learn a lot in a hurry in those early years.

“He was a bit of a scruff. Always a little dishevelled. And in the early days he didn’t understand that pro’s pro approach to footy. With that leadership around him he fell into line pretty quickly. He wasn’t always the most skilful or talented player but he did have a red hot crack. It was hard to place him with the structure we had and Ross (Lyon) used him more effectively as a tagger,” he said.

After 23 games in three seasons at St Kilda, McQualter was delisted by coach Lyon with a year left on his contract, a five-game 2007 season enough to see his papers stamped.

McQualter trained for four weeks at Hawthorn before being taken back by the Saints.

As Lyon said a year into his second chance: “He’s fought his way off the rookie list, we flicked him, and he’s learned how to work really hard and be disciplined and be a fanatical preparer and competitor.”

McQualter was one of multiple Saints to miss gettable shots at goal as the Saints piled on the pressure before Geelong turned the 2009 grand final.

McQualter on the day he was announced as Richmond caretaker coach. Picture: Michael Klein

But if there are what-if moments from those grand final deciders that close bunch of mates knew they left nothing on the table in attitude and commitment.

But 12 months after playing a total of 49 games in those grand final seasons (2009-10) he was gone again.

It is a measure of his relationship with his senior coach that despite being delisted by him twice, McQualter was one of the first assistants Lyon called as he tried and failed to get him to Moorabbin this season.

RELATES TO ALL

By then he was managed by TLA’s Nigel Carmody, also a Sandringham VFL player, after they struck up a connection during McQualter’s semi-regular games for the Zebras.

Carmody had seen his share of dropped AFL footballers whose only use for the VFL side was a stepping stone back to the AFL.

“He was invested with the VFL-listed guys he was playing with and you couldn’t say that with every player who came back,” Carmody said.

“He just relates to anyone and everyone. He came from a Latrobe Valley upbringing, he spent time at Caulfield Grammar and then he has just had the complete footy experience. He is so well rounded with his experience in footy and life.”

By the end of his single year at the Suns, he played with Southport and sold real estate on the Gold Coast.

When Richmond’s alignment with Coburg disbanded in 2013 it was the perfect landing spot for him to return to Melbourne to combine a development coaching role with playing in the Tigers’ VFL side.

Andrew McQualter has been with Richmond in a coaching capacity since 2013. Picture: Michael Klein.

“They needed mature bodies and experienced heads to put around the VFL guys,” said Carmody, who managed McQualter until he moved into media full-time in 2021.

“Richmond will go through their process but I have spoken to him about this. In terms of his coaching years he is quite experienced, but in terms of his birth certificate he is not far removed from so many of the guys he is coaching and that is so valuable having spent 10 years in coaching roles at Richmond.”

There have been soaring highs and lessons to learn from Punt Road figures including Hardwick, Craig McRae, Justin Leppitsch and Mark Williams.

There have been difficult personal moments to navigate as he and wife Jane endured a horrific 2017 as daughter Emily battled with a cyst near her kidneys diagnosed as a rare form of cancer called a neuroblastoma.

She was eventually given a clean bill of health and Andrew and Jane welcomed two more daughters in recent years.

So McQualter is in pole position and yet almost has to prove himself twice over – both as a senior coach and by making clear to the Tigers they will not fall into the caretaker coach trap which has befallen many other clubs.

But if McQualter does miss out, industry figures believe he is perfectly positioned to secure a senior job at a rival club.

Why wouldn’t West Coast bolster its coaching department with a figure like McQualter, or even put in place a formal succession plan given Adam Simpson has committed to the hard days of the Eagles’ rebuild?

McQualter has not only had his successful audition as Richmond coach, he has the Punt Road intellectual property so in-demand, like past Richmond assistants Adam Kingsley and McRae.

Thomas saves rare praise for McRae by comparing him to NFL coaching great Vince Lombardi and believes McQualter is cut from the same cloth.

“I think he’s done an incredible job. I am mightily impressed with the way he’s conducted himself in the box. It’s more along the Craig McRae lines than the Rossy (Lyon) lines,” Thomas said.

“You would have to be someone damned good to knock him off (as Hardwick’s successor). If you look at someone like McRae, who if he keeps going on the same trajectory will be regarded as the (Vince) Lombardi of the AFL, those coaches are more people-oriented and culture-oriented than coaches who are tactical and strategic. McRae is a coach who builds culture and has the personality to build relationships and ‘Mini’ is one as well.”

Originally published as Inside the rise of Andrew McQualter from first round pick to the likely next coach of Richmond