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| ISBN-13: | 9781743431160 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Allen & Unwin Pty., Limited |
| Publication date: | 02/01/2013 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 830 KB |
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The Game
A Collection of the Best AFL Stories
By Dennis Cometti, Jon Pierik
Allen & Unwin
Copyright © 2012 Dennis Cometti and Jon PierikAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-74343-116-0
CHAPTER 1
499 GAMES COACHED, ONE ENJOYED: DAVID PARKIN
Linda Pearce
David Parkin made the mistake, a few years back, of arriving late to Mark Maclure's 40th birthday party. By the time he got there, about 20 of his former players had already gathered around the barbecue on the hill.
"What do you see up here?" Parkin was asked. "Twenty Carlton footballers," he replied.
"Have another look."
"Twenty great Carlton footballers."
"Have another look."
"Sorry, 20 premiership players."
"Have another look."
"I give up."
"You sacked the lot of us."
Five hundred games as a coach can do that to you. Stay around long enough and players who helped bring you a premiership or two in your first stint at a club have to be tapped on the shoulder when you return, in Parkin's case, six years later for another 10-year association.
Only four other coaches have lasted longer in the VFL/AFL than Parkin, who has now delegated the match-day responsibilities to his assistant Wayne Brittain — "Everybody thinks I finished at 493," he quipped — but whose 500th game will officially come against Richmond on Monday.
He is friends with all except, obviously, the late and legendary Jock McHale. Parkin succeeded Allan Jeans as Victorian president of the Australian Football Coaches Association and regards Jeans as an enormous contributor to football; Tom Hafey paid an unsolicited visit briefly to provide reassurance after the incident in which Parkin took a swipe at a spectator as he left the ground; Barassi was one of the idols of his Melbourne-supporting youth and dropped by near the end of Parkin's Fitzroy days.
"I was about to be sacked and didn't know it, Ron came in and spent a couple of hours, slipped in off the street, he must have perceived what was about to happen and he was telling me about life after footy," Parkin recalled. "I didn't understand at that moment but two weeks later I did and I was always thankful for that, and Ron and I have remained pretty good mates. I didn't know Jock, obviously, but the other three I'm pleased to be in that sort of company."
Parkin's journey has encompassed four stints at three clubs, over 22 seasons for four premierships, including 336 games at Carlton. There have been stress and pressure, dismissals and regrets (notably at Fitzroy), and, last year, a debilitating illness that reduced his capacity. The only game of footy he says he truly enjoyed was the 1995 grand final, when he was keen to pop the champagne in the box during the third quarter, only for his focus to be slapped back into place by long-time lieutenant Col Kinnear.
Much in football has altered since Parkin returned from a stint with Perth club Subiaco to inherit a champion Hawthorn team in 1977. He jokes that when he began, teams did endless circle work each night at training to prepare to play straight up and down the ground.
"So the good thing is that footy's now changed: we train up and down the ground and we go round and round when we play, so there's been a massive revolution in footy over the last 40 years and it's basically just summed up in that."
Parkin describes himself as not so much a great innovator as the man unwittingly responsible for introducing a language of footyspeak that others came to adopt. Yet he says that came from an international sports language and a community into which he taps regularly, often seeking out Brian Goorjian and Jan Stirling (basketball), Wayne Bennett (rugby league), Charlie Walsh (cycling), and confidante Joyce Brown (netball).
He said football teams had followed the lead of soccer, hockey and others, using depth and width to create time and space. Giving up ground to eventually gain advantage was one example of what would not have happened 25 years ago, he said.
Nor, of course, were such huge coaching teams in place back then, although Parkin insists he is still "totally responsible" as he was in 1995, when "empowerment" was the successful theme. Yet there is no doubt the help, and the ability to delegate have enabled him to continue, while also combining a long tertiary education career he continues to cherish.
"I think the milestone reaffirmed where I am with my life," he said, apologising for his at-times "shocking" treatment of the media and admitting a weakness of pessimism.
"I think it's been a long and pretty tough innings. It's been a massive output in my life that I didn't quite understand, and the punishment that you take physically and mentally through the whole thing.
"I started in 1960 or '61 at Hawthorn and I've been fortunate to stay in footy in some form, playing, coaching, developing footy, for the last 40 years. That's a long time to give to any one institution in anybody's life so I'm thankful. I've received far more from the game than the game's received from me."
CHAPTER 2THE MALCOLM BLIGHT SACKING
Rohan Connolly
When you're a coach with as big a reputation for unpredictability as Malcolm Blight, it's hard to keep surprising people. But it's fair to say Blight's sacking as St Kilda coach yesterday surpasses any of his wild and wacky stunts over the years for pure shock value.
It's only 10 months into the supposed "ride of a lifetime", and a mere 15 games into the new and more professional approach to football that Blight was supposed to be bringing to Moorabbin.
In hindsight, that ride was the "Mad Mouse" going spectacularly off the rails. How did both parties get it so wrong?
St Kilda president Rod Butterss' fairly unconvincing explanation yesterday centred around Blight's seeming lack of commitment to the "core values" laid down by the club's new management team.
At the same time, both he and football director, and now temporary coach, Grant Thomas denied any rift between themselves and Blight. Skipper Robert Harvey said the players had no problem. It doesn't add up.
More and more, possibly the saddest point in St Kilda's recent history seems like a case of two parties completely unprepared for the scale of either's quirks. Or a club that couldn't cope not only with the degree of professionalism expected by its new coach, but all his attendant eccentricities, and a coach who had little idea just how flawed was his new environment.
Blight's coaching record, and surely this will be its conclusion, makes for amazing reading. He's coached four AFL clubs now, and pulled up stumps early at three.
Even in his first ill-fated spell, as North Melbourne's captain-coach in 1981, he lasted 16 rounds before resigning, one more week than he's managed with the Saints. He coached Adelaide for only three seasons, winning two premierships but resigning midway through the very next season.
The sudden departures don't suggest success. A record of two flags, five grand finals and a career winning percentage of 58, as good as or better than all his present rivals bar Denis Pagan, Kevin Sheedy and Terry Wallace, suggests otherwise.
But Blight's success always seemed to go hand-in-hand with his "wackiness".
More importantly, it also went hand-in-hand with his supposed dictatorial style, and his penchant for publicly singling out individuals for letting down the team and his coaching philosophies.
At Geelong, Blight threw down the gauntlet from day one, in November 1988, when, in front of the assembled media, he dragged out and dressed down Cat star Bruce Lindner for being a late arrival for a 10-kilometre time trial.
Later on in his tenure, Blight staged perhaps his most public display of his displeasure by sending defender Austin McCrabb away from the three-quarter-time huddle, like an errant schoolboy sent to stand in the corner.
It is the "crazier" Blight stunts, such as the day he made the Geelong players sit around a swimming pool pretending to be Indian chiefs, or lining the same players up as a "guard of honour" for their Adelaide opposition, that have always attracted the most comment.
But those amusing stories have had nothing like the impact of a vintage Blight "bake".
Adelaide hosted two of his more famous, his round-two 1997 labelling of ruckman David Pittman as "pathetic", and the afternoon at Football Park the following season when so annoyed was Blight as the Crows were being overrun by Richmond that he and football manager John Reid packed up shop and went inside the rooms.
Both were huge gambles that could have backfired. Instead, Pittman recovered to play a key role in the Crows' first flag win. The following season, after Blight went AWOL in the last quarter, Adelaide won all but five of its last 18 games to win consecutive premierships.
But the most obvious, and rarely discussed, difference between Blight's time at Geelong and Adelaide, and his short-lived tenure at Moorabbin, was simple — the quality with which he had to work.
The Cats and the Crows had experienced, senior and physically strong lists, both of which had underperformed and needed a good kick in the pants.
St Kilda was a much younger, rawer, lightly framed player group, even with its legion of recruits from other clubs, and not nearly so able.
That's why eyebrows were first raised when Blight declared, as he had with the Crows, that the pre-season before Christmas would be purely fitness-based, the balls not coming out until January.
The eyebrow-raising continued when the Saints stayed out on Colonial Stadium to warm down after their round-10 loss to Melbourne, Blight seizing the chance to address the group out there.
For perhaps the first time since a quinella of flags with Adelaide raised him to god-like proportions as a coach, the more cynical began asking whether there was a bit too much "smoke and mirrors".
Perhaps there was. And perhaps Blight's sacking is evidence that a man surrounded only by excellence most of his sporting life isn't the best-equipped to teach it to a club that sees the same quality only as a lofty, previously unknown ideal.
But given his history — and that of the club he embraced in a moment of what appears to have been foolish lust — it seems that both Blight and St Kilda should have at least known to buckle up when they climbed aboard for the "ride of a lifetime".
CHAPTER 3THOMAS, AN OUTSIDER WITHIN
Greg Baum
Grant Thomas is the stranger in town. Everyone knows who he is — but who is he? Down at the AFL Arms, the regulars are staring and whispering among themselves. Some are suspicious, some curious, some openly hostile. But over at the table, he is beginning to win games. What sort of hustle is this?
The way Thomas came in was affronting. As a St Kilda board member, he fired Malcolm Blight and replaced him with himself. But he also had led the deputation to hire Blight in the first instance. If he was driven by personal ambition then, he hid it well.
Perhaps Blight had to go. Jason Cripps spent eight years at St Kilda, and grew to understand the place intimately. "If you ask the playing group, deep down inside, they weren't too disappointed that Blighty did go," he said. "Unfortunately, it just was not what St Kilda footy club needed at the time. He was very aloof. We had a young group coming through the club, at a critical time, and we needed someone like Grant, who would bleed for the place. The club is his No. 1 priority.
"I'm not saying it wasn't for Malcolm, but that's at times how it came across. It just wasn't going to be successful with us."
Cripps, now working for St Kilda and the AFL in Hobart and playing for Tasmania, admitted it was strange initially. "Aaron Hamill was pissed off," he said. "But Grant sat Aaron down and explained the whole story, and there was nothing said after that."
St Kilda president Rod Butterss' voice grew weary when asked about the integrity of the process of replacing Blight, in which a notionally independent panel recommended an insider.
"I knew then, and I know now, that if the sub-committee had come back with a strong recommendation for someone other than Grant, he would not be in that job," Butterss said. "He demonstrated that he understood better than anyone else what had restricted St Kilda from enjoying success historically."
Thomas is seen to have come from nowhere. In fact, it was not nowhere, just somewhere else. He played 72 games for the Saints. He coached Warrnambool to five premierships in the Hampden league, then had a year with Old Xaverians in the amateurs before embarking for the AFL again.
Butterss now believes the Thomas route is the way to go. "I think the current model of assistant coaching is in many ways flawed. You aren't required to make tough decisions. You're sitting one out, one back, and get sucked along in the current.
"I don't believe it is the ideal preparation for senior coaching because it doesn't expose the assistant coach to the realities of confrontation and tough decision-making. You've got to be able to go out into VFL or country football and take the full responsibility for managing a group of people."
He said that even if, say, Terry Wallace or Rodney Eade applied next year when the coach's contract was up, he would stand by his man.
Some find Thomas, if not sleazy, too much like a salesman.
But every coach is a salesman; everyone of them has had, at one time, to sell to a team a line that he did not truly believe himself. Cripps said that with Thomas, it was not spin, but candour.
"He's straight down the line. When I was delisted last year, he was straight to the point with me," he said.
"Honesty is one of his strengths. You look at the Matthew Capuano situation. Once he'd made up his mind that was it, he wasn't going to leave him playing for Springy for the rest of the year and keep feeding him crap about how he's close to getting a game. He's honest and a player appreciates that. We didn't always have that before."
Still, Thomas disturbs the establishment. They dislike his links with Butterss, with his designer stubble, name and lingo. They think Thomas's talk about "empowerment" is pretentious, but no one scoffed when David Parkin first used the same jargon. They suspect he is assimilating power rather than dispersing it, for instance, by inviting chief executive Brian Waldron into the coach's box.
But all the great coaches had their power bases. Besides, Cripps said Thomas genuinely shared around responsibility. "The leadership group would meet once a week and he'd ask them how the game plan was going, what we needed to do different," he said. "He involved a lot of people."
Andrew McLean played at Old Xavs and later became president, and credits Thomas with building the springboard that took the club from last the previous season to a run of six premierships soon afterwards. "Knowing the sort of person Thommo is, and the way he relates to players, I think you will find there will be a bit of the old Tommy Hafey thing. Players will be playing for him," McLean said.
The orthodox dislike Thomas's dual role as coach and football manager, also responsible for player contracts, like a soccer manager. Butterss admitted that this was a financial necessity forced upon the club, but said it had mothered a working invention.
"Through the adversity, we've had to think laterally and come up with better ways of using the resources available to us."
Some doubt that a coach-manager can make clear-eyed match-day decisions. Again, Cripps said the key was honesty. "If a bloke's got a contract that's heavily incentive-based, Grant is not the sort of person who would drop him because he was coming up for, say, a 20-game bonus. It just wouldn't happen."
The establishment thinks Thomas is paid too much for a novice coach, that he is too outspoken for one yet to pay his dues and that he will squander what in a sense was St Kilda's ill-gotten wealth, the largesse of the draft. Butterss did not dispute that St Kilda was a beneficiary of the system, but did dispute that Thomas had had a champion team fall into his hands.
"I've been in the room when the phone calls came in. We've had some extremely attractive offers for us to trade away our first-round picks," he said.
"We've resisted that. We made a decision three years ago to rebuild the club with youth. We knew we'd have to go through pain. There may be a bit more pain left. We needed somebody with strength and character and vision to implement those difficult decisions. From that perspective, Grant's done a really good job."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Game by Dennis Cometti, Jon Pierik. Copyright © 2012 Dennis Cometti and Jon Pierik. Excerpted by permission of Allen & Unwin.
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Table of Contents
Contents
Introduction Dennis Cometti,COACHES,
THAT ONE DAY,
DEEPER GAME,
THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY,
MARN GROOK,
THE SUITS,
OUTSIDE THE (CENTRE) SQUARE,