WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?

by Whispering Jack

Mick Malthouse has been coaching in the AFL/VFL for two and a half decades. He started as a young coach with the Bulldogs, moved to the West Coast Eagles where he was instrumental in building a team that earned two premiership cups and then took over a basket case at Collingwood to become runner up two years in a row and is now in the course of reshaping and redeveloping his team after some more lean years. Like most of his kind, he has his supporters and his detractors and many of the latter category often say that he makes no sense at all. After reading his latest column in this Friday's Australian newspaper - SHAW-FIRE WORLD OF THE MONDAY COACHES - I'm firmly placed in the former category.

At first brush, the article appears to be nothing more than the writer's response to a broadside fired at him by his predecessor Tony Shaw over his recent handling of Shaw's nephew and Magpies defender Heath Shaw. Tony Shaw has previously criticised Malthouse over the handling of Heath's brother Rhyce and there were also mutterings heard when Tony's own son, Brayden spent a single, unsuccesful season in the land of the Lexus.

Malthouse put Tony Saw back in his place with this cleverly placed barb:

"Tony, in particular, would have been almost punch-drunk, having coached Collingwood from 1996 to 1999, the club's darkest period for more than 50 years."

Touche!

Those who read the Malthouse article as merely being Malthouse's way of settling a personal core with one of his harshest critics who might also be seen as having a personal vendetta against him would be missing out on something far deeper and more profound about the way AFL clubs are coached these days.

As I read the article, I couldn't help but think of our own coach Dean Bailey, of the many young players at the club whose football careers are his responsibility and of the club itself, which is going through the deepest of troughs in the football cycle. We're doing it tough and Bailey must be under some pressure as the team continues to lose games on a regular basis. What many of the critics don't see is the work going on to rebuild our young team and the fact that the fruits of that effort might take some time in the reaping.

Malthouse makes the point that every Monday he is the recipient of complaints from the know alls. Even when his team wins by 100 points, as it recently did against West Coast, there's always a smart arse who has the answer to the question why they didn't win by 120 points.

Mick's answer to the smart arses is as follows (and we all would do well to take this in):

"But the fundamental thing about coaching is to stick to your plans. Our plan at Collingwood, and I dare say at most clubs, is to develop the individual first, which in turn helps to develop the team, which in turn provides the football club and its supporters with a highly competitive combination that will represent at its highest level for a long and sustained period."

I must confess that I, like many others, overestimated the strength of the Melbourne list some two years ago when it was cruising towards its third finals series in a row. We couldn't foresee the injury plague that was about to hit the club but even this turned out to be a blessing in disguise because it exposed many of our fundamental weaknesses and hastened the move towards a total reconstruction of the playing list. That transition is now well under way under the club's present coaching regime but we are witnessing the inevitable ugly face of the early stages of a club's redevelopment. As the team becomes more and more reliant on its youth, there will be performances that are full of inconsistency and disappointment.

We will also suffer scorn and derision from the rest of the football world and our coach and our players will undergo intense scrutiny. Like Malthouse, Bailey will no doubt get the usual letters suggesting his coaching on the weekend ranged from ordinary to pathetic.

There is an upside to this whole process which is that, despite the defeats and the criticism, we are witnessing the slow and steady development of many younsters in the team whose average age keeps falling and whose more senior faces keep disappearing. In addition, there are half a dozen recent draftees including All Australian Under 18 players and elite AIS graduates waiting in the wings who have yet to play an AFL game and who are learning the ropes this year at VFL level. They form part of the club's growing young player bank that will be augmented at the end of the season with more draft picks including some very early selections.

I know the word "tanking" is on everyone's lips but it would be absurd to think, as some people do, that the club's future depends entirely upon the necessity to have the first draft choice. Having pick 1 might be better than having pick 4 but it's more important that the coach is focussed firmly on what is, was and always be his primary role at a club. As Malthouse clearly puts it in his conclusion:

"... current coaches and players have to prove time and again they can either play or they can coach - it goes with the title."