Crikey Sports has the pleasure of having a guest post by David Latham, a Collingwood Moderator on BigFooty, Australia’s largest and most popular AFL internet forum and has recently completed an honours thesis on Australian Rules Football from 1870 – 1920.
BigFooty’s David Latham writes:
If death and taxes are the two inevitabilities of this mortal coil, the two inescapable axioms of modern football following a string of losses are; sack the coach and purge the list. Either the coach doesn’t have a winning game plan, or there’s something wrong with the cattle. It’s only a short step from there to blaming the coach for the list as well.
At least that’s the popular view, if talk-back radio and internet forums are any indication. Patience is certainly not a virtue in modern football. Whereas the fantasies of the football fan are boundless, the realities are more complex. The intense scrutiny which has come about as a result of the 24 hour sports news cycle, has not yet translated into a very sophisticated appreciation of the elements that go into building an ominous football club.
Every fan is aware that on-field results are often determined by 1%ers, so any incremental advantage that can be secured from strengthening the various departments of a club is like gold dust. The more robust each cog is, the stronger the machine.
The building blocks for success are numerous and interconnected, but the first, and most banal factor is a clubs’ finances.
Bottom Line
The salary cap might be an equalisation measure which has improved the standard of the game immensely – with every team having played a preliminary final since 2000 – but there exists no such cap on spending in other areas of a football department. A wealthy club can attract the best recruiters, fitness and conditioning staff, assistant coaches, medicos, membership and marketing staff. Each of those plays a vital role.
Recruitment
Before a player even gets to the list, he has to be recruited. A good recruiting department is perhaps as valuable as the head coach. Talent spotters spend hundreds of hours watching the feeder competitions and pouring over footage to unearth raw talent and to address needs before putting forward their recommendations.
Picking bottom aged players, players who have dropped off at draft camp, who have sustained fixable injuries, who have large development potential, who have enormous work ethic, athleticism and who might be hidden away in the nooks of the football landscape is the task of the recruiting department. Picking out diamonds later in the draft is at an absolute premium for clubs.
This may or may not be Geelong's midfield
Fitness and conditioning
If a club has an excellent fitness department, including technology – such as Collingwood’s hyperbaric chamber – the recruitment staff can be confident of fast-tracking and developing young players ahead of schedule. Tailoring individual programs for players and giving them top-flight medical support, to overcome injuries or improve fitness, gives an enormous fillip to a football club. If the downside of a potential recruit was fitness rather than skill, a good conditioning department can overcome that issue and thereby raise a player to AFL stature. The ability to bring in rookies and have them playing at senior level is a testament to a strong recruiting and fitness department.
Assistant coaches
Each line has their own coach which allows groups to receive specialised attention. To have someone like Steven Silvagni dealing with defence at St Kilda is a great boon. Areas of expertise that might be lacking with the head coach can be introduced via assistants, a case in point being Brad Scott’s sports science background at Collingwood. Assistant coaches coming from other clubs bring other game styles and perspectives to the head coach.
Finance and marketing staff
Building the bottom line and growing the brand obviously feeds back into a club’s capacity to recruit the best support staff, but it also allows a team to avoid selling home games as well as attracting big crowds. With sponsorship comes also excellent facilities.
Club board
A football club’s board is ultimately responsible for the overall direction of a club. If a board is impatient, or overly optimistic, it can hire the wrong staff or coach. The hiring decisions have a flow on and multiplier effect, and if not gotten right, can seriously damage a club.
Any weaknesses within a club feed on down the line. A poor recruiting department can lead to a list with little upside, too many players in one line and without a line of succession.
If players are held onto too long in the hope of imminent success, instead of being traded while they retain good value, the wheels can come off, a la Brisbane this year.
What is patently clear is that there are a multitude of factors feeding into a teams’ success or otherwise, not that this is the common interpretation. In fact, one could argue that the head coach owns only a portion of responsibility, doing his best with what he is bequeathed.
It’s not so sexy, but the buck must ultimately stop with the board who are charged with overseeing all facets of a football operation. They are hardly open to the same conjecture and exposure as a coach, their decisions and faces, hidden as they are, behind closed doors. A coach of course does have to be judged by his own measurements and responsibilities, as must every staff member at every department, but the fish always rots at the head. And make no mistake, the board is the head of a club.
5 Comments
Culture is a massive factor. That comes from the board and the coach making the hard decisions.
North Melbourne were arguably the team of the 90s while lacking any money. Simply they played hard.
Geelong went from being a bottom half the the 8 team to an unstoppable juggernaut over the 2007 pre-season. Mostly attributed to the culture in the club changing. They no longer accepted any crap just because a player had talent.
I think you make a great point on patience. At the start of this year and particularly a few rounds in Melbourne and Richmond were considered beyond hope. Now they are sides that look like they could be competing for finals in a year or two with exciting young lists.
On Brisbane (and various others) who have tried to top-up with older players to push for a flag. I don’t think flag winning sides usually have more than one or two new recruits in them. Hawthorn had Stu Dew. Geelong had more good players than they could fit in. Sydney or West Coast before that?
Interesting article. How about your thoughts on the non Victorian teams and where they stand in relation to your excellent points. As a Crows supporter, I am amazed at how a young team and a club with buckets of money has its fickle supporters demanding the demise of the coach, especially as they play like a young team right now by first beating Geelong and then losing to Port & Richmond. Inconsistency is a hall mark of youth.
An I agree most whole heartedly with you about holding onto the fading stars. The fact is that while there is a huge emotional attachment to them (and haven’t they shone for whatever club they play for?) it is a cold hard truism that a younger fitter body, while not having the total skills of the older stars, can usually last out the game better and learn ‘on the job’, thus potentially becoming one of those stars in the future.
Hey EP, club culture is vital, and I think you can see how Carlton’s somewhat lax attitude to Fevola ended up biting them on the arse. Like the Bombers, they are a club accustomed to success and its a rude awakening to find that Judd and 3 number one picks isn’t enough. Robert Walls absolutely gave it to the Blues today, but while Kernahan is at the helm, I see Carlton drifting, rudderless. They need a ruthless assessment of all departments – and not in the style of a Voss-like self-assessment – and in particular, I’d be looking at their head of recruitment, Wayne Hughes, who has built a pretty ordinary list with seemingly little upside.
On top-ups, you have to be genuinely within striking distance or the risks are massive. Clubs who trade in players often pay overs – Luke Ball at pick 30 last year being an exception – and that has long term flow on effects. Brock Mclean and Kane Lucas for the Blues is baffling to me.
Regarding young players in teams, the Pies currently have from memory about 15 of the current 22 drawn since 2005 – a very young list with large turnover. The Hawks have similarly blooded a whole swathe of post 2005 players and look in good touch. The Saints and Geelong have blooded the least, in fact only about 5 or so players are regulars from the period since 2005.
Hey Robin, I was surprised by the Crows form early on, had them in the top 5 at the beginning of the year. Moving along Edwards and the retirement of Goodwin is a necessary, albeit inevitable, move to blood young players. Better to use the remainder of the year on development than playing for pride. If the game plan is right, and the fitness level good – which is one of the Crows outstanding characteristics – young players should be able to step in without any major decline.
Might sound like crap, but think of Collingwood losing players of the quality and maturity of James Clement, Buckley, Rocca and Wakelin in the last few years. The Pies have hardly skipped a beat, in fact are more powerful now.
The Crows, like the Pies, have a mass following and deliver a bottom line that should allow them to buy the best support staff available. It’s hard from the outside to assess the value of a head coach, but you’d have to say game-day tactics, relationship with players and overall game plan is their responsibility – the rest needs to be assessed in their own right.
I also forgot to add how valuable having a VFL team has been for Geelong and Collingwood. Being able to control game time, execute a plan that coincides with that being used in the seniors, the capacity to experiment with positional changes and to develop multiple levels of skill and flexibility is just enormous for a club. Bein Reid for Collingwood spent 2009 honing his craft in the backline, after being recruited as a forward. When they finally come in, they’re ready to play a role and are able to be shifted around the ground more readily.
I agree with your articles but why the suprise? Football clubs are just like any other business where managing resources, revenue and profit, market share & growth is everyday business. The board rightly determines the vision, culture and strategy of the club with short, medium and long term plans (you hope). You can also turn the emotive factors of ‘players’ into ‘assets’; with depreciation, risk, availability, maintainability, cost, asset management planning and so on….
Just thank god we don’t have clubs take on huge financial risk like some English clubs are doing…..