- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
It seems it’s just a matter of time until Mark Neeld is sacked as coach of the Melbourne Football Club but the main reason it hasn’t happened earlier is because there is no alternative. Here are five coaches the Demons need to flip heaven and hell to sign.
For the past couple of years, young coaches have been targeted across the league. It has been received well with player-coach relations having a large impact on team success.
The Demons attempted it with an untried senior coach when the signed Mark Need and well, look how that turned out.
Going for a coach who will be ‘friends’ with the players will not work at Melbourne. It didn’t work with Neeld which was evident by his players. They are not willing to play for him.
They need to seek external candidates because Todd Viney and Neil Craig can’t do the job. If they could, they’d already be doing it.
Garry Lyon has no experience coaching beyond under-12ss so throwing his name in the hat is a waste of paper.
It’s time to go old school.
It’s time to go with someone with senior coaching experience.
It’s time to go with someone who commands respect.
It’s time to go with someone who has rebuilt a team.
In no particular order, these are five men who meet the criteria.
Mark Thompson
When he walked out on Geelong after winning two flags he said he would never coach again. A few months later, he signed with Essendon and was the highest paid assistant coach the league had ever seen.
Throughout his days, ‘Bomber’ Thompson has often cited the stress of being a senior coach as draining. It was his main reason for leaving Geelong if you believe Essendon did not have a gentleman’s agreement prior to his departure.
Thompson has now proven he’ll sell himself out for the right figure and Melbourne should take advantage of that.
He took over Geelong in 2000 and they made the finals in Thompson’s first season but missed out for the next three.
This was their rebuilding stage when the foundations for the dynasty were built. From there, they Cats just grew bigger and stronger each year.
Rodney Eade
‘Rocket’ Eade was given his nickname based on his aggressive nature. He has no fear of unleashing on players and calling them out if he thinks they are not giving their absolute all. Someone needs to do that at Melbourne.
He is currently holding the Director of Coaching position at Collingwood and it is still yet to be determined what he actually does.
There’s a very good chance he’ll take up an opportunity to coach his third AFL team.
His work in Sydney was good but the team didn’t really need rebuilding. His best work came at the Western Bulldogs when he took over the team when they finished 14th.
They then slowly worked their way up the ladder under Eade to make three consecutive preliminary finals.
Mark Williams
Whoever takes over Melbourne needs to look at them as if they were an expansion team. They will have an incredibly young list once the chunk of mediocre 20-something’s are delisted and Mark Williams is the most experience man when it comes to expansion teams.
He is currently an assistant coach at Richmond but was hard done by not to be given the GWS senior coaching job this year.
As a result, he departed and landed at Tigerland so that is an indication of his desire to gain a senior coaching job once more.
While we’ll never really know how influential ‘Choco’ was at GWS, interviews with their players suggest they had plenty of respect for him and his football knowledge.
His greatest success came at Port Adelaide when he took the team to the 2004 premiership, seven years after they joined the AFL.
When Williams took over in 1999, Port Adelaide made the finals in his first year as coach and the team’s third in the league.
Port Adelaide was highly competitive for seven consecutive years under Williams, missing the finals just once. Williams did plenty with very little at Port Adelaide and Melbourne is in a similar position.
Dean Laidley
He coached North Melbourne from 2003 – 2009 after Dennis Pagan resigned. Laidley took over the Kangaroos during a mass exodus from the club when a handful of club legends departed.
He missed the finals in his first two seasons as coach but got there in his third. In his fifth season, he took the Kangaroos to a preliminary final defeat which was the furthest he ever got. Nonetheless, he rebuilt the team and laid the foundations for the current team.
It is Laidley’s experience as an assistant which gets him on this list though. After his departure from North Melbourne, he joined Port Adelaide as an assistant coach during a time of turmoil at Alberton.
They were rebuilding and doing a terrible job of it which led to the sackings of Mark Williams and Matthew Primus.
After two years there, he joined St Kilda who are in a rebuilding phase and also doing a terrible job of it.
With stints at two other clubs undergoing rebuilding phases and failing to do so, Laidley knows exactly what not to do.
Paul Roos
Many consider him the best coach who has the potential to become available but his acumen is very similar to Neeld. He is a teacher of players and one of the calmest men to ever enter a coaches box.
Roos returned Sydney to finals football in just his second year at the helm and kept them there for the next five. With his youngest son about to finish high school, Roos is open to a return to coaching.
He makes a considerable income as a member of the media and will be one of the priciest targets on this list.
The Paul Roos style of football would be the most unique in the league and the tough nature of it would be a big ask for Melbourne’s small bodies to adapt.
Suggestions that he is the best potential coach available are premature.
Who’s in your ultimate team? Pick the best team and compete with other fans for daily prizes on Draftstars. For the best odds on the game try out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Think. Is this a bet you really want to place? Set a deposit limit.