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The first wave of pre-season games are almost upon us, and do you know what that means? Rankings!
Today, I will join the ranks of these people and rank the AFL coaches from best to worst, despite my own coaching experience extending to assistant coaching my cousin’s under nines game a few years ago (I’m probably still a bit overqualified).
Anyway, let’s get on with the list.
I’ve declined to rank the four first time coaches coming into this season because I haven’t seen any actual head coaching out of them, and ranking them would be unfair.
You can still group these new coaches into three areas: the highly touted fresh-faces (Adam Simpson and Leon Cameron), the experienced assistant finally getting his crack at the big time (Alan Richardson) and the ‘Oh man we shouldn’t have fired the last coach, quick hire someone who has the same exact background’ (Justin Leppitsch).
It will be interesting to see how these four will go, with my money on Simpson being the best coach of the lot, and Leppitsch in real trouble with a group of young players who’d rather play in Kalgoorlie than in Brisbane.
The two coaches returning after a leave of absence – Paul Roos and Mark Thompson – also weren’t ranked, mainly due to our lack of knowledge about how much Thompson will be controlling things and how much Roos actually cares after basically confessing he wants out of the job as soon as possible in his introductory press conference.
Anyways, on with the actual list:
12: Brad Scott – North Melbourne (record: 89 games – 45 wins, 44 losses)
For North Melbourne supporters, the future looks bright: the financial issues that once dogged the club seem to have dissipated, they have a young squad with a bright future, along with several older players to provide leadership, and an assistant coaching ‘dream team’ brought along in the off-season.
Their weakness lies in coach Brad Scott, whose coaching performance in close games last season was historically bad, as he managed to lead a team with a midfield containing Daniel Wells, Ryan Bastinac, Jack Ziebell and Andrew Swallow to lose 10 games by less than 20 points, several of which were lost in the games’ final moments.
As much as you can blame the umpires, unimaginable player errors and a sinister conspiracy by the Etihad Stadium officials to keep the roof open for the Roos’ losses, at some point the blame has to shift to the coach for not getting his team in a position to realise the final quarter doesn’t end after 15 minutes.
11: Guy McKenna – Gold Coast (record: 66 games – 14 wins, 52 losses)
The hardest person on this list to rank, as no one really has any clue about how well the Suns should’ve done these past few years.
They looked better in their first two years than the Giants did, but then again, the Giants don’t have Gary Ablett Junior to rack up 50 disposals, three goals and 300 commentator comparisons to his father per game.
The Suns looked on the right track last year, but do we even have any idea what the track is meant to look like?
Should a club built from the ground up and made up of mostly teenagers be contending by now, and McKenna is the horrible coach holding them back, or should they have been so scarred by the constant floggings that they’ve stopped caring, and only McKenna’s amazing work has kept the Suns from turning into the Demons?
I don’t think McKenna is a really bad coach, but I don’t think he’s a particularly good one either.
The eight wins the Suns got last year seems about right, but I give more credit to Ablett single-handedly winning at least three of those matches than I do to McKenna.
A finals appearance this year may be enough to convince doubters of his coaching skills.
10: Nathan Buckley – Collingwood (record: 48 games – 31 wins, 17 losses)
I rated the Collingwood teams of the last two years very highly, not quite as highly as I rated the Hawks, but still very high.
And why wouldn’t I? They had a midfield containing Scott Pendlebury, Dane Swan, Dale Thomas, Dayne Beams and Luke Ball, as well as the best big marking forward in the game in Travis Cloke.
Nathan Buckley inherited a team unlike anything a first time coach has ever dealt with, and he’s done poorly with them.
Most first coaches start with a team in the doldrums, having sacked or forced their coach to resign due to poor performance, which allows the new coach to come in and implement his own strategies, rightly pointing out how the previous strategy was unsuccessful in achieving its aims, and generally attempting to make the team better.
The team may not be appreciative of these new strategies, but will at least acknowledge something had to change and not begrudge the coach of trying to do what he thinks will improve performances.
Nathan Buckley did not go through this experience: he was handed a team that had appeared in three consecutive grand finals by the club President who thought everything would go swimmingly when he relegated the egomaniac premiership coach in favour of the club golden child.
The distraction of replacing one of the greatest coaches ever was always going to hang over Buckley’s head, but if he was either a Mick Malthouse clone or had the same level of success, he should have been fine.
Instead, the player group are questioning why the path they were on needed to be changed so rapidly even though it was successful.
Maybe if Buckley had taken the normal path of coaching and instilled his will on an unsuccessful team, he may have been hailed as a great coach, but at this moment in time, it looks like Bucks isn’t ensuring the playing group plays to its peak.
9: Brenton Sanderson – Adelaide (record: 47 games – 28 wins, 19 losses)
The Adelaide Crows somehow won 17 games in 2012 and were only a kick away from the grand final, a year removed from winning only seven games under Neil Craig, in a season that remains one of the most mystifyingly dominant in AFL history.
Last season, their forward line was reduced to the equivalent if the English cricket team’s top order, as Taylor ‘The Mullet’ Walker tore his ACL and Kurt Tippett abandoned the club with the grace and humility of Anthony Mundine.
So, why is Sanderson ranked so low when in his only season with a full squad he did so well?
In my opinion, the Crows were probably only the sixth or seventh best team of 2012, still an improvement on the year before for sure, but I don’t think a team has ever received a more beneficial schedule, as they played the first year Giants, the second year Suns and the then terrible Port, meaning their record was better than teams like Collingwood, Sydney and West Coast, all teams that were probably better than them over the course of the season.
Last year they didn’t have such an easy schedule, and they struggled mightily, although injuries did play a part.
I don’t think Sanderson is a bad coach by any stretch of the imagination, but it does seem as if he lacks the tactical genius or the skills as a motivator the coaches above him possess.
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