- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
Cards on the table from the get go: I am not an AFL fan. Far from it. But I respect the fact that the 18-man game is the biggest and most successful football code in the country by the length of the straight.
If you can’t talk footy in Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia, and Western Australia for “13 months a year”, you would be a very lonely person.
AFL is a religion in the southern and western states.
Having set the benchmark, Mick Malthouse and Paul Roos are two of my top coaches in 50 years of covering sport.
And I’ve picked them out for a very special reason.
Why would two great blokes, having called a halt to their premiership coaching careers at Collingwood and the Swans to make their mark on television, return to the daily dog-eat-dog job of coaching of their own volition – Malthouse to Carlton, Roos at Melbourne.
Malthouse was sensational on Channel Seven with his expert analysis. He made me sit up and listen to his insights.
Roos was equally sensational on Fox’s ‘On the Couch’ with Gerard Healy and the code’s most respected writer Mike Sheahan.
Malthouse and Roos could have had stellar careers for the rest of their lives on the box, just as Jack Dyer and Lou Richards did for decades.
But no, they chose to return to coaching.
Look at the ladder, Carlton are in 16th position with one win and four losses, Melbourne are 17th with the same win-loss statistic – one and four.
Only the hapless Brisbane Lions are below them, having won no games this season.
Which raises the question, why did Malthouse and Roos make such a hard-to-fathom decision?
Malthouse has become a heart attack-in-waiting. His coaching box explosions are getting worse by the week.
Roos is of a very different nature. He’s much more placid during the game, but even his brow is becoming more deeply furrowed by the week.
Is it worth the hassle when both could, and should, be making a mint on television with no tension, and still very much in the public eye where they deserve to be?
It’s not close to worth it in my book. Hopefully their television careers can be reignited before it’s too late.
They are wasting their time, and damaging their health, with Carlton and Melbourne..