Most of us will say that former Adelaide boss Brenton Sanderson wasn’t a good coach.
They’ll validate this by pointing to the very fact he was sacked, claiming that a man of Mark Ricciuto calibre and character wouldn’t have acted in such a way without being sure that he wasn’t a good coach.
Others will point to consecutive years without September footy. Others will point to the fact that he was out-coached by ‘better coaches’ in close games in 2014.
There were loses to Paul Roos (Round 7), Mick Malthouse (Round 9), Mark Thompson Round 14), Alastair Clarkson (Round 17), Damien Hardwick (Round 21) and Brad Scott (Round 22) – all within 12 points.
All of those coaches are better than Sanderson, they have resumes to suggest it and more importantly, jobs to suggest it too.
Others will point that he was only there for three years and by the third year he had lost the ears of players. That’s not a great sign, it normally takes more than three years to lose the players. It happens to all the good coaches, but it takes longer than three years.
Others would suggest that Neil Craig’s persona and coaching techniques were so polarising that any predecessor at West Lakes would have had positive ramifications. I sit a little with this theory.
I loved Craig’s first two years as coach of Adelaide, although he mismanaged the 2006 prelim against the West Coast, he largely milked everything he could from the 2005 and ’06 squads. But he was stubborn and failed to evolve like the good coaches do and by 2011, the game had left him behind.
So when the Crows pressed the reset button and Sanderson was parachuted in to the coaching role, he was destined to have an immediate and positive effect. There isn’t much to suggest that he was a good coach, but let’s have a look at the argument anyway.
He got Adelaide within one kick of a grand final in his first year at helm in 2012. That’s a good start.
Hold on. Repeat that? He got Adelaide to within one kick of the grand final in his first year.
The team he coached in his first year of being a senior AFL coach pushed Hawthorn, probably nesting at the moment in the top 20 teams of all time in the sport, to five points of a preliminary final. Not bad Brenton, not bad at all.
Let’s hypothesise this for a moment. Ken Hinkley just did the same with the Adelaide’s little South Australian brother, Port Adelaide. In just his second year, he pushed the same Hawthorn team, (Buddy Franklin-less mind you) to just three points in a preliminary final at the MCG.
To continue this hypothetical, imagine if Hinkley is sacked in two years from now, just like Sanderson was. Impossible and unthinkable for Power fans, but hold my hand for a second, maybe sit down, close your eyes and read this if you can read with your eyes closed.
Imagine if Hinkley has to endure the following over the next two years.
A squad that is continuously depleted due to injuries, a chief executive (Steven Trigg) who voluntarily sinks the club into turmoil and a player of Kurt Tippett’s calibre leaving without compensation.
A senior assistant that is wrongfully suspended (Dean Bailey) and then dies, a senior recruiter who is wrongfully sacked (Mark Rendell) and the AFL taking away four draft picks across the 2012 and 2013 drafts.
The draft picks meant Adelaide had to trade Bernie Vince to Melbourne in order to draft Matthew Crouch so that Brad didn’t get home sick – sounds like the third season of The OC.
If Adelaide fans haven’t punched the screen yet, congratulations, you still have a computer. There is plenty to digest there in just two years for any coach.
It would be important to note now that Hinkley wouldn’t be sacked if that happened to him at Port Adelaide. David Koch and company would rationalise those events differently, they would rationalise that with more logic and patience.
They would look to the success of the untainted years and judge Hinkley on that. They would concede that the club had let him down and imploded around him.
Why didn’t Adelaide do the same? Why were Adelaide so heavy handed with Sanderson performance? Why would Port act differently to Adelaide? Do Port have lower standards than Adelaide?
The noise that Adelaide makes is louder than noise Port Adelaide makes and that might be painful for Port fans to read but it’s true. Just take a look at preliminary final week.
The media coverage in Adelaide was Sanderson sacked versus Port Adelaide playing the reigning premiers at the MCG after beating Fremantle in Perth in a semi-final. The Adelaide media ran with the Sanderson story at about 9/1.
So with the louder noise comes scrutiny and expectations. There is pressure on the Adelaide Football Club as a whole now – from coaching, to the players, to the admin to the marketing department – to rejuvenate the club in such a way that Port Adelaide did in the 2012 post season.
There is no doubt Port Adelaide’s rejuvenation has lifted the standards in South Australia, but Adelaide’s reaction was a little top heavy. A September-less Port Adelaide watched the Crows propel themselves up the ladder in 2012 with a new coach in Brenton Sanderson.
Port Adelaide then got a new coach, and propelled themselves up the ladder in 2013 and 2014 while September-less Adelaide watched on. The similarities are uncanny here between the Power and the Crows. Watch the other club succeed and do something drastic.
But there is a problem with what Adelaide are doing compared to what Port did in the 2012 post season. Port needed a revolution, a clean out from top to bottom, a new everything. Adelaide are looking at Port as their road map to success, but they shouldn’t be.
They are acting the same way that Port did in 2012. They even hired a Port Adelaide assistant coach in Phil Walsh. It’s Port plagiarism.
Port Adelaide weren’t looking at the Crows in 2012 when they decided to change course. They were looking at 2012 grand finalists Sydney and Hawthorn and 2011 premiers Geelong, three proven identities that had good culture.
They were looking at clubs that employed long-term vision, long-term planning and revelled in long-term success. So much of what Port Adelaide did in the 2012 post-season was based on a long-term vision.
Sydney, Hawthorn and Geelong have all played in at least four of the last 10 grand finals. The only grand final in the last 10 years that didn’t feature one of these teams was the 2010 edition. This what Port were planning for in 2012 – sustained success.
Port have been in the fast lane when it comes to achieving this and that’s why their narrative is so attractive to Adelaide. However, Port Adelaide and the rest of us need to err on the side of caution when it comes to predicting their trajectory and Adelaide, when copying it.
There is still an unproven element about Port Adelaide, an undistinguishable vulnerability about the current trajectory. Port Adelaide are still only two years removed from having Matthew Primus as their coach and tarps covering half their seats at home games. (RIP AAMI Stadium).
Why are the Crows plagiarising Port? If I was advising the new Adelaide chief executive Andrew Fagan, I’d tell him to consider three questions when it comes to running this club.
What would Sydney do? What would Hawthorn do? What would Geelong do?
That’s it, simple. Not, what would Port or the Brumbies or Ricciuto do.
It still needs to be acknowledged whether Brenton Sanderson was a good coach or not. I don’t know, even though what was written in the first part of the article was evidence enough to suggest he wasn’t a good coach.
What Adelaide shouldn’t have done was let the peripherals like Port Adelaide’s achievements rule the narrative. Sanderson has also admitted that his management skills need adapting, which is hard for a neutral or distant observer to judge.
He was quoted in The Advertiser saying, “I was controlling 75 people. Some days I did that well, other days I didn’t do it well and a lot of management skills come out.”
That would be hard for anyone and I don’t know if Clarkson or John Longmire do the same in their roles at their clubs. Wouldn’t they delegate roles more?
Isn’t that how Damian Hardwick, Adam Simpson, Ross Lyon and Luke Beveridge got AFL jobs? They were hugely responsible for the direction of the club while being assistants at Hawthorn and Sydney.
The sample size of 69 games at 39 wins was too short and so tumultuous that no definitive or accurate opinion could be formed on Sanderson’s abilities. Sanderson might not get another senior coaching job, and it’s a shame. I hope he does, I hope it’s for a club that is not as fickle as the Crows and a club that sets the agenda themselves.
Twitter – @paudiang
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