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AFL coaches are dressing as one these days. The look – or non-look – is exemplified by Damien Hardwick’s windbreaker (for some reason Hardwick comes to mind, first among equals).
Other staples in match-day apparel include glute-hugging black trousers and short-sleeve polo.
A clutched clipboard completes the warehouse foreman look.
It’s time for a nonconformist to enter the ranks: a renegade with a fedora and feather in club colours, or something harder – faded jean-jacket with ripped Metallica back-patch.
Picture it. Hard-rocking denim swathed in do-it-yourself insignia sew-on. Instead of Kia and BUPA and Uncle Tobys, it’ll be Motörhead and Megadeth and Manowar.
Luke Beveridge has the most heavy-metal hair of the current coaches. He’s young enough to carry it off.
Nathan Buckley’s edge-of-seat fury calls for the polo-sleeves to be hacked unceremoniously. For Alastair Clarkson? Some understated knuckledusters – but no bringing them to the junior games, please.
Ross Lyon could use Brigadier stripes and a khaki cap. It is rumoured that last summer at Fremantle, two rookies neglecting to fold their towels the right way were made to scour the latrines with toothbrushes. Brutal, but that’s the Brigadier.
Probably because they’re being hired younger, coaches are looking more like players than ever before. Gone are the days of Jeff Gieshan’s joggling belly. This new athletic aesthetic makes sense. Powerhouses like Tommy Hafey and Mick Malthouse always set intensely physical examples. Their physique-flattering threads sent a subliminal message: if I can look like this at 50, don’t even think of bludging.
Strangely, when the look was less physical, coaches were more inclined to get physical. In 1980, Carlton’s coach Percy Jones threw a superbly deranged roundhouse at Richmond coach Tony Jewel. It was an ugly clash in more ways than one: Jewel sported a chequered, Roger David sports jacket, Percy wore flares.
Supercoach Ron Barassi once muscled up to Collingwood hard man Des Tudenham and came away missing a button on his favourite blazer.
Barrassi is an interesting case study. His 1977 grand final day ensemble has become one of Australian sport’s iconic images: the gargantuan Mauritius-blue collar reflected our game in the ’70s: majestically gaudy, uniquely unselfconscious.
Not that such sartorial flamboyance was ever the norm. The early ’80s saw the rise of the simple v-neck. David Parkin and Robert Walls led the way, mixing and matching the v with casual cotton collars. Parkin looked like a maths teacher subbing for a PE teacher. Walls looked like a PE teacher subbing for a maths teacher. In 1986 their clubs famously did a straight swap.
The loosely scholarly, unpretentious v-neck suited Aussie rules coaches. Collingwood coach Leigh Matthews even went with a preppy v-neck vest. Ties, on the other hand, have always seemed amiss. Bet365 should run odds on which AFL coach will next don a tie.
The trench-coat, too, worn with such aplomb by Melbourne’s Norm Smith, has gone the way of the wind. How would a trench-coat go under Etihad’s swirling lasers? Stoic Brad Scott could carry it off. Get into Aussie Disposals, Brad.
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