Collingwood pedigree irresistible to clubs

You've slightly missed the reasoning behind why assistant coaches from Collingwood are popular: it's simply that they've been a successful team over the past few seasons. Geelong's success has also seen there assistant coaches in demand. You're drawing the longest bow to consider Sanderson anything but a Geelong product, and McCartney, new coach of the Bulldogs, is another, with Ken Hinkley is a candidate for the Saints job. It seems that if you want to be an AFL Head Coach then first become an assistant coach at a club that tastes a lot of success.

It's a real plus when clubs can add so much credibility to an employee's resume. Its one of those important added benefits, over and above salary, which are important to attracting good people to the organisation. Of course other clubs have achieved this in the past: Melbourne, with the great Norm Smith legacy, Hawthorn with the long Kennedy legacy, Richmond of the seventies, which produced two of the three greatest coaches in the post war period, Sheedy and Malthouse. Collingwood has a chance to institutionalise this benefit through the far sighted and innovative appointment of Mick as Director of Coaching. Being a nursery of AFL leadership talent should be high on the list of corporate objectives for CFC as it progresses towards its goal of being the "Manchester United" of Australian Rules Football. I'm certain it is.

Yes, if anything we should be praising Geelong. No wait, if anything we should be praising Ocean Grove! Not every week a local footy club gets two four-time premiership coaches appointed to coach AFL teams!

You're playing 6 degrees of separation pretty loosely if you think Sanderson is a 'collingwood product'

Radical, We should not be too surprised by this turn of events given Collingwood's success in recent years. A similar thing happened following the even more outstanding success of Hawthorn in the eighties. Suddenly every coaching candidate was a disciple of Allan Jeans. I suppose it's not unreasonable for clubs looking to improve to try and import the "knowledge" to speed the process. In days gone by clubs lived and died by the quality of their teams and their senior coach. Men like Jock McHale, "Checker" Hughes, Norm Smith, John Kennedy and Ron Barassi ran their clubs like their personal empire and took no prisoners. Just how much coaching alone led to premiership success is anybody's guess - player talent is presumably crucial - but success they had and the credit, mostly, was theirs. The idea of assistants was a foreign concept for these great coaches. Certainly, clubs had talent spotters all over the place and did not hesitate to chase the next big thing for their club so there was assistance of sorts - even if that had nothing to do with the running of the team. Of course, this was back in the days we might now consider to be amateur. A professional sport, certainly, but played in the amateur spirit. Player payments were relatively low, inducements positively banned. From memory, Hadyn Bunton was banned from joining Fitroy for a year because the VFL discovered the club had offered him an inducent to join them. The next year, his first, he won the Brownlow Medal thereby proving the judgement of those Fitroy officials. In this atmosphere, training began late in the year and was only a Tuesday, Thursday evening pasttime presumably to run out the soreness and maintain some small level of fitness. Expert assistants, in those days, were not only surplus to requirements they were unheard of and the clubs, no doubt, could not possibly have afforded them even if they had thought of the idea. Perhaps the shift of Barassi from Melbourne to Carlton signalled a move to footy professionalism. This move created more furore than that of Ross Lyon from the Saints to Freo and, for probably the first time, the footy public - and the clubs - realised that money could indeed talk. The subsequent move of Barassi to North Melbourne, coupled with the short lived "ten year rule" further emphasised that football was now professional and it was a case of "Not how - but how many". Since then the money has soared for both players and coaches. With this increased professionalism came extra commitment. Training, which previously had been relatively sedate and predictable, became very important. Extra nights were added either on the track or in the gym. Where talent was equal there was possible advantage to be gained from extra fitness and extra muscle. Clubs which had been pushed aside now joined the innovators. Not to do so was to fall behind - and stay there. Suddenly, it bacame apparent that further advantage could be gained by appointing a specialist fitness coach, or weights coach. Very soon it became apparent that the demands on clubs to be successful meant the idea of further specialists must be employed. Club officials travelled to England and the USA to observe the running of professional teams in a variety of sports. One thing was common - specialist assistants. Now we have forward, back and midfield coaches all reporting to the senior coach. There's also the ruck coach, the fitness coach, the weights coach, the dietician - the list seems endless. Club success is now diluted among the band of brothers acting as assistants, as well as the main man in charge. It raises the question, "How much of Collingwood and Geelong's success is down to Mick Malthouse and "Bomber" Thompson?" How valuable was Nathan Buckley and Brenton Sanderson, for example. And will we actually ever find out? Both of these men now assume senior roles at their clubs. After this season, which may well bring another Magpie premiership, Buckley will have the responsibility of backing it up. Sanderson, too, is seen as pivotal to the recent successes of Geelong but, as from next year (or even from right now) he will hold the fortunes of a club which has been seriously disappointing for the last two years. It can probably be safely assumed that the appointment of so many new coaches is further proof that clubs are constantly seeking success. That many of these have been assistants at successful clubs can presumably be attributed to their new club's desire to pick up any new ideas that may have separated those successful clubs from the rest. Sanderson, for example, has no doubt been chosen for his own skills but Adelaide also know, or hope, he can bring knowledge held previously by Bomber Thompson and his Cats successor, Chris Scott. Rightly or wrongly, the assistants are now considered crucial to any club's success. With that in mind it's not surprising they are sought after as senior coaches in their own right. Given that, it's not surprising that Collingwood, and Geelong, assistants, or past players, are the most sought after of all. As were those who came under Allan Jeans, as players or assistants, a few years ago. Let's not forget, also, that West Coast and Gold Coast have Malthouse disciples in charge. Neeld and Buckley will further add to that list which is a credit to Malthouse. I guess the real question, Radical, is whether we can genuinely include Sanderson as a Collingwood product. Four games and flicked after one season suggests Collingwood did not think much of him. All the more credit to him then that he followed up with eleven seasons and 199 games with Geelong (Best and Fairest in 2001). Adelaide, it seems, have now corrected the mistake they made when they traded him (after six games in two seasons) at the end of 1993. Funny how these things work out.

Claiming Sanderson as part of some Magpie 'elite' is somewhat disingenuous. I would have thought that his Geelong pedigree would be far more likely the rational behind the appointment, rather than four games at the tail end of the Leigh Matthews regime (years before McGuire’s arrival).