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Mission accomplished. Paul Roos is eight games away from finishing a stellar tour of duty with the Melbourne Demons, reviving a team back on the brink of irrelevance.
What’s his next move? Paul Roos should save the Brisbane Lions.
Back in 2012, the Melbourne Football Club were aspiring to be called a rabble. A series of catastrophic on and off field decisions, accumulated over the preceding five or six years, coincided with the League’s expansion era, to consign Melbourne to the role of AFL clown. They had no players, no identity, and no way out.
The AFL, under the iron fist of Andrew Demetriou, sensed this, and phoned a friend: Paul Roos, who was carving out a career as a truly sensible football pundit. A $1 million per year (reportedly) two year deal, with a third year option for Roos, to take over as coach of Melbourne was struck, along with some AFL-led changes off the field in the administration of the club.
It was an experiment in many respects, a test to see just how quickly a club, in modern times, could be turned around with an AFL-initiated intervention. The results speak for themselves: it took 18 months, but by the time the back end of 2015 rolled around it was clear that Melbourne were on the right path.
Now, a lot of this is to do with their significantly improved player identification abilities. Click through to the linked article above, and you’ll see an example of how woeful the Dees administration was at identifying players. In 2009, they had four picks inside the top 20, and arguably picked four of the six worst players in the top 20 of that draft.
Since that dreadful period, the Dees have made good on their mediocrity, and are now chock full of good, young players. They, and the handful of astute veteran additions, are a big reason why Melbourne look like a team primed to rise into finals contention from next year onwards.
Notwithstanding, Roos’ role in Melbourne’s revival has to have been immense. Senior Assistant Simon Goodwin, who takes over from Roos at the end of this season, has been given the keys to a remodelled 80s muscle car – I bet he can’t wait to take it for a spin.
And this is why Paul Roos should become the next coach of the Brisbane Lions.
On almost any measure, this season has been a disaster for Brisbane. They are on track to turn in one of the worst full year defensive performances in AFL history, with a Defensive Efficient Rating of -39.2 through 14 games this year. Their inside 50 differential (-13.7 per game, ranked 18th) points to a host of issues at all points on the ground.
Critical absences haven’t helped, but having all of Dayne Beams, Tom Bell, Allen Christensen, Mitch Robinson, Tom Rockliff and Dayne Zorko available for 100 per cent of the year is unlikely to have made a difference of the scale required to turn this into a decent year. This half dozen, plus newcomer Ryan Bastinac, Pearce Hanley, Daniel Rich and Lewis Taylor are the makings of a very strong midfield. The group’s collective underperformance, both this year and last, is puzzling.
Brisbane’s weaknesses at the bookends are well known, and will take some time to address. Josh Schache looks to have the fundamentals to be a very good key forward, while Daniel McStay and Harris Andrews have similarly looked at home down back – beaten consistently, yes, but displaying the skills required to hold up the fort once they put on a bit of muscle. The rawness of Brisbane’s pillars is probably a big factor behind their inability to make good on attacking thrusts, and to stop their opponents doing the opposite.
But man, that midfield is not terrible, not -14 inside differential week in, week out terrible anyway. Those ten players at the top of the depth chart should not allow the team as a collective to be shredded in the manner that we have grown accustomed to seeing the Lions be shredded.
Current coach Justin Leppitsch is locked in for 2017, with Lions’ CEO Greg Swann preaching stability when the signatures were exchanged earlier this year. That’s fine, and as we discussed yesterday having their respective houses in order is almost certainly a key factor in the success of the new Big Three. You can argue whether that is putting cart before horse; Melbourne has shown that stability can be the horse.
The Lions haven’t had the best time of it lately, only lately stretches all the way back to 2004. Tellingly, the Lions have seen their percentage decline each year since 2012. Swann’s appointment was, in all likelihood, an AFL-led incursion to help bring stability to the club. But there are challenges wherever he would wish to look; the Lions are set to be the last team in the league to have an elite training base, for example.
Brisbane made a decision to back Leppitsch in, and thus far it would appear the playing group has not followed suit. Much of the early season player movement talk has, once again, centred on Brisbane, as it has for the past three years.
This is all sounding pretty familiar, isn’t it?
Save the deplorable drafting, Brisbane find themselves in a situation not dissimilar to Melbourne half a decade ago – defensively inept, lacking a football identity, players heading for the exits. The Dees churned through coaches and administrators, but Brisbane have the relative disadvantage of playing in a more fickle market without the institutional backing of the oldest organised sporting club in the world.
Roos is probably due some time on the pine, after bringing a premiership to Sydney and kick-starting their tenure as a league exemplar, following up with a turnaround at Melbourne. But should he receive a call from the big cheese in, I don’t know, May next year, he’ll know what it’s about.
SOS, Paul. Brisbane needs you.