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With Justin Leppitsch expected to be sacked as Brisbane Lions coach at the end of the season, focus now turns to who should succeed him in the hot seat at the Gabba from next year onwards.
The Lions announced in the wake of last week’s embarrassing 138-point loss to the Adelaide Crows at the Oval that an entire review of the club’s operations will take place, with Leppitsch expected to be the major victim of it.
His inevitable dismissal will also cost the club a payout, his contract having been extended to the end of the 2017 season in March.
The club has won just 13 of 63 games since the triple-premiership defender took over as coach prior to the start of the 2014 season, and also had to contend with the departure of many young and experienced players who would either find their feet at other clubs or enjoy their footballing retirement.
That came after another favourite son, Michael Voss, was sacked as coach close to the end of the 2013 season despite the club showing signs of improvement in what was his fifth year in the top job.
It’s also expected that the services of more personnel will no longer be required. Already, club legend and 2002 Brownlow Medallist Simon Black has left the Gabba in order to focus on his growing Academy program in Brisbane.
A logical replacement for Leppitsch would be former Carlton coach and current Hawthorn assistant coach Brett Ratten.
Like outgoing Melbourne coach Paul Roos, who started his coaching career at the Swans in a caretaker capacity in mid-2002, Ratten was suddenly thrust into the hot seat after Denis Pagan was sacked as Carlton coach in 2007.
Despite four straight losses, Ratten did enough to be installed on a full-time basis and would lead the Blues out of the doldrums until he was moved on at the end of the 2012 season.
In his five-and-a-half years at Princes Park, he instilled some competitiveness and a hard edge into a side that was emerging from a dark period when salary cap breaches and the subsequent loss of valuable draft picks impeded their efforts to rebuild its ageing playing list in the short term.
His plan to rebuild the Blues was helped by the arrival of Chris Judd, whom many saw as the best player in the AFL at the time. It was hoped that the Blues would be able to build their next premiership team around him and a stack of others such as Matthew Kreuzer, Marc Murphy and Eddie Betts.
After enjoying its best season for a decade in 2011, the Blues entered season 2012 as one of the early premiership favourites, and appeared to live up to expectations when they started that year with five wins and one loss.
But the wheels would fall off as the season wore on, with injuries to key players and a five-week suspension to Judd (during which the Blues lost just one match) seeing the club crash to a 10th-place finish at season’s end.
Eventually, after weeks of media speculation, Ratten was dismissed in favour of former Collingwood mentor Mick Malthouse but it would not deter Hawthorn from snapping him up as an assistant coach.
Many saw the sacking as a knee-jerk reaction to simply one poor season, which followed three years of finals. But the matter of the truth is that the Blues underperformed in a season when a top-four finish was expected of them.
Ratten has since played a role in each of the Hawks’ last three premiership victories, and as of today is one of the best assistant coaches who could make a potential return to AFL coaching sooner rather than later.
By contrast, the Blues would sink back down to the lower part of the ladder under Malthouse, and after his own subsequent sacking, John Barker. As a result, the club finds itself undergoing yet another long-term rebuild under Brendon Bolton.
Thus, in hindsight, it was wrong for the club at the time to have sacked Ratten, considering how far they have fallen since, and the rebuilding task it faces today.
If he had remained, imagine the success the Blues could have enjoyed in contrast to the downfall it eventually suffered in the subsequent years.
Nevertheless, the lessons he learnt at both Carlton and Hawthorn should steel him well for a second senior coaching stint should the Brisbane Lions come calling for his services at season’s end.
Despite the nature in which he was sacked, the Blues have strongly endorsed him, as have North Melbourne champion Wayne Carey and Hawks coach Alastair Clarkson.
“If they (the Lions) were to look at another coach … Brett Ratten is the best coach in waiting, given he has already been in charge of a senior team,” Carey said on Triple M recently.
“He didn’t have a bad record at the Blues (60 wins and one draw from 120 matches in charge), and didn’t have a lot of players to work with there.
“And now he has done the apprenticeship under Alastair Clarkson and we’ve seen what coaches that have been under him for a little while have done, and (Luke) Beveridge is one at the Bulldogs (who has excelled).
“I think he is the standout candidate.”
Though Ratten has coached at the top level before, he would become the latest in a long line of coaches to have learnt their trade under Clarkson, including Adam Simpson (West Coast Eagles), Leon Cameron (GWS Giants), Damien Hardwick (Richmond) and Beveridge (Western Bulldogs).
All (or in the case of Cameron, will) have taken their sides to at least one finals series.
At the Lions, Ratten would be famously reunited with current CEO Greg Swann, the same man who gave him his marching orders from Princes Park four years ago.
But any past animosity between the pair is set to be buried with Ratten seen as the best man to lift the club out of the doldrums.
The Lions have contested just one finals series since losing the 2004 Grand Final to Port Adelaide and have endured a shocking season on and off the field this year, logging just two victories.
Had it not been for the season-long suspensions handed out to the many past and present Essendon players in January, it’s a fair bet to say the Lions would be last on the ladder and in prime position to win its first wooden spoon since 1998.
It follows on from a seven-win season in 2014 to just four last year.
If Ratten does accept the Brisbane Lions coaching role, he will face a massive task in trying to instill the same hard edge into the young and success-starved playing list like he did at Carlton all those years ago.
Similar to the situation he faced at the Blues nine years ago, Ratten would also enter a club low on confidence and desperate for some short of success.
But any potential discussions that take place between the two parties will have to wait until after the Hawks’ finals campaign concludes, possibly with a fourth consecutive premiership.
A new rule was established in recent years prohibiting clubs from inquiring about assistant coaches at other clubs during September, so as to not disturb their finals campaign.
It came after Mark Neeld left Collingwood midway through their finals campaign in 2011 after being announced as Melbourne’s new coach, and we all know how catastrophic that was.
Neeld was sacked halfway through his three-year contract after returning just five wins from 33 matches, and was replaced by Paul Roos, who is just about to complete his resurrection mission at the Dees with their best season in a decade.
If that, and the magic Brett Ratten weaved at Princes Park for a return of some on-field stability but only modest success at best, is anything to go by, then he is the perfect man to resurrect the Brisbane Lions and drag them out of the doldrums.
But whether he will be up for the challenge will not only remain to be seen, it will also depend on whether his family, which was decimated by the death of Cooper Ratten nearly twelve months ago to the day, would be willing to relocate north.
If he accepts it, well, good luck to him because he’ll need it.
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