Imo if ken is serious about another coaching gig he has done the right thing in taking a year off.
I think you need that little gap to recalibrate and reflect as to whether full time coaching is what you really want to do, particularly at his age.
So Chad Cornes was right.
Maybe the club told him the job is his and just take the time off he needs
Thanks bossman appreciate the ongoing insights !
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All those comments apply fairly and squarely to Brad Scott as well.
Less than a week out until the 1st to 4th year players are back for pre season training. We have a head of development sorted yet? You’d think you’d want that done and dusted before the youngsters start back up training.
Get Choco as head of development
Scott doesn’t have the strategic ability or the man management and relationship development ability.
Adding Ken and Solly cover the relationship building.
Now he just needs a strategic operator and he will have made the position of head coach redundant
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Reckon it’s already become redundant.
A job of senior coach is less and less now nothing like it was back in the day where the head coach was in charge of everything on game day imo.
Drink.
Where was relationships building Solly for a photo op?
Kenny prefers to spend time with his family than join the club (and rightly so after his decade of coaching).
Four years ago…
We need a coach who gives hard truths and they better not be a happy clapper like our last one.
We need a captain who drives standards and he also better not be a happy clapper like our last one.
Now…
We need a relationships coach who builds relationships with the players.
We need a relationships captain who happy claps everyone.
Four years from now…
We need a coach who gives hard truths and they better not be a happy clapper like our last one.
We need a captain who drives standards and he also better not be a happy clapper like our last one.
I really don’t care whether the coach is best mates with the players, happy clapping them from the bench or angrily punching holes into wall in the coaches box. It’s rubbish fluff.
This list does not need ‘encouragement’. It needs to learn what it takes to be a professional footballer.
I thought I’d ask chatGPT about common gripes AFL fans have towards their coaches. They got the list pretty much spot on…
Top 10 AFL Fan Complaints About Their Coach
- “No Plan B!”
The coach is accused of sticking to the same game plan even when it’s clearly not working. Often said mid-game when the opposition gets a run-on. - “Can’t coach rotations!”
Fans complain the coach is burning out midfielders, leaving stars on the bench at key moments, or doesn’t know how to manage interchange properly. - “Plays favourites.”
A staple complaint: certain underperforming players are “untouchable” while others get dropped unfairly. - “Too defensive / Too attacking.”
Whichever game style the team plays, fans want the opposite. A defensive setup is “boring,” but an attacking one is “reckless.” - “Doesn’t make changes early enough.”
Whether it’s matchups, tactics, or moving magnets, the coach “waits until it’s too late” to react. - “Selection is a joke.”
A weekly ritual: the Thursday night team sheet drops, and fans rage over who’s been picked or omitted. - “Players look confused / don’t buy in.”
When structure breaks down, it’s seen as evidence the coach has “lost the group” or overcomplicated the system. - “Can’t develop young players.”
Especially common during rebuilds: youngsters aren’t improving fast enough, or aren’t being given enough opportunity. - “Doesn’t show emotion / Shows too much emotion.”
If the coach is calm, fans say he’s “too passive.” If he’s fiery, he’s “lost control.” There’s no winning here. - “We’re soft / lack killer instinct.”
A reflection of frustration more than tactics — but the coach always cops it for a perceived lack of “mongrel” or physicality.
Point 2 is the weirdest one I’ve never read before. But the rest are pretty typical of the sway to and from extremes fans go through depending on what they see.
I’m pretty sure I read similar comments on the Geelong board between 2020 and even halfway through their premiership year in 2022. I imagine the same would have been said of Brisbane (if they ever had enough of a fan base to actually comment on their board) between 2020 and 2024. Especially when they were 2 and 5 at the end of round 8. I’d say unless you make it to a prelim, you can tick off at least half of those being parroted by their fans.
In the end, a coach is there to achieve results. And unless you have a very good to great list, you aren’t challenging premierships. Our results in the last 20 years speak just as much about the players we had as it does the coach that has had to pull them all together and ‘get the best’ out of them. The best we’ve gotten is losing an elimination final. And to be honest, aside from one or two of those years, we’ve over achieved based on what we had on the list. Just compare it to the best teams in the league at the time and we’ve always been 5 to 7 players away from being able to consistently match it with the best teams. I’d say before this season, we were around 7 to 10 players away, once the injuries hit, that pushed out to 15 pretty easily. No amount of happy clapping, strategic ability or man management skills can make up for the shortfall in talent.
Strategically, I’m not sure what Scott can do with a player who can barely guide the footy onto his boot, a team who consistently make terrible decisions by foot, are average skilled at best, are injured as often as they are available, are undersized through the middle yet average at contested footy, have had a history of fitness issues through the season, tend to panic in key situations and above all have a 20 history of failing spectacularly when an opportunity is there to achieve something (even as low as winning a final). You can play the kids like Rutten did, but we didn’t like those results and only now is there a greater sentiment of ‘appreciation’ of what he did during his time. But he also had no plan B (barely a plan A), players look confused and I’m sure that time on the bench next to Hind showed his best happy clapper man management traits that he had.
By the middle of next year, I’m sure we’d be lamenting McGrath’s terrible panic kicking and Redman’s average (at best) play. We’d have forgotten that they were the leaders who want to be here and are galvanising the group, whilst Merret (the guy who doesn’t want to be there) puts them all to shame with repeat performance. No amount of happy clapping or strategic nous will paper over that.
Scott will be sacked because of the onfield results. Merrett and any professional competitor want at the very least to be a chance of winning. That is the backbone of a good team. That is why he wanted to leave and also why we’ve barely attracted an average player through trade or free agency for 7 years now. Our club is untrustworthy across the league. The competing and will to win drives the team forward. Not going through seasons like this last one. And no amount of happy clapping coaches or leaders will make the experience ‘feel’ better. Winning will do it. Just as winning will undo the sentiment from fans towards the club. That’s all that matters.
The list is sub-standard. And needs to be turned over. That needs time. But the board will not allow it to occur quickly because of the ‘strategic’ plan in place. We don’t even know what the plan is. The closest to it was ‘get the most out of the list’. I also doubt they will release the ‘strategic’ plan, because the last two have failed miserably. Most people fixated on the lack of ‘winning premierships’ so they revised it and went all in and stated that they’d win a premiership at every level by 2026. That’s worked out well. It made me feel so much better that we were aiming for premierships whilst Sydney were up by 10 goals at half time of the elimination final. The VFLW premiership was great though.
I’d love to know what our strategic plan is. It would help define what the club aims for over the next 5 years and we can judge whether it can realistically be achieved. Hopefully, it’s mentioned at the AGM, but I doubt they do.
But in the end. It still means nothing. The onfield results will matter more. And even if we see good onfield results, it’ll be met with criticism from fans who have lost trust in the club.
Edit…
Appologies to quote your post HirdMentality. I’m sure you mean well. I just chose your post to randomly comment on that pretty much captured what the sentiment the last few months have been like.
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Very interesting that the coach is at McGraths wedding.
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Can I get a tl;dr on that
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why
A coach can influence nearly all of the above, that’s half the reason why he’s there. We just have a coach that’s good at culture and standards supposedly…..
Teachers pet?
Interesting that that particular coach is at that particular player’s wedding or that a coach is at a player’s wedding in general?
Dodo was there too judging by his comment on Andy’s IG.
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From bomber blitz, criticism of Scott is he doesn’t connect with the players that well. Judging by other player pics of their weddings, the coach normally isn’t there.
Just thought it was unusual. Maybe the Merrett thing has galvanised the coach more with the player group.
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From Bomber Blitz he’s both too close with players and also not close enough. Not that hard to understand.
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Mitchell was at Barrass’s wedding and Barrass had only been at the club for 3 minutes.