I think Papley is the type of personality that would warm to Spikes style. I reckon the likes of ARW and Archie Roberts Will thrive with this style.
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WSPHU
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I reckon Roberts and Caddy in particular are gonna thrive under McVeigh. Super exciting stuff
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So we said about Worsfold and Rutten. And as it turns out they couldnât coach in an Essendon environment. So if theyve got McVeigh in the hope heâll manage to impart whatever cultural wisdoms those two couldnât because heâs an Essendon man thats great.
Just hope he can coach.
Itâs almost like if there was just one other available Essendon person out there with proven coaching ability that could assist in such a contentious timeâŚ
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Is that including Goldy too ?
Worsfold was brought in for âcultural reasonsâ to have a ârespectedâ person in the roleâŚhe also had a reputation as a lousy game day coach.
Rutten was typical Essington panic stationsâŚthey were worried that The Crows were going to grab him so they parachuted him into the role.
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Yes.
I told you Barlow is a guy we should be after. Future AFL coach in my opinion and was a really smart footballer.
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Yeah well that person decided now isnât the timeâŚ
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Jon Ralph is always finding a way to be negative about Essendon.
Hereâs another: No Cookies | Herald Sun
Wreck It Ralph: There has to be a better solution to million dollar coaching payouts
Essendon should be hunting the gameâs best development boss to aid Mark McVeigh in 2027. Instead, they are hamstrung. Jon Ralph writes, itâs their own doing â and other clubs be warned.
Jon RalphClubs like Geelong must laugh at Essendon wasting money on coaching payouts like Heath Ledger burning an enormous pile of mob cash in The Dark Knight.
Ledgerâs Joker famously wanted to âwatch the world burnâ â cue your best croaky Michael Caine impression â but AFL clubs are supposed to be sensible and fiscally responsible.
Consider what new Essendon coach Mark McVeigh could spend on coaching assistants next year with the million dollars the club will waste on Brad Scottâs coaching payout.
The best development boss, for starters, after Essendon went through the season not only bringing board member Dean Solomon into the coaching ranks but turning 2025 development boss Cam Roberts into the forwards coach.
Roberts resigned by August but at least finished out the season unlike many of the Dons coaches at a club crying out for guidance for young players.
Imagine McVeigh having to make list decisions on players like Elijah Tsatas and Archie Perkins without knowing if every stone was turned to develop them.
He has just left a club where youngsters in Jesse Dattoli, Tom Hanily and Harry Kyle just proved Sydneyâs incredible development pathways (with Will Edwards superb before injury).
Essendon canât even get its No. 5 overall draft pick Tsatas going.
The club will this year appoint a development boss for McVeigh, but consider the amount of coaching man hours that wasted million dollars could have bought at the Hangar.
Call it five full-time development coaches or enough cash to lure footyâs best development boss Nigel Lappin from Geelong instead of him moving to Tasmania.
Geelong admitted it couldnât match Tasmaniaâs Lappin offer â with an extra million in soft cap room imagine the offer the Dons could have made.
Instead the Dons have spent $5 million on coaching payouts since 2011 (Matthew Knights, Ben Rutten, James Hird twice, Brad Scott), losing five elimination finals by 49, 55, 65, 12 and 62 points in that time.
Paying ten cents of every dollar in your roughly $9 million football department cap for a Scott payout means Mark McVeigh is coaching with one hand tied behind his back.
âClearly it does impact the soft cap,â CEO Tim Roberts said of Scottâs sacking.
âWeâve worked through that and weâre confident we can still fully resource that footy department, both this year and next year. Obviously itâs a challenge, but weâre confident we can deal with.â
Geelong meanwhile, hasnât paid out a single senior coach in exactly the same period while winning two flags and 17 finals while appearing in September across 14 of 16 seasons.
Join the dots.
So as a raft of high-profile clubs assess whether to re-contract their coaches over summer, there has to be a better way than simply torching cash on costly coaching extensions that donât provide security anyway.
Scott was sacked with 18 months on his contract, barely lasting to round 11 this year with that contract providing zero stability.
You could argue Michael Vossâs contract through to 2027 gave the Blues a reason to allow him to coach out his deal despite their reservations but he was gone around the same time.
How do the Dogs and Saints find a middle ground on Luke Beveridge and Ross Lyon that allows them to remove the distraction of their coachâs contact while limiting any potential payout?
Because for both clubs, there is at least some justification in being seen to back their coach with a new deal even if neither club would want the million dollar payout they might be risking.
St Kilda will move heaven and earth to re-sign Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera beyond 2027, so they can hardly hang Ross Lyon out to dry when his star player might want to know who is coaching him into the future.
The Bulldogs will have won or lost the Zak Butters battle by the time they consider Beveridgeâs contract but if they miss, the next potential star recruit would also want to know who is coaching them.
Is there a world in which Beveridge would agree to a single-season extension to the end of 2028 while accepting a limited payout of $400,000-$500,000?
In an ideal world that figure wouldnât become public because it might be seen to undermine him.
But that kind of modest extension would remove his name from all those summer coaching Pressure Indexes while easing the boardâs mind about the potential downside of a new commitment.
The last time Beveridge was out of contract the speculation just never stopped.
He went on the hustings to promote his sideâs early achievements, and every game was a referendum on his future. It was a distracting and unedifying period.
All parties did their best to get through it and the clubâs administration did well to hold off but eventually signed him by June.
The club went 14-9 but still missed finals.
Twelve months on you can spin this season either way you want depending on if you are a âBevoâ man or not.
A credible 13-win home-and-away season â despite Sam Darcyâs injury and Cody Weightmanâs struggles â as well as a rousing wildcard win and fighting loss to Adelaide on away turf.
Or another wasted chance in Marcus Bontempelliâs prime that saw the Dogs fail to progress past the elimination final stage for the sixth season in a row.
We are closer to the former camp than the latter but it still doesnât mean there is a case for an early and lucrative extension past 2027.
Lyon is completely aligned with his board, president Andrew Bassat and CEO Carl Dilena so it wouldnât surprise if they just extended him anyway.
But on face value, four seasons at 13 wins, 11 wins, nine wins and 10 wins isnât screaming out for a long-term million-dollar extension.
Even if, like us, you believe the Saints made progress building a young midfield this year in a season Max King played a single AFL game.
St Kilda and Lyon might just make a handshake deal anyway that sees Lyon agreeing to walk away without a huge payout when the club taps him on the shoulder.
But as Alastair Clarkson found out last week, sackings are highly emotional periods that tear apart friendships and destroy coaching reputations.
Best laid plans crumble without watertight contracts.
An early one-year extension with a modest (and maybe secret) payout figure seems the proper way forward.
The Roos have now paid out Brad Scott (reportedly up to $800,000), Rhyce Shaw (a mutually agreed financial settlement), David Noble and now Alastair Clarkson since 2019.
But at least the Clarkson figure of between $500,000-$600,000 limits the clubâs damage.
Putting coaches on staff can be problematic too â they are seen to be sackable at any period.
Justin Longmuirâs unusual employment arrangement has a 12-month payout clause too so that deal isnât about minimising the financial cost of a sacking.
The AFL finally released the purse strings on the AFLâs soft cap and allowed clubs to expand coaching payouts to a full year but it has put clubs in a bind.
Paying roughly $1 million of a $9 million soft cap to a coach you have booted out of your club is the recipe for the kind of mediocrity Essendon has excelled at.
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He isnt wrong though.
We have burnt so much coin in soft cap paying out coaches.
Letâs hope we get some gpod development ones in.
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Not sure how any of that is wrong tho.
You might not like it, but itâs 100% correct.
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Reality is negative about Essendon.
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The club has spent tens of millions of dollars, over the last 2 decades, in paying out staff.
That is membership dollars going to waste. There has been zero accountability for the recruitment of staff and long term contracts given to under performing staff.
The club then cries poor, when it comes to lifting membership prices and refusing to spend 100% of the soft cap.
Itâs been poorly run club for a long timeâŚ.. from the Xavier Campbellâs stealth new contract, to not sending Dodoro packing, to gifting Parish, Ridley & Redman ridiculously long contracts, to paying out Worsfold & Scott.
The club has been a sh*tshow.
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Yea itâs right, but itâs also just a cheap shot and they know Essendon sell news papers. Same article could be written about Carlton or Nth and just swap the names.
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Yep, massive flog but sadly on the ball here
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Re-signing Scott was peak Essington. If we hadnât given him an extension we wouldnât have wasted $1m. Ralph is correct.
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Its not the sackings im mad about. Its the terrible appointments and then needless extensions.
Iâve liked the expression Spike has used recently âwe canât missâ. It implies a criticality in getting key decisions right, where previously we have been so poor in this area
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Wasnât Knights extended the year they sacked him?
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So much of it is political. Both the extensions and the sackings.