Who ya gonna call?

As the writing on the wall looms ever larger for Terry Wallace at Richmond — and with another six senior coaches potentially coming out of contract at the end of the year — attention will turn, inevitably, to the potential choices for seven AFL clubs.

In a series of previous posts, and this one follows on, I've looked at one relatively crude criterion that might be applied when clubs decide who to look at seriously. I'll be spending some effort in bringing a slightly more scholarly approach to the question as the season unfolds, but a superficial analysis right now serves to illustrate the minefield that club administrations are entering.

Following on from my previous arbitrary measurement (Premierships equal success), I decided to look at premiership years as players — playing in a grand final is not intrinsic as I'm focusing on cultural exposure rather than on-field experience of the last Saturday — of five current, and one recently-discarded, coaches. This is, of course, absolutely ad hoc and unscientific.

Coach	Premierships as player	Games total	Coaching flags
Sheedy	67, 69, 73, 74 (and 80 as recently-retired skills coach)	251	4
Roos		269	1
Worsfold	92, 94	209	1
Thompson	84, 85, 93	202	1 (+)
Clarkson		134	1
Wallace	78, 83, 86	254	—

To call this confusing and counter-intuitive is an understatement.

Thompson was an assistant coach in 2000 at Essendon, Clarkson (I think) at Port in 2004. Prior to the recent Swans flag, I suspect Paul Roos had no direct exposure to a Premiership-winning culture, although he played and served as assistant under Rodney Eade (4 Premierships at Hawthorn).

In the normal way of things, there are exceptions to rules. Roos and Clarkson are exceptions in one way, Wallace in another (although Wallace did coach the Bulldogs to two Preliminary finals).

Just food for thought for the moment. . .

It's also interesting to note that a very low number of naturally-talented footballers have achieved the ultimate coaching success: Blight (2), Jesaulenko (1), Roos (1), Coleman (2), and, stretching the definition in my view, Matthews (4).

Gritty players who got the most out of their (limited) talent are over-represented: Parkin (4), Sheedy (4), Hafey (4), Jeans (4), Barassi (4), Kennedy (3), Malthouse (2), Pagan (2), Williams (1), Thompson (1 and counting) [and Clarkson (1)].

See Coaching credentials 2