What it takes to win one of these
Sam Lane
The Age
August 21, 2005
What it takes to win one of these What qualities must an AFL team have to succeed in September, to raise the cup? Samantha Lane asked three men who, between them, have coached 10 premierships.
Not since 1996, when Rodney Eade and Denis Pagan sat in opposing camps during the final match of the year, have two virgin grand final coaches directed teams through football's ultimate annual contest.
Barring a miraculous rejuvenation of Leigh Matthews' Lions, two of John Worsfold, Neil Craig, Grant Thomas or Paul Roos – and perhaps even Dean Laidley, Mark Thompson or Chris Connolly – will fill those same hot seats in just five weekends' time.
As it stood going into round 21, seven of the competition's least experienced coaches had their teams in the top eight and, on account of their fortune, several comparative veterans are readying themselves to study, rather than participate, this September.
For the first time in more than a decade, there will be no Pagan, Kevin Sheedy or Mick Malthouse in the finals. Each would have a wellinformed view of how their respective lists measure up against the profile of a successful modernday finals and premiership team. Particularly since the introduction of the salary cap and national draft, a club's intimate knowledge and management of the demographics of its stock can be as important as any move a coach might make on match day.
In 2003, four-time premiership and six-time grand final coach David Parkin composed a document, which he presented to Hawthorn's board, outlining some consistent characteristics of the previous 13 premiership teams.
Though a highly credentialled finals coach himself, Parkin, in his thenrole as the Hawks' director of football, had not gathered information relating to on-field strategy. What he had identified was eight key criteria that, according to his research, formed a blueprint for building a list capable of winning premierships.
The report included some immeasurables, such as the requirement of a "strong" leadership group of about 10 players. Parkin also listed the need for a "strong, aggressive and passionate personality" (read: senior coach) to lead a "quality" coaching panel. He has since acted as a consultant to several AFL clubs, including at least one which is now in the top eight, in regards to list appraisal and related strategic planning. And his general framework has varied little.
Each of the premiers between 1990-2002 had a minimum of 27 players Parkin termed "bonafides", with at least 25 senior games experience. At least 10 players would have more than 100 games to their names – Essendon in 1993 and Adelaide in 1997 are the only recent exceptions – and the team would have finished in the top five for about three years before winning the flag. If Parkin was revising the document today, he would note that 11 of the past 15 premiers came from the top two at the end of the home-and-away series.
If Sheedy's Baby Bombers and Malcolm Blight's youthful Crows were the trend-breakers in relation to some of these conventions, it should be no surprise that neither man talks about rigid formulas when describing the key to September success.
"First off you need a hell of a lot of good players, really good players. Every other ingredient is just an adjunct to the playing group," Blight told The Sunday Age.
"It's probably obvious, but some people don't think it is."
According to Blight, aggression and strong bodies – commodities that are consistently nominated among the most critical ingredients for September success – are no more important than in any other month on the football calendar. He does not rank the performance of any one on-field division in finals as more important than another's.
"It's no different to throughout the year, not really, I don't believe. It's the same game," he said.
Sheedy believes an elite midfield is the fundamental trait of a successful finals team. "We always felt we had a pretty good side when Simon Madden was hitting it down to Tim Watson, Merv Neagle, Leon Baker at the start of each bounce," he said.
But he qualifies this by saying that even when every possible key performance indicator is checked, victory can never be guaranteed.
"Stats are only like the weather. You don't get too tied up about being over-statistical about finals because you can't measure spirit in stats.
"Statistics will tell you what you're doing and what they're doing, but are you winning? You can have the best stats in the world and you're losing the game. That's of no bloody value."
For all of Parkin's delving into patterns and demographics, he selects an immeasurable commodity – leadership – as the most crucial to ultimate success.
"All of the premierships I've been associated with, they've been playerwon premierships ... it's been a group of players, in the finish, who have taken ownership over the result."
Carlton's premiership team of 1995, the last he guided, contained such experienced players as Stephen Kernahan, Greg Williams, Craig Bradley, Peter Dean, Justin Madden and Stephen Silvagni. Parkin would later credit the players with coaching themselves that year.
Of the current top four, Sydney boasts the most 100-plus game players, with 16, Adelaide has 13, West Coast 12 and St Kilda 11, meaning all measure up to the experience requirement Parkin's report set out. But Blight said experience, specifically previous finals experience, was an overrated commodity.
"I think one of the myths is that you need experience," he said. "History says that if you've been around a while you've survived a lot of things, you've survived the pressures of the game, and therefore you perhaps can survive a finals series, but I still don't think it's a given.
"Sometimes if you've been there before the pressure to actually taste it again can probably be more overwhelming than a young guy playing in his first finals series. It always get back to the quality of the playing list, no matter what age, I believe."
Inevitably, it is a team's best players – who are often among the more experienced – that receive the most strict checking from opponents. This emphasises the quality of a team's so-called "bottom-third" stock, which, Blight said, could influence the result as much as the champions. In keeping with this theory, he believes it's not necessarily the victorious team that will claim the day's superstar.
"One versus 18 never works ... I just think it's a sum of all the parts.
"It's fantastic when a bloke absolutely blitzes them and has a blinder, but I really think they're bonuses, and it doesn't mean you win. I saw Gary Ablett kick nine goals and we missed out by a kick."
The ability to find an extra gear can be better relied upon to make the difference, said Sheedy. "That's the capacity to change a game when you're being confronted with a level scoreboard at three-quartertime and you're in the preliminary final," he said.
"Who's going to lift then? You've all played 90 minutes and that's when you lift."
And so again, it's back to the immeasurables.
Blight rates the ability of the current Adelaide team to play "almost exactly the same every week" as its outstanding strength.
But as much as consistency is fundamental to winning a premiership, surely some element of difference is required. Perhaps science plays no part in the production of that.
Sheedy and Parkin both recalled premiers that looked to have fulfilled their destinies when, after repeatedly falling short, their hour finally arrived.
The most recent example is Port Adelaide, which finished minor premier in three consecutive seasons before it managed to collect the real prize last year.
Similarly, the Kangaroos were unbackable favourites but wasted a golden chance with their inaccuracy in the 1998 decider against Adelaide, but managed to bounce back and defeat Carlton the following season.
Ask any Bombers supporter about that season and they'll say it was a desperate, last-gasp Fraser Brown tackle in the preliminary final that got between their club and the flag that year. However Essendon produced its all-conquering season in 2000.
"I do think you need a touch of luck," Blight laughed.
"It's hard to quantify. But I think if you look back at every game and every grand final, you'll see at some stage that little bounce of the ball from that scruffy kick and the bloke running second all of sudden ends up with it. The bloke in front's done nothing wrong, really. There's that sort of stuff.
"Every team gets its share, but sometimes there's crucial ones. I'm a bit of a believer in a touch of luck ... you do need a touch of it somehow."
. . . AND WHO CAN DO IT THIS YEARWhat Blight, Sheedy and Parkin say about the top four
WEST COAST
Strengths
Blight: "Like everyone else, I think their midfield is brilliant."
Sheedy: "Their ruck division, because they're better than nearly all the others."
Weaknesses
Sheedy: "The lack of possible goal power, the champion goalkicker that can do it. They haven't had one for years anyway."
ADELAIDE
Strengths
Blight: "They've just been so consistent. They play the same way nearly every week."
Sheedy: "Their defence. You've got to have a very good running, stoppage game to get the ball out of the pack and around and through the Adelaide defence."
ST KILDA
Strengths
Sheedy: "St Kilda's goal power is pretty good. Their ‘points for' at the moment, is only six (in fact, eight) behind West Coast — it's quite amazing considering the lull that St Kilda's had in the year . . . There's four games difference (in wins), so it's a pretty good effort."
Blight: "I think their forward line looks more dangerous than any other."
Weaknesses
Sheedy: "If they get injuries in the ruck they're in trouble."
SYDNEY
Strengths
Sheedy: "They're mean (as in average) and mean and mean and average and mean aren't they? They're just sort of a bit of everything. They're still an ugly top-four side that's made it (laughing). Their evenness is their strength, and I think their tackling and their strategies. I think that (Paul) Roos has done a very good job with that group, he keeps them up there. But they've had to be that way."
Blight: "I think their forward line's very good and . . . they actually go about it in a way that you respect. Notwithstanding all the criticism and all of what happened earlier in the year, they're just a really hardworking team."
Weaknesses
Sheedy: "Probably reliance on (Barry) Hall. If he busted his knee, I'd say, 'That's their chances'. If he broke down in a final, Barry Hall, I think they'd be in trouble, he's such a champion."
TIPS FOR THE PREMIERSHIPKevin Sheedy: West Coast
"I'd probably say West Coast (to win) and either Adelaide or St Kilda (to play off), it depends on the injuries to those clubs."
Malcolm Blight: West Coast
"Things can change, but I think the Eagles are as good a chance as we've seen for the last few years . . . they've had an outstanding season."
David Parkin: "It has to come from one of those four. I'd be very surprised if it doesn't. But I would suggest if you line up the criteria . . . not one of those clubs actually stands out with, what I would call, the premiership credentials.
"I'm concerned that Adelaide and Sydney can't go to another level, whereas St Kilda has the body of talent and so does West Coast, but I'm not sure whether they have that leadership/ownership, which I believe is the essential component to win it. I would like to think it's the most open premiership race we've had for a decade."
HOW THE NUMBERS STACK UPAverage age/games played of senior club lists (excluding rookies) of the past five premiers and this year’s top four
2000
ESSENDON
Average age: 24
Average games: 73
2001
BRISBANE LIONS
Average age: 23
Average games: 73
2002
BRISBANE LIONS
Average age: 24
Average games: 89
2003
BRISBANE LIONS
Average age: 24
Average games: 98
2004
PORT ADELAIDE
Average age (on grand final day): 24
Average games (on grand final day): 79
2005
WEST COAST
Average age (at August 19): 23
Average games (to round 20): 63
ADELAIDE
Average age: 24
Average games: 75
ST KILDA
Average age: 23
Average games: 80
SYDNEY
Average age: 23
Average games: 76
PREMIERSHIP PATTERNSComparing this year’s top four with the past five premiers
1. POSSESSIONS
The past five premiers have had at least 10 players averaging more than 15 possessions a match in the home-and-away rounds.
Number of players averaging more than 15 possessions to round 22
2000 Essendon 15 players
2001 Brisbane Lions 10 players
2002 Brisbane Lions 10 players
2003 Brisbane Lions 10 players
2004 Port Adelaide 11 players
2005
West Coast 11 players
Adelaide 11 players
St Kilda 9 players
Sydney 8 players
* Competition leader: Port Adelaide 14 players
2. KEY FORWARDS
The past five premiers’ leading goalkickers scored at least 50 goals by round 22.
2000 Essendon Matthew Lloyd 109
2001 Brisbane Lions Alastair Lynch 58
2002 Brisbane Lions Alastair Lynch 76
2003 Brisbane Lions Alastair Lynch 78
2004 Port Adelaide Warren Tredrea 81
2005
St Kilda Fraser Gehrig 74
Sydney Barry Hall 66
Adelaide Scott Welsh 50
West Coast Phillip Matera 38
3. MARKS INSIDE 50m
Three of the past five premiers have been among the competition’s top-two marking teams inside 50 metres during the home-and-away rounds. In 2003 and 2001, the Lions increased their effectiveness so dramatically in September that they eventually topped the average marks inside 50.
Competition rankings for average home-and-away-season marks inside 50
2000 Essendon No. 2
2001 Brisbane Lions No. 5
2002 Brisbane Lions No. 2
2003 Brisbane Lions No. 6
2004 Port Adelaide No. 2
2005 (before round 21)
St Kilda No. 1
Sydney No. 2
Adelaide No.7
West Coast No. 13
Source: PROWESS SPORTS
http://www.realfooty.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2005/08/20/1124435183150.html
