Assistant coaches [merged]

[The Machine]

Needs a clean up still maintain shouldn't have let so much quality go fair enough McRae got a job rumour has it Dimma didn't want to take a pay cut to keep the band together.

Rumour is wrong. It has been well documented he did take a pay cut.

Soft cap got slashed by $3mil. Not a million, not $1.5 million but $3mil.  We were spending all of the soft cap before the AFL over reacted. So our cuts had to be deep

I've said this a number of times and I know people don't like hearing it.

But we had 2 assistant coaches coming out of contract (Leppa and Macrae) all others were contracted. So others were not let go those 2 put their hands up and said they'd go. Although Macrae already had an offer from the Hawks on the table. To further ease the job losses Dimma took a pay cut. But the club still had to cut to get under the new limit. Recruiting got hit, development got hit. They did that and we've paid the price ever since.

I won't go into more detail but reckon if anyone ever gets the chance to chat to Balmey about it, youvshould you will learn a lot and I reckon most would be like me and think it’s a disgrace what the AFL did, damning

Ok that may be true , but why have other clubs recruited quality assistant's like a poster mentioned and we haven't replaced them.The only replacement has been Teague and promoted Clarke.We loss Rutten ,Blake ,Leppa and McRae that's alot of quality not replaced in my book.

Indeed it is and it produced 3 of the best years on my life- 3 x cups
Good people are poached so it's our job to develop the next group.

[Tiger Khosh]

Needs a clean up still maintain shouldn't have let so much quality go fair enough McRae got a job rumour has it Dimma didn't want to take a pay cut to keep the band together.

Rumour is wrong. It has been well documented he did take a pay cut.

Soft cap got slashed by $3mil. Not a million, not $1.5 million but $3mil.  We were spending all of the soft cap before the AFL over reacted. So our cuts had to be deep

I've said this a number of times and I know people don't like hearing it.

But we had 2 assistant coaches coming out of contract (Leppa and Macrae) all others were contracted. So others were not let go those 2 put their hands up and said they'd go. Although Macrae already had an offer from the Hawks on the table. To further ease the job losses Dimma took a pay cut. But the club still had to cut to get under the new limit. Recruiting got hit, development got hit. They did that and we've paid the price ever since.

I won't go into more detail but reckon if anyone ever gets the chance to chat to Balmey about it, youvshould you will learn a lot and I reckon most would be like me and think it’s a disgrace what the AFL did, damning

Ok that may be true , but why have other clubs recruited quality assistant's like a poster mentioned and we haven't replaced them.The only replacement has been Teague and promoted Clarke.We loss Rutten ,Blake ,Leppa and McRae that's alot of quality not replaced in my book.

^ This.

I’ve read your take on this WP and while I understand costs had to be cut due to the reduced soft cap, doing it to such a severe extent on our coaching group has been a mistake imo. Like the post above says, we lost 4 assistants at one point or another during our flag years and we’ve replaced them with Teague (done a good job imo) and that’s it. We’ve got Xavier Clarke pulling double duty and have Steve Morris coaching our VFL side. Think about that for a minute, we went from the guy who is now coaching Collingwood to 5th spot on the ladder to a guy who just recently retired from our VFL program who I’m not sure anyone had pegged to take up coaching.

Imo we need to hire 1 more senior assistant in the off-season at the bare minimum while 2 would be ideal.

[WilliamPowell]

.

I’ve read your take on this WP and while I understand costs had to be cut due to the reduced soft cap, doing it to such a severe extent on our coaching group has been a mistake imo. Like the post above says, we lost 4 assistants at one point or another during our flag years and we’ve replaced them with Teague (done a good job imo) and that’s it. We’ve got Xavier Clarke pulling double duty and have Steve Morris coaching our VFL side. Think about that for a minute, we went from the guy who is now coaching Collingwood to 5th spot on the ladder to a guy who just recently retired from our VFL program who I’m not sure anyone had pegged to take up coaching.

Imo we need to hire 1 more senior assistant in the off-season at the bare minimum while 2 would be ideal.

So exactly where was the Club supposed to make the cuts?

I keep reading that they should have simply paid over the cap and pay the tax for over spending no matter how much that was/is. If only it was that simple

Club made just on $2.5mil profit in 2021. If they had paid over the cap by say $1.2 to $1.8mil and then the tax, the Club would have made a loss. Is that what people are suggesting the Club should be doing? Yes or no?

[Tiger Khosh]

.

I’ve read your take on this WP and while I understand costs had to be cut due to the reduced soft cap, doing it to such a severe extent on our coaching group has been a mistake imo. Like the post above says, we lost 4 assistants at one point or another during our flag years and we’ve replaced them with Teague (done a good job imo) and that’s it. We’ve got Xavier Clarke pulling double duty and have Steve Morris coaching our VFL side. Think about that for a minute, we went from the guy who is now coaching Collingwood to 5th spot on the ladder to a guy who just recently retired from our VFL program who I’m not sure anyone had pegged to take up coaching.

Imo we need to hire 1 more senior assistant in the off-season at the bare minimum while 2 would be ideal.

So exactly where was the Club supposed to make the cuts?

I keep reading that they should have simply paid over the cap and pay the tax for over spending no matter how much that was/is. If only it was that simple

Club made just on $2.5mil profit in 2021. If they had paid over the cap by say $1.2 to $1.8mil and then the tax, the Club would have made a loss. Is that what people are suggesting the Club should be doing? Yes or no?

I don’t know enough about the footy department to know where else costs could be cut but I’m sure there would have been other avenues to atleast spread the cost saving out.

Also fair difference between $2.5mil profit and taking a loss, again I’m not familiar enough with the books but if they added just 1 additional assistant coach are you saying we’d go from a $2.5mil profit to in the negatives?

[yandb]

.

I’ve read your take on this WP and while I understand costs had to be cut due to the reduced soft cap, doing it to such a severe extent on our coaching group has been a mistake imo. Like the post above says, we lost 4 assistants at one point or another during our flag years and we’ve replaced them with Teague (done a good job imo) and that’s it. We’ve got Xavier Clarke pulling double duty and have Steve Morris coaching our VFL side. Think about that for a minute, we went from the guy who is now coaching Collingwood to 5th spot on the ladder to a guy who just recently retired from our VFL program who I’m not sure anyone had pegged to take up coaching.

Imo we need to hire 1 more senior assistant in the off-season at the bare minimum while 2 would be ideal

So exactly where was the Club supposed to make the cuts?

I keep reading that they should have simply paid over the cap and pay the tax for over spending no matter how much that was/is. If only it was that simple

Club made just on $2.5mil profit in 2021. If they had paid over the cap by say $1.2 to $1.8mil and then the tax, the Club would have made a loss. Is that what people are suggesting the Club should be doing? Yes or no?

WP are you sugesting that Assistants get $600,000 a season? I would have thought that $300,000 would have been closer

[WilliamPowell]

I don’t know enough about the footy department to know where else costs could be cut but I’m sure there would have been other avenues to atleast spread the cost saving out.

Also fair difference between $2.5mil profit and taking a loss, again I’m not familiar enough with the books but if they added just 1 additional assistant coach are you saying we’d go from a $2.5mil profit to in the negatives?

They very much spread the cost savings out. Tim Livingstone is on record as saying they looked at everything, Balmey has said the same

They cut people that most of us wouldn't know about. Trainers, physios footy administrators staff that the players loved = heart and soul people. People bang on about culture but having to let those people go had IMHO a huge impact on the place. They cut in recruiting, they cut development. Every area got cut. It seems people think the only place the cuts were made were in assistant coaches

Also remember the soft cap doesn't cover the total of heads it is all footy dept costs like interstate travel for recruiters. People suggesting we go back to not spending our recruiters interstate?

My $1.2-$1.8 mil was based on putting back in 2 assistants and adding in recruiting. I deliberately made the over spend high to make a point. Paying over the cap would cost us more than people realise

Per the article from 2020 in this link
https://www.theage.com.au/sport/afl/revealed-details-of-the-afl-s-new-footy-tax-20200729-p55gqg.html

Thr Soft cap tax is harsh. So if we were to spend even $500k over the soft cap it would cost another $1mil. So an extra $1.2 million in extra soft cap spend would cost us in total $3.6 million and as I said there goes any profit.

Now I don't know about you but I don't want my Club funding the AFL so they can give that money to the likes of N0rt, GC, GWS, Saints etc

Every Club has made cuts. Every Club has everyone in their footy dept doing double the work. It seems with us all anyone focuses on is our assistants. We've cut deep across the entire footy department ... not sure what else the Club was supposed to do?

So I ask again where or what/who else should we have cut to get under the cap or do we just go along pay overs and pay a tax at 200%

[georgies31]

Understand your point WP , but how have other clubs managed to keep there boat a float of assistant coaches and also added quality coaches that's what I can't understand I can't recall any club loosing that much quality over the space of 2 seasons. I don't buy it either we we're over paying or there is another reason.

This has back 🔥 big time all our success come when we added quality football people around the club so proof is in the pudding.

[Tigeritis™©®]

Great question Georgies 

It doesn’t make sense that we seem to need to have the bare minimum when other clubs poach our assistants we can’t afford.
Sydney lose no one and gain Pike and our fitness coach.
We seem to be struggling to pay anyone of quality.

And now we lose Burge to Hawks too after we couldn’t afford you keep McCrae but the hawks somehow could 

It all makes no sense to me but apparently ALL clubs are struggling but it doesn’t seem so if you look at what some clubs have in their footy department compared to ours.

[Hard Roar Tiger]

I think the point here is that our spend was at it’s highest when covid hit - clubs like Hawks and Swans might not have had the same spend being near the foot of the ladder which would have made us vulnerable to being poached.
The best example are the Pies who effectively would have got Macrae and Leppa for Buckley’s salary.
I don’t understand why people can’t see this - organisations the world over have their talent pinched by those who are striving to fill their shoes.

[georgies31]

I think the point here is that our spend was at it’s highest when covid hit - clubs like Hawks and Swans might not have had the same spend being near the foot of the ladder which would have made us vulnerable to being poached.
The best example are the Pies who effectively would have got Macrae and Leppa for Buckley’s salary.
I don’t understand why people can’t see this - organisations the world over have their talent pinched by those who are striving to fill their shoes.

Understand that got no issues with talent getting poached, but why weren't they replaced  we had one less assistant coach last year one was doing 2 jobs  that's embarrassing for a club that boasting about 100k members and just won 3 flags ?.

[georgies31]

Great question Georgies 

It doesn’t make sense that we seem to need to have the bare minimum when other clubs poach our assistants we can’t afford.
Sydney lose no one and gain Pike and our fitness coach.
We seem to be struggling to pay anyone of quality.

And now we lose Burge to Hawks too after we couldn’t afford you keep McCrae but the hawks somehow could 

It all makes no sense to me but apparently ALL clubs are struggling but it doesn’t seem so if you look at what some clubs have in their footy department compared to ours.

100 % agree when you put together one of the best assistant coaching group together we started flourishing so why we wouldn't continue is bewildering and yes soft cap had it's issues, , but we handled it poorly we we're one assistant coach short last season mind you and club rectified it this year while other clubs have boosted .

[WilliamPowell]

Wouldn't it be great if we knew exactly where, what and who every Club cut? How much each club pays its assistants, senior coaches, recruiters etc? To see how every Club allocates the soft cap now and before the cuts

Then everyone could actually accurately compare.

It is pretty clear to me that for Tiger supporters the only thing most focus on is assistant coaches and constantly compare to what other Clubs have or haven't done ....but surely there's more to it than that?

Doesn't it also involve what areas Clubs prioritise? We kept Emma Murray, we kept the leadership bloke. Things that are obviously important to our program. It was a balancing act.

Am I saying that we got everything right? No, far from it because as I have said many times there were behind the scene folk that were let go that hit the enitre footy dept and Club hard. But when you have to cut over $3mil from your costs then you have to make big cuts. I also wonder if there'd be this focus (obsession) on assistant coaches if we had won all the games we should have.

And just one more point many on here are making the assumption that all Clubs were spending the $9 mil plus before it was cut. They were not. So if a Club was only spending say $7-$8mil then wouldn't they need to make less changes and could that not be one of the reasons they didn't lose assistant coaches? Just think people need to look at the entire picture not just part of it

When it is all said and done our Club worked bloody hard to get to the point where it could be one of handful of Clubs that could spend all of the previous cap. And now we're are clearly disadvantaged due to an over reaction by the morons at AFL HQ when COVID struck. That the AFL has refused to return the soft cap to pre pandemic levels clearly shows their want to try and hold back successful clubs and help the have nots. The Pandemic gave them them the perfect excuse to make that cut. It was the perfect storm as they say.

[Francois Jackson]

So Murray is still around now on the payroll? IF so she join burge and get stuffed.

The players aren’t listening to her it seems so why waste our money? Use it on another assistant like Grigg.

[georgies31]

Whatever we think football department needs a revamp Burge gone and we atleast 2 quality assistant's Grigg would be great and Graham from the dockers.

[WilliamPowell]

Whatever we think football department needs a revamp Burge gone and we atleast 2 quality assistant's Grigg would be great and Graham from the dockers.

I would think right now the main focus has to be getting the Burge replacement 100% correct

Then look at the other areas.