A coach fighting for his future is vulnerable - no matter how drenched in integrity he is - to taking an expedient option rather than the one best placed to strengthen the club not momentarily but permanently.
If TW, or any coach, is more interested in saving his job, rather than doing his job properly, then it’s time to get out voluntarily, or get pushed. Who does it serve otherwise, and for how long?
If the Richmond board of directors thinks it needs another six months to figure out if Wallace is the right coach for their club it is more an indication that they need to reassess their competency rather than that of Wallace.
Maybe so, but what’s the hurry to re-appoint TW? Besides, perhaps things have only recently started to change for the better. Because when TW came to the Club in 2004, he was virtually given free reign. Between TW and GM, they all but ruled the roost.
That was then and thankfully things now seem to be different, and instead of the Club all but handing over responsibility to others, to direct and orchestrate success, they now at least seem to recognise that it is their role to steer and monitor progress, and not the coach or someone else.
And it is their business to know, or at least get to know, what makes a good coach and coaching department. Clubs don’t pay various people within a footy club/department for no good reason. If progress is being made then they need to at least pretend to have an understanding of who is responsible for it and who needs to lift their game. If RFC needs another six months to know more then so be it. Better late than never.
Unlike what seemed the case previously, the coach is not a law unto himself. Who and how TW’s coaching was monitored back then is a mystery. If TW needs to have his ego stroked at every turn, in order to commit to the role, under these new conditions, then we don’t need him. His role, first and foremost, is to coach the players at his disposal. It should be up to the Club to determine what is and isn’t good enough.
Realistically, where is the certainty that next season will see us progress to the finals? Young players progress, and so they should. But is that simply through experience and game time, or because coaching progressed them further than experience alone ever could? And who is responsible for that, TW and/or others? The question I ask is ‘can TW take the players to the level required’? How would we know? It is up to RFC to determine that and act on it, as, and if, appropriate.
I think it’s healthy that RFC question and challenge the status quo, rather than just accept, as has happened in the past, that the next step is a natural progression to finals. We’re still dealing with the effects of the last time RFC took things for granted.
TW is there to do his job and RFC is there to do theirs, which doesn’t involve accepting mediocrity and that things are now perfect and ideal and that our course is assured.
RFC needs to do the right thing by the Club, and TW does not constitute the Club. TW’s authority may have been eroded to what it needs to be for any coach, and rightly so. For the first time in a long time, perhaps things are as they should be.
