It's head down, Terry Wallace
Kevin Sheedy | April 19, 2009
DURING my 27 seasons at Essendon the Tigers made 12 coaching changes.
In racing parlance, Terry Wallace has just jumped out of the barriers in the Melbourne Cup.
A long season awaits and we should not hang, draw and quarter a coach based on three games.
In my first year I lost five of my first six games and all of a sudden we produced a winning run. That could happen in the next two months with Wallace and then the calls for his axing won't be as loud.
Coaches should be judged on their lists and their ability to get the best out of their players.
Wallace has had four years at Punt Rd, but it took Mark Thompson eight years to win his first flag down at Geelong.
There are seven coaches coming off contract and five willing premiership coaches who could take their jobs. I'm a premiership coach who could still coach if I wanted to. Then you've got Mick Malthouse, who is off contract, Denis Pagan, John Worsfold and Mark Williams.
It's fantastic for the media to create talk, but why cut a guy short on a contract? I wouldn't make any announcement on a coach being replaced until after the last match of the season. You honour a contract and I'm very grateful that Essendon did that with me.
If I were Wallace, I would just keep my head down and continue to work through the process.
Right now he would wish he had done better, but things don't always happen overnight.
Unguided passion is dangerous and it disrupts organisations. You can't blame Wallace for the previous years of failure at Richmond.
Tigers champion Francis Bourke got Richmond into a Grand Final in 1982 and everyone thought he had failed. Now the club has suffered for almost three decades for being disloyal to him. He could have been a much better coach if he was given the chance. During my 27 seasons at Essendon the Tigers made 12 coaching changes. It's a remarkable statistic.
I can empathise with a coach at the moment. About the same stage of the 1993 season I was not going to be coach of Essendon in 1994. I was a dead duck ready to be shot. Timmy Watson kicked a goal out of his backside and from then on nothing stopped the players. I just had to get the 20 in the team right.
Laying blame on a coach smacks of an uneducated attitude. You've got to get your list in order for the cyclone approaching. That is cyclone Gold Coast and cyclone West Sydney.
It might be the safest time not to coach if you want to have a career. Maybe the AFL needs to look at having a pool of contracts for any player above 30. They can play 12 games and be paid outside the salary cap.
The best thing we did at Essendon was play James Hird for another year and he won a best and fairest. If you're not going to get the early choices, how are you going to be a chance in the next five years?
It's not about whether a coach has won or lost three games. It's about Melbourne clubs really banking through a better plan than what's on the table now.
The fattest recruit in the AFL last year turned the Grand Final on its head. That's Stuey Dew. And what happened to the scientist's recommendation? AFL clubs right now need people in experienced positions to be smart.
It's about building your club to go somewhere.
Richmond doesn't have that hopeless a list. All they've got to do is keep working on their skills and make better decisions.
You don't sack coaches during the year. I believe the AFL should make sure with their management and presidents that it doesn't happen.
Coaching's not that hard but on the flip side people don't realise how tough it can be. Malthouse hasn't won a premiership in over 300 matches. The problem when coaches lose is that they are condemned to death row.
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/sport/afl/story/0,26576,25353432-19771,00.html
