SOLID FOUNDATIONS THE KEY TO SUSTAINED TIGER SUCCESS
Richmond's General Manager of Football, Craig Cameron
Fighting Tiger bulletin - Issue 2, July 2009
Richmond entered the 2009 season full of hope, and expectations of playing finals football. Unfortunately, that's not going to eventuate, which clearly is very disappointing to us all.
I can assure our members, however, that proper foundations are now being put in place, to give the Tigers the best possible opportunity of experiencing success in the future on a constant basis. We're devising a strategy that will build a sustainable structure within our football department. This will ensure that when we recruit our players, we develop them (both on-field and off-field), we maintain injury-prevention levels, physically prepare them, as well as supply them with the required mental skills. As a result, we can then provide our coaching panel with a playing list they can mould into a successful unit. The overall objective is to make sure we have a football department that can extract the maximum talent out of all the players on our list.
It had reached a point where we just had to say, okay, we're going to take a long-term view to structuring the football department and the playing list. But, even though we are adopting a bigger-picture outlook, that doesn't mean we're in a rebuilding phase. The long-term vision is based around getting the right structures in place and ensuring that whenever a player is recruited to Tigerland, he is given every chance to fulfill his potential.
I asked each of the people, who head up the various areas of the football department - operations, recruiting, list management. coaching, elite performance, (strength and conditioning and medical), and the development side - for them to talk to their staff members, to get their input, and then report back to me.
Under CEO Steven Wright's direction, at the Gold Coast in early July, each Club department presented their specific strategic plan. We then worked on integrating those strategic plans into an overall five-year vision for the Club. The plan is for the entire Club to end up on the same page, and over the next couple of months, we'll reveal the details of this five-year vision.
From a football department perspective, by the end of this season, we should have a much better understanding of where our list's at, and how the development of our younger, developing players is coming along, with a view to them being able to play good AFL football for a long period of time.
One of the main reasons behind the appointment of Jade Rawlings as the Club's caretaker coach for the second half of the '09 season, was the fact he had coached his own team - Coburg, our VFL affiliate. He'd also coached a lot of our developing players at Coburg, which was a plus. Another important factor in the decision was that continuity remained within our coaching structure as much as possible, with minimal disruption. The bottom line, however, was we just thought Jade was the right person for the job. He possessed the right qualities to pick the group up and move forward with them. Mind you, it wasn't an easy decision, because the other three candidates also were really good.
With regards to the search for the next permanent coach of the Club, we want someone who will best suit the direction that we're heading in. We are looking for a coach who can combine development and teaching with instiiling a winning attitude, plus the right culture, into the team. The age of the coach is irrelevant... we're looking for the best coaching fit for the Richmond Football Club going forward. And, given our plans for the football department, it's important how the coach fits within that whole structure.
The selection of the next Tiger coach will be a very methodical process. One of the reasons for this is that we believe there are a lot of excellent coaching candidates out there and we need to get to know them as well as we can.
There are three key phases in the interview process for the new coach and in the initial phose the coaching sub-committee will comprise the Club's CEO Steven Wright football director Tony Free, General Manager of Learning and Development, Jeff Bond and myself, along with two external members in Ben Crowe, director of Gemba, one of Australia's leading consultancy/communications agencies - and a keen Richmond fan - and Australian basketball coaching great Lindsay Gaze.
The stage one process will revolve around examining the applicants' leadership skills, their other personal qualities, as well as their coaching vision. Obviously, we'd also like some knowledge at that stage of their game plan and their overall football vision - both short-term and long-term.
Hopefully, we'll be ready by early August to filter down the list of candidates we'll be taking to stage two. It's at that time the two external sub-committee members (Crowe and Gaze) will be replaced by two highly-respected, former Richmond players in Emmett Dunne and Greg Stafford. Tiger president Gary March and directors Don Lord and Rob Dalton also will join the coaching sub-committee at stage two of the interview process, where football-situation analysis will be the main focus, along with some psychological profiling.
After that, we'd be in a position to take a short list of candidates to the Board for the final recommendation. Ultimately, this is a Board decision, but they will be receiving a recommendation from the coaching sub-committee.
I firmly believe we are an exciting prospect for a coach, with our young list and the structural plans we have in place for our football department. The successful coaching candidate will be stepping into a football department that will give him every chance to coach a thriving team. . .
At the end of this year, it's likely that we'll have more than the usual number of picks in the National Draft. Our intention is to go to this Draft and give our recruiters every opportunity to select talent. The same objective applies to the Rookie Draft a few weeks after that. The recruiters have to go out and recruit the best players, however, from a list-management and succession-planning viewpoint, we probably need to find a power forward. And, if we could snare another A-grade midfielder, we'd be pretty happy. We think our ruck stocks are quite good, with Tyrone Vickery and Andrew Browne coming through and Angus Graham showing significant improvement this season. Our defensive end is solid, with Luke McGuane, Kel Moore and Will Thursfield, along with young players such as Jayden Post and Alex Rance developing through there as well. Forward of centre, Matthew Richardson can't play forever. I'm certainly not retiring 'Richo', but we need to find a young power forward, who can step up when the Tiger great does eventually hang the boots up. And, you can never have enough A-grade midfielders, so that also will be high on our list of recruiting priorities.
It's worth pointing out that our recruiting department has been significantly boosted this year. Francis Jackson remains our Recruiting Manager, and he's been joined by two full-time recruiting officers, in Matthew Clarke and Richard Taylor. Both Matthew and Richard had been involved in recruiting on a part-time basis for more than 10 years. Not only do they bring experience to the role, but having them in a full-time working capacity gives us more resources to view games. It also enables us to start buidling a three-year knowledge base of young players before they become eligible for the Draft. In addition, being better resourced in recruiting, has allowed us to explore some of the other areas that we have not been able to in the past, such as the NSW scholarship program. Francis visited Ireland a few months back to investigate the possibility of us recruiting there, and we may have an Irish youngster come out and train with us at some stage later on in the year. Matthew Clarke went to Papua-New Guinea to watch their under-15 and under-16 championships, then saw them play against Queensland. He made good connections with Ray Hall, the former Richmond player, who's now up in New Guinea and helping out with their junior teams. There's an international scholarship program that we'll probably investigate as well. The main bonus of having the additional recruiters, is they can cover the country much better. You've got three sets of eyes to watching vision of players all week, so there basically won't be a player who goes through the system that we won't have seen or won't have good coverage of. It also allows us to build better relationships with second-tier clubs, second-tier coaches and team managers, so that we receive all the information we require. We've gone from 2005, where we didn't have a full-time recruiter, to now, this year, having three full-time recruiters, which is a significant step in the right direction for us.
