PEOPLE AND POTENTIAL

QYou have been a well-regarded assistant coach in the AFL system for the past five or so years and seem to have been selective in terms of stepping up to a senior job. (It was reported Dew was in the running for the Brisbane Lions, Melbourne and Carlton senior coaching jobs but did not enter those races.) What stood out about the Gold Coast job that made you chase it?

AA lot of it is about timing and that is from my end as well as a footy club. When you come into a job like this, you want to be really aligned on the way in because it is a ruthless business. If you are not aligned as a coach and a club from the start, it is going to be hard yards. The fit that I liked with the Gold Coast was that it is a great opportunity and it is not very often you get to do “firsts” with teams. There is the opportunity for us here to be the first consistent performers on the Gold Coast in terms of a sporting code. But, focusing on the AFL alone, the challenge is there for us to work our way up the ladder. We finished 17th last year, which is really disappointing for the footy club and for the competitive part of me, there is that challenge to build the team up. Suns CEO Mark Evans ( pictured) was a big positive for me when looking at the job, I knew him well from our time at Hawthorn. The alignment off the field is as important as the one on it. Personally, a few things lined up where I saw myself on my coaching journey after a great grounding at Sydney, where I spent eight years under a couple of great coaches. I felt it was my time to take the reins. Mark is a real people person and ultimately football is a people business. We are really keen to maximise people’s potential.