Respect adds to rivalry
CAIRNS Saints and Port Douglas will go to war for 100 minutes this afternoon at Cazlays Stadium to decide the 2018 AFL Cairns premier.
Once the 44 players cross the white line, it will be the fiercest contest that you will see all year in the competition.
But, in the lead-up to the 2018 grand final, reigning premiership coach Brad Cooper has paid the ultimate compliment to their opponents this afternoon — he used Saints as his blueprint to build their current AFL Cairns dynasty that may yield a third flag today.
Cooper, a former player at the Crocs, was appointed coach at the start of the 2012 season as Saints were in the midst of a dream run — winning flags in ’ 08, ’ 09 and ’ 10, before going again that year and again in ’13, when his club had not won one since 2005.
The Griffiths Park-based club built its success on shrewd recruiting, selecting players and coaches on their personality and demeanour, instead of just playing ability, as well as their interest in buying into the club’s building culture.
Cooper saw what Saints had built and immediately went to work on implementing similar practices at Port.
“Saints were focused on what they were doing, in regards to their culture, they did not have many idiots at the club,” Cooper said.
“They built a strong culture through a leadership group and they taught their new blokes the Saints way.
“It is about strong leadership and buy-in.
“It is a different environment up here to other parts of Australia and I saw straight away Saints had that Ballarat connection, and we have done the same thing through Horsham in Victoria.”
Of course, there are always outliers, with both Port and Saints punting quality players in recent seasons for poor behaviour away from the field, with the Crocs imposing a club suspension on a player earlier this season.
Former Saints coach and committee member Mark Kennedy, who coached between 2006-2009, which included back-to-back flags in 08-09, says he lived by the motto of “good people get good results”.
“We were big on looking back at that history we had and retaining that strength,” Kennedy said.
“Other clubs were always scratching their heads about how we got good-quality people, who were not wanting to play for money, they wanted to play for each other.
“It has grown immensely since, with juniors and netball coming on board. It is a healthy club environment.”
While it was easy to have an idea to copy Saints’ strategies at Port Douglas, it was obviously going to be much tougher to implement.
The now Geelong-based Kennedy viewed the Crocs as a club that recruited for oneyear rentals when he coached in the Far North, instead of taking a longer-term view, as Saints did with their Ballarat connection that is still landing influential imports today.
“Port may have relied on big recruits if they were going to have a good year or not, rather than players that remain for three or four years, which is like a decade if you put that in the context of Cairns footy,” Kennedy said.
The Crocs returned to the summit in 2014 and are searching for three premierships in a row today, and Cooper appreciates the journey his club has been on.
“It was full-on for a few years teaching that, and on the back of that we started to get strong,” Cooper said.
“Following on from that, the players then become the coaches out on the ground and they teach the others that come up every year. “It builds and builds. “We recruit guys who are suited to our town, then we look at how good a footballer they are.
“How they play is secondary to how they fit in.”
Since Saints entered the competition in 1993, the premiership Cup usually resides with them or at Port Douglas, with 13 won by Saints and five for the Crocs.
David Williams, Saints’ president in the 2010 flag, says today’s Saints squad and com- mittee share the same ethics that were passed on to him.
“A set of values has been passed on from coach to coach, or from a different committee member to another,” Williams said.
“Mark Kennedy was a huge driver of that, he developed a strong culture, as well as the bond of mateship and players wanting to play for each other.
“We created an environment of everyone being wel- come, but we did not have too many idiots come through the door, and if they did, they did not hang around for very long.
“I would like to think we played hard footy, but we also played fair footy.”
The mutual respect between the clubs has come full circle, according to Saints defender Kieran Daley, with Saints having a rough trot the last two years, but are back on the rise.
“Port are the benchmark now and we need to match them,” Daley said. “We have worked hard recruiting and teaching our players to get to their level and the level we were on in previous years.”