SNARING STUEY
STUART Dew was enjoying lunch by the water with his family at the famous Sails restaurant in Noosa when he received the phone call that sealed his position as the Gold Coast Suns’ head coach.
It was early October 2017, and he was hanging on every phone call, but he had no time to fret as time ticked beyond the 24-hour time frame in which he was told to expect a decision.
“With young kids there is not much time to be preoccupied,” Dew said.
“I was on pool duty for about six hours that day, throwing the kids up and down in the water, so it was easy to keep busy.”
Dew had given his second and final pitch to Suns chief executive Mark Evans and board members Tony Cochrane, Paul Scurrah, Martin Rowland and Simon Bennett.
The man who won AFL premierships as a player for Port Adelaide and Hawthorn and while an assistant coach at Sydney decided to spend the waiting period holidaying in Noosa.
Finally, mid-meal, Evans rang.
“Once I saw his name my heart started racing and I became very hopeful,” Dew said.
“Mark asked if I could get on a flight back to Queensland but I was able to tell him I was nearby and could drive down the highway.”
Dew accepted the threeyear offer to replace Rodney Eade as coach at the Suns’ Carrara headquarters.
Celebrations were in order, but by the time Dew and some of his new colleagues arrived in Broadbeach for dinner it was about 10.30pm with few places open.
They managed to find somewhere they could buy a couple of beers and the journey began.
Dew was the Suns’ third coach in seven years, following inaugural coach Guy McKenna and then Eade.
This was another club reset, and with pressure on to gain some traction on field, Evans had to get it right.
Only new to the club himself, Evans knew what it needed and began searching for the coach who best fit the bill.
Most of what he sought were standard character traits in coaches, but he specifically needed someone who could unite a group of players and staff and commit them to each other, to their coach and to a football club.
The coach needed to be able to set up the right processes and procedures so the team could play a modern style of football.
Evans set up informal coffee catch-ups at cafes around Australia with well over a dozen candidates.
Some were experienced coaches and some, like Dew, were yet to get their first chances to take on head coaching roles at AFL clubs.
A host of those conversations didn’t progress, either by Gold Coast’s decisions or the candidates’.
The Suns boss already knew Dew from their time at Hawthorn, and it made for an open discussion.
Evans needed to work out where Dew was at in his coaching journey, what his strengths were, what he wanted to develop, and what support he needed.
“The thing that convinced me that he could be a chance is that in a very short time frame of meeting someone, they quickly feel like he is on their side and can generate great bonds with people,” Evans said.
Evans then ran a series of first-round interviews in Melbourne and decided on a shortlist of three men.
Each of the trio came to Queensland to conduct a second interview in front of the club directors.
Dew impressed again, highlighting a staged development of players and showing a clear understanding of the emerging AFL market and how he would get people excited about the team and club.
The three candidates could not be easily separated, but a flood of support for Dew by references got him over the line, with all of them saying similar things.
“We knew about his footy smarts, we knew he had a desire to improve himself and we knew he had this capacity to be a magnet to people who want to commit to a cause,” Evans said. “Those things came through strongly from almost everyone we spoke to about him.”