Cats coach needs to get to know his young players if he wants the club to succeed
AFTER 23 rounds of the home-andaway season and three weeks of finals, it all comes down to this.
Two teams, West Coast and Collingwood, to face off in Saturday’s grand final for the right to be crowned 2018 premiers.
It is remarkable when you look back at what was being said about both of these clubs before the season.
Players, captains and coaches were questioned, lists were analysed and written off, and neither were given much hope of achieving anything of note in the ensuing six months.
But something changed between September last year and the start of this season, which manifested itself in the way these two teams played their football in 2018.
Nathan Buckley and Adam Simpson have both previously been seen as two of the more serious people in football and yet 12 months on, their transformed personas have been embraced by the people who should matter most — their players.
Listen to the words of Will Hoskin-Elliott in the rooms after Collingwood’s preliminary final win against Richmond on Friday night.
“I think the coaches have opened up more,” Hoskin-Elliott said.
“The leadership group takes control in our divisional meetings but there is a very close bond between coaches and players.
“The coaches are really approachable and easy to get along with this year.”
Go back a week and consider what West Coast ruckman Nathan Vardy, a former Geelong player who struggled to get any consistency with his body in his seven years at Kardinia Park, had to say about Simpson.
“He knows more about me as a player and a person in my two years here than probably the coaches at Geelong knew the whole time I was there,” Vardy said.
It is also understood that Scott was not in attendance for several of the recent exit interviews, which raised the eyebrows of a former senior coach no longer at club land.
“The thing with Simmo is he wants to know the person, and help the person just as much as he wants to help the player.”
These are players who have helped drive the change in their team’s fortunes on the field, but have been inspired by what they have seen and heard off it from men who are paid to lead and provide motivation.
But coaches are not merely in the role to give guidance to players about what they need to do in order to be successful at their job from week to week. They are also employed to build and develop meaningful relationships with those very players, whose performances are reflections of their work.
The blueprint was there for all to see after Richmond triumphed last year on the back of its HHH (hardship, highlight, hero) program, where coaches and players poured their hearts out to each other from early in the pre-season in order to create a deeper connection.
So on the back of the success that these coaches have had since becoming more accessible and more open with their players, it is difficult moving forward to see how Geelong coach Chris Scott would not at least consider adopting a similar approach.
Scott is incredibly close with the core group of senior players at Geelong, including Joel Selwood, Harry Taylor and Tom Hawkins.
But his relationship with numerous others is nowhere near as strong.
Of most note is the lack of communication between the senior coach and young players, some of whom he has barely spoken with in their time at the club.
Clearly, Vardy is one player who felt something was missing in his time with the Cats.
It is also understood that Scott was not in attendance for several of the recent exit interviews, which raised the eyebrows of a former senior coach no longer at the club.
Coaches possess an almighty presence and yield unquestionable power at football clubs, so their influence can never be questioned.
But their disposition is mirrored by their players, and as Magpies president Eddie McGuire said on Friday night, the changed atmosphere at Collingwood this year had clearly worked.
“Everyone is relaxed and we are all having fun,” McGuire said.
“There is an air of calmness and fun at our club at the moment and that is all due to Nathan Buckley, Geoff Walsh and the other coaches.”
There is no doubt that Scott can coach, but the list that Geelong has built since the end of 2015 should have achieved more than it has, so questions need to be asked about what is happening off the field.
Perhaps becoming more accessible, opening up to players, participating in open dialogue and accepting that his communication style might need to change could just be the first step towards transforming the onfield results in 2019.