Upbeat: Bulldogs chairman Peter Gordon. Photo: Getty Images
Peter Gordon's extraordinarily upbeat version of just how the financially struggling Western Bulldogs had terminated a senior coach's position with two years remaining on his contract demonstrated yet again how this game and its leaders can spin just about anything.
Particularly when those leaders come equipped with a fierce intellect and a good grasp of the English language. Thursday, October 9, 2014 will be recorded as the day the captain walked away from the Whitten Oval because he had lost faith in his coach - a shock move that led to that coach's resignation. And yet Gordon described the above as "an inspiring day for me".
Gordon described media commentary surrounding player power and suggestions that the coach had lost the players as harking back to "aphorisms of the 1960s" - convenient cliches not reflective of the modern complexities of the AFL. We would suggest it was actually pretty simple - the timing of Brendan McCartney's "resignation" pointed to a board responding finally to a player revolt.
And Gordon, having declared late on Thursday that he had no intention of indulging Ryan Griffen, was extolling his leadership qualities by Friday morning. Surely that ship had well and truly sailed.
Finally - and ridiculously - the Bulldogs chairman warned players of the sanctity of contracts, stressing that careful thought must be put into those written agreements. This from the club that had less than one year ago extended McCartney's contract until the end of 2016 when he already had one year remaining.
Even allowing for the context of this calamitous AFL spring and the fact Gordon had members and sponsors to whom an upbeat explanation was required, it was a fairly incredible performance.
That relations between coach and players had eroded with such finality only during the second half of 2014 - as Gordon claimed perhaps in justifying the contract extension - defied belief.
The club had strongly suspected for some time that McCartney was exactly what Geelong had had in mind for him several years earlier - an inspired developer of young talent - but not the coach to lead the Bulldogs into the top four. Any plan for a smooth transition of that sort in the future was prevented by the Griffen walk-out.
It is now impossible to deny the brutal effects of player power upon the AFL club system. A combination of free agency and the notion of "destination" clubs across Australia all boasting different qualities and temptations for different players, have intensified the fragility of that landscape.
Only at one club - Essendon - has player power failed to yet force or at least strongly influence the sacking of the coach James Hird. This despite the fact that the Bombers' star ruckman/forward Paddy Ryder could finish up leaving Essendon for no return because of the welfare failings of coach and club. With each passing day at Essendon it seems a new crack emerges.
Ryder has publicly declared how the club has let him down, that he has lost faith after 20 months of empty assurances from Essendon, and how the drugs program Hird allowed had led him to fear for his unborn son. Tellingly, Ryder would not support the coach who hangs on to his job due to a series of legal threats.
Player power was not enough to stop the injection program and various other potentially dangerous treatments to young footballers. It has become clear the treatment afforded the players was reflective of a jab-happy chemical environment in which coaches, executives, trainers and other staffers indulged - too many of whom remain at Essendon.
That Hird allowed it and still fails to see how badly he let down his players is so disappointing. While the coach continues his fight to suppress the truth, his chairman, having told him he would be sacked, has at least temporarily backed down.
This has led to the inevitable conclusion that James Hird is bigger than the club. Perhaps it was this very aura that stopped players from putting a stop to the experimental treatment that sees 34 of them facing playing bans for doping.
At the Gold Coast, the Suns appear to be harbouring misgivings about rushing to employ Mark Thompson as senior coach. The AFL denies having influenced those second thoughts despite the competition's concerns regarding Thompson's unpredictable behaviour.
Some of the Suns players were schoolboys when Guy McKenna became their coach. As those boys became men, a significant number no longer believed McKenna was the right man to develop them. This was a view not exactly shut down by the still-unsigned captain Gary Ablett - and McKenna was sacked.
Despite the mitigated, low, six-figure payout, the fact that the AFL's golden child has blown that sort of money remains a poor reflection on the competition. But it is a drop in the ocean compared with the millions wasted by club boards over the past five years.
Too many clubs - so many of them surviving on equalisation funding - have signed up coaches on extended contracts without truly examining the style of the men to whom they are committing.
The new football-department tax should prove one deterrent in future, as will the new coaching-accreditation scheme. But surely the competition should mandate at the very least a best-practice guide for boards with little football expertise as they commit small fortunes and extended contracts to coaches only for the players to ultimately rebel.
At Adelaide, the Brenton Sanderson removal was more shambolic. Again the players had lost faith in the coach - a coach whose contract had been extended some 10 months earlier. If chairman Rob Chapman and his power-broking director Mark Ricciuto acted to secure stars like Rory Sloane and Patrick Dangerfield, then they made a hash of it by citing those players and others when they sacked the coach.
Sanderson was reportedly told about some of the negative feedback emanating from the Crows' on-field stars - a fact relayed back to the disenchanted players, who felt their trust had been breached by the board.
The warning bells had been ringing for some time that McCartney was about to fall victim to a senior player revolt - bells repeatedly but inadequately muted by both Gordon and his CEO Simon Garlick.
Brendan McCartney had no cachet in the marketplace and had achieved no ladder success as a coach and yet in many other ways his situation has mirrored by that of Nathan Buckley, in whom Collingwood has invested so much and can afford - unlike the low-key, often unnoticed Bulldogs - a few lean seasons.
That senior players have walked out of both clubs says much about those players, but also about the coaches' inability to win them over with their own unique brands of tough love. But Collingwood has called Dayne Beams' bluff while the Bulldogs could not do the same with Griffen.
So, in a season where no coach came out of contract, three have gone with Hird surely the next to go. It is too simple, as Gordon said on Friday, to alone blame the growing momentum of free agency because strong cases can be made for all three departures.
But nor is it an "aphorism of the 1960s" to suggest that in all three cases the coach had lost his senior players and the players - as usual - won.
35 comments so far
More comments
New user? Sign up
Make a comment
You are logged in as [Logout]
All information entered below may be published.
Thank you
Your comment has been submitted for approval.
Comments are moderated and are generally published if they are on-topic and not abusive.