Behind the scenes: The six key roles that make or break a footy club

With a few clubs going through tough times and pressure mounting on their coaches, the eternal question of where responsibility lies when a club is underperforming has been hotly debated.

Is the talent at the coach’s disposal to blame, or is it his inability to get the maximum out of those players?

I know two things to be true. One, you can’t win without talent, but having talent doesn’t guarantee that you win. Two, it’s never one thing that makes you win or lose; it’s always the sum of the parts.

As a starting point, judging the level of talent in an AFL club to even reach a comparison point is difficult. There are so many players, on the field (23) and on the list (roughly 44). At the extremes, it’s easy. “Snowy on the tram” can tell you the Brisbane Lions’ best 23 right now is better than Essendon’s.

But who can say definitively which list is better out of the Bulldogs and Hawthorn? The Dogs, who have an incredible top six but drop away a bit? Or the Hawks, with a few superstars and a more even spread? Melbourne or Richmond? The Tigers have unbelievable youth; Melbourne have Max Gawn. How many 18-year-old top-10 draft picks is Max worth?

All the Champion Data in the world will still leave you with a subjective call. And being people, we all value things slightly differently and see things wildly differently.

Which brings us to off the field, where development takes over. What you see from your players on the weekend is always a reflection of what happens off field during the week. Once you think about it, that bit is obvious. The club recruits the players, coaches the players, gets the players fit, teaches them to lead and so on. So the people in charge of your club are always ultimately responsible for the performances you see.

As fans, we want to blame the players, which I understand; they’re the bozos kicking when they should handball and handballing when they should kick. But once you yell at them a bit, always remember it’s the club that picks the player, hardly ever the player who picks the club.

The coach is the most important person in the football club, by a margin. He sets the tone for the team, the football department and the club. He sets the game plan and empowers his coaches to deliver it. He is also the frontman for the club. For every interview the CEO does, the coach does 20. He is the one talking to supporters.

I’d have the CEO and general manager of football next in line in the importance stakes. The CEO is critical as they often choose the coach, with the GM, but then they clear all obstacles out of the way for the football department to get to work. The GM is important because they clear the way for the coach to be at his best. Coaching the team and managing the coaches is an enormous job, so not getting involved in areas that don’t help the scoreboard is important.

Damien Hardwick has many strengths but one of his greatest is that he knows that while he has enormous capacity, there is still a limit to that. So anything he sees as outside this realm he leaves to the GM and others.

Last season at the Suns we were hiring a head physiotherapist, a critical role. I asked Damien what involvement he’d like to have. “Tell me their name once you’ve chosen them,” he said with a grin. He wasn’t in any way diminishing the role they played, he just trusted others to deliver and knew he had other more pressing issues to deal with. It is a skill he’s developed with experience.

Often people talk about the four key people at a football club: chair, CEO, GM of football and coach. I’d make it six and include the list manager and the head of high performance. Former AFL chief Andrew Demetriou may scoff on his croissant at the thought of the “phys-edders” being important, but what has always been an important role has become absolutely critical.

Player availability is crucial to top-four success and that sits largely with the high-performance team. The coach has a say in this as well as he sets the training drills, but he must trust his high-performance boss or his mind will stray from what his job requires.

My sense is the margin between the fittest and the least fit teams in the competition is quite low, but the availability of players is absolutely critical to success.

The club with the best player availability over the past three seasons has one of the lower-profile high-performance managers. The Suns’ Alex Rigby, who has been in the role for seven seasons, is the best I’ve seen. Why? He was a mad triathlete, finishing in the top 100 in the Hawaii Iron Man. This gives him intimate knowledge of the pain the best athletes need to feel in training and how far the body can be pushed. He has a physio degree, and the relationships he builds with his players are as strong as I’ve seen from a person in that role.

The president? They do so much in a strategic sense, but from the football department I’d ask of them, “In good times challenge us, and in tough times support us.” The right words in the corridor or on the phone can mean so much … as can the wrong words. I’ve only had good experiences in this space.

Which brings us to the list manager. Leigh Matthews, who could coach a bit, said, “The better players I have, the better I coach.” Leigh is smart, so list management is crucial.

As for the coach, they cop it too harshly when they lose and don’t get enough praise when they win. It comes with being the most important person at the club.

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