I rate Brett Ratten the best of the Midfield Coaches, so it will be interesting to see what difference he makes to Hannebery, and St Kilda, as a whole.
I have been interested in the impact of assistant coaches and how they cane turn teams around (and winning teams equals more SC points for their players normally)
In doing so I came across this post from June 2016 in BF. This is not the entire post as it is quite big but I found it very interesting. The poster is replying to a someone querying Ken Hinckley and the impact of the Port coaching team and compares Port to Clarkson and Hawthorn.
8 as a minimum but 10+ years is my definition of a preferred senior assistant, which is a combo of coaching your own side + being an AFL assistant coach. The coaching your own side bit is important, because you don't want too many professional assistant coaches in the box, and you only want a long term professional senior assistant who hasn't coached his own side, if he is known for his strategic thinking skills and isn't necessarily a great man manager to be a head coach eg Walsh, who had no desire to be the main man until he had a near death experience in Peru post 2012 season, his wife shortly after that got cancer, that's why he decided to move back to Adelaide, and then decided life is too short, so why not give it a go. Unfortunately fate dealt him a terrible hand.
Let's look at Hawthorn. Clarkson was born in 1968, Hinkley in 1966. When Clarkson started at the Hawks he had 2 guys with 8 years experience of coaching their own side and then moving into an AFL assistant roles in former Hawk
Andy Collins - who was already an assistant at the club, and he drafted former Kangaroos player
Ross Smith who was a team mate of Clarkson when he played at the Roos. Then Hardwick pinched Ross Smith at the end of 2011 ie his second year at Richmond so Hardwick had a 15 year senior assistant coach for the 2012 season. Collins coached Box Hill for a couple of years as part of the Hawks set up and then moved on to be Coburg coach which was part of the Richmond affiliation for a couple of years before taking over as West Adelaide Coach. Collins likes being in charge of his sides as he is coaching stand alone VFL side Williamstown who won the VFL flag last year, which was his second year in charge.
Clarkson also recruited
Hardwick straight after he was appointed and Hardwick had just retired. He appointed
Todd Viney who was a team mate of Clarkson at Melbourne, had spent his first year post retirement at Melbourne in 2000 and then went and coached his own side for 4 years in Echuca. That's where and when the Ollie and Jay Viney's friendship was established.
Clarkson pinched sports scientist Andrew Russell from Port but he also appointed another sports scientist from the AIS,
Dath Rath to be a general sports coach, including his teaching skill acquisition talents. Rath like Russell, is still at the Hawks.
So from day 1 Clarkson had a nice blend of youth and plenty of experience in his coaching box.
So during the 2005 and 2006 seasons he had 2 assistants with 8 to 10 years experience. Between 2007 and 2011 season he had a 10+ year veteran in Ross Smith as his senior assistant and over the years he has refreshed his box with plenty of experience as well as inexperienced coaches.
For 2006 he adds
Damien Christensen to his coaching group who has coached the Geelong Falcons for 6 years to replace
Andy Collins and he coaches Box Hill. Christensen had been a recruiting officer for Port in 1998-99, would have worked with Pelchen and that would have been a nice link for Pelchen to recommend him to the group.
For 2007
Geoff Morris is added to the group, another Port man, who had coached his own side in the SANFL for 3 years before joining Port and then had a decade at Port as a development coach and general assistant coach.
For 2008
Barry Mitchell comes in to coach Box Hill Hawks replacing
Christensen. Mitchell retired at end of 1996 at Carlton was their runner for several years before becoming assistant coach in 2000.
Chris Fagan is added to the list to make 7 assistants who came in as head of development, was a mate of Clarko's at Melbourne and had been both an assistant coach from the start of Neale Daniher's tenure in 1998 to the end of 2004 season and then Melbourne's football manager.
So comparing apples for apples with Ken, in his 4th year of coaching Clarkson had as support:
Ross Smith his 12th year as a coach or AFL assistant coach
Todd Viney in his 9th year as a coach or AFL assistant coach
Damien Hardwick 4th year as an AFL assistant coach
Geoff Morris 15th year as a coach or AFL assistant coach
Barry Mitchell 9th year as an AFL assistant or coach of his own side
Chris Fagan 7th year as an assistant coach
Dath Rath 4th year as an AFL assistant coach + many years at the AIS.
They win the flag, they start getting raided, but they still keep putting good quality new and experienced coaches into the box.
For 2009 Clarko adds
John Barker, Brendan Bolton, Chris Flood, Rick McGowan and out go
Todd Viney back to Melbourne,
Geoff Morris to the recruiting department,
Barry Mitchell to Fremantle. Barker had 2 years at St Kilda as an assistant to Ross Lyon. Bolton was a captain coach in Tassie winning a flag in 2003 in his first year as a 24 year old captain coach of North Hobart and was given the Box Hill job, Flood was a development coach at the Bombers 1999-2003 Coached the Coburg Tigers (Richmond) in 2004-05 and then Calder Cannons in TAC cup. McGowan had coached Sturt for the previous 2 years and played under Clarko at Centrals. So in 2009 the coaching group was regenerated with some younger guys but there was still plenty of experience in such a big box.
For 2010 Clarko adds recently retired
Adam Simpson another Clarko team mate from his time at the Roos and
John Wardrop - who has 15 years experience as an opposition analyst at West Coast 1994-99, Collingwood 2000-2007. He was the first ever full time opposition analyst employed by an AFL club. Out goes
Hardwick who got the Richmond job.
For 2011 Clarko adds
Leon Cameron who finished playing in 2003 and spent the next 7 years as an assistant at the Bulldogs. Out goes
Barker to Carlton as an assistant coach and not sure where
McGowan went to.
For 2012 Clarko adds
Luke Beveridge who has been coaching since 2000. He started his career at St Bede's Mentone Tigers in the Vic Amo's and took the C, B and A Grade premierships in 3 consecutive seasons. He spent 2009 and 2010 at Collingwood and had 2011 off. Out goes
Ross Smith to Richmond and takes his 15 years experience.
For 2013 Clarko adds
Brett Ratten and
Cameron Bruce. Out goes
Leon Cameron to get ready to coach GWS and
Chris Flood. Ratten was an assistant coach at Melbourne in 2004 his first year after retirement, then coached his own team in the Eastern FL ie Norwood FC, returned to Carlton as an assistant in 2007, ended up coaching the last few games after Pagan got sacked and lasted until late in 2012, so came to Hawthorn with 9 years experience inc head coach and 120 games under his belt. Cameron Bruce retired mid 2012 at the Hawks and became a coach straight away - replacing development coach David Flood officially at the end of 2012.
For 2014 Clarko adds
Damian Carroll and
Adam Yze. He loses
Adam Simpson to coach WCE and
Chris Fagan became Footy Ops manager during 2013 when Mark Evans left and became AFL head of Footy Ops. Damian Carroll had a couple of years coaching the Gippsland Power in the TAC cup and then was appointed Box Hill Coach for 2010 season and won the flag in 2013. Adam Yze In 2012 and 2013 was a part time kicking and goal kicking coach at the Hawks before getting a full time gig.
For 2015 Clarko adds
Rob McCartney and out goes
Luke Beveridge to coach the Western Bulldogs. McCartney has spent over a decade of coaching his own sides in Vic country leagues inc Goulburn Valley and Central Murray leagues. And keeping to the teaching theme, Clarko is an ex teacher, McCartney has over 20 years experience as a teacher and school principal and is made head of development. I started looking closely at the Hawks coaching structure under Clarko's tenure about a month ago, when I heard Mark McClure on ABC radio with Stan Alves, talk about Clarko's coaching group structure, his teaching background and McCartney in particular and compared it to Collingwood's coaching group who are made up of only ex players who have never worked outside the AFL industry, ie gone from playing to assistant coach and never coached their own teams.
For 2016 Clarko adds
Chris Newman, loses
Brendon Bolton to Carlton and
John Wardrop retires. Clarko continuing his trend of having adding recently retired player to the box every year or every second year.
You can do a similar exercise for Geelong since 2000 and Bomber was coach and see a similar pattern. Port has openly said we are copying the Hawthorn and Geelong models. Well to be successful we have to do more than try and copy their drafting and trading patterns, we also should look at how they have made sure their are plenty of talented and long term experienced people in their coaching group than aren't in and out like a dirty brown trout!