RHYCE SHAW'S AFL coaching career is still in its embryonic stages, but he already has a chance to create history.
If Shaw can inspire North Melbourne to an upset win over Greater Western Sydney on Sunday, he will achieve a 30-year high for interim coaches.
In the history of the AFL/VFL there have been 85 interim coaches, but just five have won their first three games in charge.
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A victory over the Giants at Blundstone Arena would make Shaw the first to do it since 1989.
Since being handed the reins at Arden Street after Brad Scott's departure, the former Sydney assistant coach has raced to a 2-0 record following wins over Richmond and Gold Coast.
A Giant-killing effort in Hobart would lift Shaw to equal third on the all-time list, behind only Carlton great Fred 'Pompey' Elliott's record of seven successive wins as stand-in captain-coach after replacing the legendary Jack Worrall in 1909, and Allan Everett's six straight wins as stop-gap Geelong captain-coach in 1940, and alongside three-win wonders in Essendon's Syd Barker in 1922 and caretaker extraordinaire Alex Jesaulenko, who performed the feat at Carlton in both 1978 (as captain-coach) and 1989 (non-playing coach).*
To eclipse Elliott's 110-year record, Shaw would then have to guide the Kangaroos to an extraordinary run of wins over Collingwood (at Marvel Stadium), St Kilda (Blundstone Arena), Essendon (Marvel Stadium), Brisbane (Gabba) and West Coast (Optus Stadium).
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Of the 24 interim coaches this century, four have started with back-to-back wins but none have completed a hat-trick. Aside from Shaw, they are Peter Rohde (Western Bulldogs 2002-03), Mark Bickley (Adelaide 2011) and Mark Harvey (Brisbane 2013).
Carlton's fill-in coach David Teague enjoyed a first-up win over Brisbane in round 12 after the sacking of Brendon Bolton, but fell short against the Western Bulldogs on Saturday night.
With Shaw to plot against his younger brother, Giants veteran Heath Shaw, it's set to be just the 12th instance of a coach having a brother playing on the opposing team. The most recent case was in 2009 when Jade Rawlings was a stand-in coach at Richmond against his brother Brady's club North Melbourne. Prior to that we have to go way back to 1949.
The Bulldogs have had the most caretaker coaches – 13. At the other end of the scale, West Coast and Greater Western Sydney are the only clubs not to have had one.
Geelong hasn't appointed a stand-in coach since Everett in 1940 – the longest current stretch among clubs.
* This excludes cases of temporary interim coaches appointed due to illness or unavailability, such as Brendon Bolton winning all five games at the helm at Hawthorn in 2014 when Alastair Clarkson was suffering from Guillain-Barré syndrome.
- Sources: AFL statisticians and historians Stephen Rodgers and Col Hutchinson
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