THE COLLINGWOOD/Mick Malthouse/Nathan Buckley coaching succession plan is ground breaking in many ways. Whether it is creating the firm foundation for a great construction or entering an unseen patch of quicksand will only be obvious in hindsight.
Seemingly Collingwood have got what they wanted all along. Malthouse will coach for now and Buckley, according to the plan, for the longer term future beginning in 2012. Of course plans can change and two years is an eternity in top level footy. A lot can change in one month let alone a couple of years.
Still the Magpies, as the saying goes, “have got their cake and are eating it too” but one downside has to be that this is a very expensive cake.
This is great fodder for AFL Player’s Association CEO Brendon Gale, who argues that players are not getting enough of the game's financial pie compared to off-field expenditure. The cost of Malthouse and Buckley probably equals about four All-Australian players.
I have written in this column before of the many changes taking place in footy that have been stimulated by the move to full-time professionalism.
Full-time players have required full-time coaching groups. The ultimate and most effective coaching model remains a work in progress.
The long-term role of Malthouse as Collingwood’s director of coaching could be the next progression in the off-field evolution. However, one suspects that the job description of this role is currently only a vague concept, a convenient and pliable but very well paid vehicle for a post handover role.
Over the next two seasons the working relationship and its ensuing effect on the Collingwood team and in fact the whole club will be intriguing for outsiders and challenging for those involved.
Will Bucks add sufficient value as an assistant to override the inevitable splitting of perceived power and authority between the incumbent and the successor?
We can be sure that both are men of immense strength and character. What will be required is great tact and sensitivity. The specific outlining of who does what and when, who says what and when, will need to be firmly established and agreed to.
Can it work to everyone’s advantage? Only time will tell. There is little downside for the successor but for the incumbent it gives a definite and final finish date.
The club is undertaking a delicate and potentially divisive arrangement.
I do not believe, in principle, that coaching succession plans are advisable in the intense public scrutiny that is part of the AFL scene.
Coaching reputations and fashion change with each month's results and very few succession plan timetables will survive a severe downturn in form.
If I believed that succession plans would work then I might still be coaching the Lions with Michael Voss as my assistant.
With full board approval, the succession plan scenario was given much consideration at the Brisbane Lions during the middle of 2008. I believed then and still do that if any two people could have made this romantic concept work then Vossy and I could have.
The fact that I moved on at the end of the season and Vossy became senior coach is a fair indication of my view that rather than stay around to mentor it is better to clear the decks and let the next in line take charge.
The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.
