AS MELBOURNE sits down to pencil in the list of names to consider for its vacant coaching position, it can add Mark Williams, and with the approval of his current employer.

Greater Western Sydney coach Kevin Sheedy said on Tuesday that he wouldn't stand in the way of his senior assistant if he ended up being offered the senior coaching position with the Demons.

"I would like to keep Mark Williams because that's the reason I got him," Sheedy said. "You never stand in a coach's way, but I haven't spoken to Mark yet because this only happened yesterday. It has all happened so quickly."

Sheedy heaped plenty of praise on Williams, the Port Adelaide premiership coach of 2004, who has taken charge of the Giants' NEAFL side for most of this season and will have a major role with the club next season, its first in the AFL.

Some have likened the Sheedy-Williams arrangement with GWS to that of leading soccer teams, with Sheedy acting as the manager and Williams as the coach.

"Mark is a very good coach, probably better than half the coaches in the AFL who are coaching now. Two Grand Finals, one with an ordinary team and one that beat the Brisbane Lions, who had won three in a row. It's a damn good effort," he said.

Sheedy was speaking at the MCG following the launch of Kevin Bartlett's biography, KB: A Life In Football. He said he had yet to speak to Dean Bailey, the outgoing Melbourne coach, who played and coached under Sheedy at Essendon, but was planning to do so shortly.

"I didn't see the [Melbourne] game and I don't know the feeling around the club. Every club is a little bit different and handles pressure a little differently, but I think Dean Bailey is a very intelligent young man."

"When I got him back to Essendon, I thought he would be a very good coach and I'll give him a ring soon to have a chat soon and see how he's going."

When asked about Bailey's removal, Sheedy harked back to 1992 when Hawthorn beat Essendon by 160 points, in what turned out to be Bailey's final game as a player with the Bombers. A season and a bit after that, Essendon won the premiership.

"We were playing kids and I had to explain to the board that that's what we needed to do in order to become a good footy club again," he said.