FORMER Essendon champion Matthew Lloyd says St Kilda captain Nick Riewoldt has to 'reinvent' his football if he is to show that his best is not behind him.
Lloyd, who retired partly because of a reluctance to reinvent his own football when told by coach Matthew Knights he would have to move further up the field, writes in his Sunday Age column that Riewoldt looks like he's having about as much fun out on the football field as a young child being dragged along to a Sunday Mass".
He said Riewoldt had been "worked out" by opposition teams.
"He is running into so many numbers with the way the game is currently being played; he is being double- and triple-teamed as Chris Tarrant and Ben Reid did," Lloyd wrote.
"Rarely has Riewoldt been running into an open space as he has for most of his career. Now he's running into another pack of players and he's struggling to adapt.
"Riewoldt has only won 31 per cent of his possession in the forward 50 and is averaging just one contested mark a match, his worst return since 2003. In a game that is so heavily weighted towards winning the contested possession, Riewoldt is struggling to win any contested ball at ground level or in the air. "
Lloyd wrote that improving his contested marking over summer would make Riewoldt 'relevant' again.
"Riewoldt needs a summer of one-on-one contested marking and being worked over when the ball is coming in his direction in a pack situation," he wrote.
Age shall not weary them
AFL Coaches' Association chief executive Danny Frawley has hit out at clubs for their apparent youth obsession in appointing coaches.
He told the Sunday Herald Sun the trend towards chasing young assistant coaches for senior roles rather than experienced and successful older leaders bucked a trend in world sport.
"I don't think you can put a birthdate on whether you can coach or not," he said.
"(Manchester United manager) Alex Ferguson is almost 70 and (former Chicago Bulls and LA Lakers NBA coach) Phil Jackson coached into his 60s.
"I know the systems are different, but the reality at the moment is that we have only one senior coach who is over 50, and that's just wrong.
"We have all been seduced by getting younger coaches and buying some time. But most senior executives of companies only come into their own in their 50s."
After the departure of 53-year-old Western Bulldogs coach Rodney Eade this week, Collingwood's Mick Malthouse, 58, is the senior coach in his 50s.
And he, of course, will be handing the reins - somewhat reluctantly - to 'young' Nathan Buckley, 39, after the end of the season.
The one-man-out next year will be Kevin Sheedy, 63, who will coach Greater Western Sydney in its inaugural season.
"I still think Mick Malthouse is the best coach in it, and he may coach again somewhere down the track," Frawley said.
"But Rodney Eade and Mark Williams are good coaches too, and they have great records."
For the record, Frawley, a former Richmond coach, is 47.
Sheeds the spy
And speaking of Sheedy, was the cunning old master on a spying mission when he sat behind the Hawthorn interchange bench at Etihad Stadium on Friday night?
The Hawks would certainly like to know, with football manager Mark Evans telling The Sunday Age he would review Channel Seven's footage of Sheedy's activities to "see what he was doing".
Sheedy parked himself in the row immediately behind the Hawthorn bench - from which Alastair Clarkson was coaching the team - and was filmed taking notes, which the newspaper's Jon Pierik speculated were "presumably of the Hawks' rotations and other moves on the interchange bench".
"He also took photographs, with one suggestion they were of the computer screens [on which] the Hawks showed their resting players how much game time they had logged and when they should have another breather."
Evans said he initially thought Sheedy had been working for Seven.
''I am not really going to make a fuss of something that I don't really understand, but I will probably go and watch the Channel Seven tape to see what he was doing. It's a pretty low fuss for me but I am reserving my judgment a little bit because I don't know what was going on.''
The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs
