For years, youth teams and local clubs have provided the stepping stones for retired players looking to a career in coaching.
But there is an increasing trend for players to step straight into assistant coaching roles at the top level.
Players such as former club captains Mark Bickley (Adelaide) and Scott Burns (Collingwood) have gone from being AFL players to assistant coaches without so much as a season of barking instructions from a local club box.
And in a shake-up of the coaching world, newly-appointed Brisbane Lions' coach Michael Voss has moved from player to senior coach in one giant leap.
Hawthorn and Carlton premiership-winning coach David Parkin says the landscape is changing as clubs understand the importance of evaluating coaching performance and effectiveness. In turn, new pathways to senior level coaching are emerging.
"There are something like 104 assistant coaches in the competition, which has gone from 48 since about 2003 or 2004," Parkin says.
"I reckon we've got 50 or 60 outstanding young men who could at any stage be given the opportunity [as a senior coach] and the good thing is that AFL has realised that it is a development task."
Parkin says the tendency to recycle coaches has gone, with the emergence of talented young people who have put in the hard work at local and state league levels.
"I think we're starting to understand that [need for] experience looking after your own team as well as understanding what needs to go into place at an AFL club," Parkin says.
Parkin's former charge at Carlton, Brett Ratten, is an example of a player who trod a well-worn path to senior coaching. After retiring from the game, he became an assistant with Melbourne before coaching a Victorian representative side, managing his own team in Victoria's Eastern Football League and then returning to the Blues to ultimately get the top job.
"Assistant coaching is a wonderful experience to have prior to coaching," Parkin says.
"But also at the same time controlling your own team on game day and your own development as reserve coaches do, who coach teams in the VFL or whatever, seems to be part of the ingredient as well."
The Brisbane Lions will challenge this formula through the appointment of Voss. Since retiring from the game, the Lions' favourite son has had limited coaching experience in a role with the AIS-AFL Academy while pursuing a career in the media.
Parkin says while the qualities Voss can bring to the role are numerous, the lack of that "essential ingredient" – experience – makes him anxious for the new coach.
"They (the Lions) would see what qualities he would bring to the role – the credentials he showed as a leader on the field – and were prepared to take the risk that he would develop.
"[But] there are certain personal attributes you've got to develop and certainly a lot of professional competencies which you need to develop as well. It's very hard to do that on the job."
Port Adelaide assistant coach Matthew Primus argues that while managing your own team might be valuable, experience isn't everything.
He says the modern player is equipped to step from an assistant at AFL level into a senior coaching position.
"If anything they're a bit more down the teaching-themselves path and knowing a bit more of how the game's played," he says.
The experience of players doing their own research on opposition and tactics means there is a growing pool of retirees well suited to moving straight into coaching at the highest level.
"I think some players during their career find out they enjoy that side of it and clubs are pretty quick to jump on them rather than lose them to someone else," Primus says.
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Registrations for the AFL 2009 National Coaching Conference are now open. The conference runs from Friday, January 30 to Sunday, February 1 at the MCG in Melbourne. It provides footy coaches with access to the most up-to-date Australian football coaching methods and practices. Find out more.
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