The former Collingwood captain and champion, who has been an assistant coach with the Magpies for the past six years, explained reasons behind the club’s decision to establish it’s own stand-alone reserves team and end it’s eight-year alignment with VFL club Williamstown.
“Even though the (Collingwood-Williamstown) alignment was a fantastic alignment for us and a great partnership, this was probably another step in the direction of developing our players and having full control over our senior list,” Brown said at the Lexus Centre on Tuesday.
“When the opportunity came about we jumped at it, and we think it’s going to be really beneficial for the club.”
Having worked under Mick Malthouse for the best part of this decade, Brown, who played 255 games between 1987-2000, including the 1990 premiership, and won three Copeland trophies, is excited about having his own team.
“When (former Collingwood assistant coach and Williamstown senior coach) Brad Gotch moved on, I jumped at the opportunity.
“It was a fantastic opportunity for myself and it’s fantastic for the club, because we get to develop our players to their fullest potential and have total control over them.”
A huge amount of work went into making the decision to enter a stand-alone team in the VFL, and Brown explained the process behind selecting supplementary list players to represent the Collingwood reserves.
From the 45 players who have trialled with the club over the last few months in the hope of being given the opportunity to wear the black and white stripes in the VFL competition, 11 will be selected as primary list VFL players, while a further 10 will be on the club’s VFL rookie list.
The club will submit its final lists to the VFL on March 10, with Brown admitting it’s been a huge job trialling and selecting the best 21 players for the club.
“The primary list of 11 are the players we choose from when we need to top up the VFL side,” Brown added.
“When that 11 have been used up then we’re allowed to go into our rookie list of 10. Basically, that primary list of 11 will play most of the games, and the rookie list will also get a few opportunities as well.
“So it’s a massive task really. It’s a pretty tough job to pick, but we’ve had really good numbers, and it gives us a chance to pick the best 21 out of that group of 44, 45 players that have trained with us.”
While selecting players has been a massive job, Brown has also been working closely with a new staff member at Collingwood, the recently retired two-time Copeland Trophy winner Paul Licuria, to select all the part-time and voluntary support staff.
“Some of the full time staff at the club at the moment are going to be involved, but we’ve got runners, time-keepers, scoreboard attendants and statisticians, match day managers and all the rest of it, so we’ve done all that, we’ve picked our staff, a terrific staff.”
Licuria has been employed as VFL football manager, and Brown is “rapt” to have his former team mate on board.
“Paul is VFL manager as well as helping Walshy (chief of football Geoff Walsh) with the football admin. He’s just a fantastic character, everyone knows Licca… he’s a great inclusion.”
In terms of what Collingwood fans can expect in year one from the new version of the Collingwood reserves, Brown said it’s a real unknown, but extremely exciting.
“It’s hard to know what to expect because we’ve virtually built the side from scratch. The whole emphasis is on development really, and obviously with a winning attitude.
“We want to be really competitive, that’s why we want to pick the best 21 VFL players available to help supplement the AFL players come game day in the VFL competition.
“We just want to fast-track our players and develop them as quickly as possible while being competitive and hopefully we’re playing finals footy, and that will be great for their development.”
Collingwood’s alignment with VFL club Williamstown spanned eight years (2000-2007), with the clubs coming to a mutually amicable agreement at end of 2007 to allow the Magpies to establish their own stand-alone VFL side. The highlight of the alignment was undoubtedly the 2003 VFL premiership success.
collingwoodfc.com.au will provide information on all VFL-listed Collingwood players once the final list of 21 has been submitted by the club in early March.
