I DIDN’T think it was a good sign when the four-man club delegation gate-crashed my wife Pauline's birthday party on Monday night without a cake or present… but as it turned out she couldn't have received any better gift.

I’m thrilled to be given the opportunity to continue coaching at Port Adelaide as we chase our second flag.

But I must say waiting for the decision to be delivered to my house caused my family as much stress as the citizens of Vatican City waiting for the white-coloured smoke to appear from the chimney of the Sistine Chapel.

I was watching all the news services to try and see what the media camped outside the club had uncovered and I was getting text messages from half the playing group every 30 minutes asking me what was going on.

My kids were peering through the windows wondering what our president Brett Duncanson and board members Bruce Abernethy and Darryl Wakelin were doing standing outside our house in the dark.

The three of them waited outside 20 minutes for our CEO Mark Haysman to arrive before finally coming in.
 
The kids were eavesdropping from upstairs while Brett explained the reasons behind the club’s decision and when he finally told me I’d be offered a new contract there was an uproar from the second storey.

I admit I had my doubts about whether or not I’d be reappointed at the Power.

In some contracts there is a ‘June 30 clause’, which requires a club to indicate to an out-of-contract coach whether they will continue at the same club next year or if they should begin to consider a future elsewhere.

Having just lived through this process I can tell you it creates a high degree of tension and stress. I’m not sure whether it will be included in my next one!

Anyhow, the show must go on and that was especially true over the mid-season break.

During the break football staff go into review mode with the aim of identifying something they might be able to change for the second half of the season.

The changes might be significant or very minor depending on where a team is positioned on the ladder, but you can guarantee that each club will find something.

At Port Adelaide each line coach is assigned the responsibility of reviewing his particular area.

The coaches look at the key performance indicators they hope to reach by the end of the year and also where they rank in different categories. They try and identify where the opportunities to improve exist.

I’ll assess the players and identify where I think they have/haven’t improved and our development coaches will go through a similar process with players through first to fourth year.

Some coaches, myself included, might also have their own progress assessed.

Our fitness staff are also involved in the mid-season review.

They give us an update on injury rates for the year, including attendances and time spent on the training track and also rotations in games.

There’s even preliminary discussion about surgery different players might require at the end of the year.

We’d also like to think there are a couple of days off over the break where you can actually freshen up for the last 10 rounds.

One thing that came out of our review was to change some of the meeting times.

We’ve turned over half our playing list in the past three years and as a group develops they can take onboard more and more information.

You’d like to give every person exactly the same amount of information and get the same result, but we think we’ve probably been overloading the players in terms of the amount of time spent at the club.

Most of the young players are just out of school and haven’t spent too much time in a working environment.

A lot of hours in a particular place can be taxing, as we can all appreciate, so we decided to change the emphasis a little and that’s been warmly accepted.

We think it will be a good move and with the senior coach’s position now clear we can look forward to the last nine rounds with confidence.

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.