Declawed: A Modern History of Australian Football

Melbourne - September 3, 2006

Mark Thompson threw his hands in the air as the final siren rang out around the Telstra Dome, the low pitched blaring of the horn emanating throughout the ground signalling an end to Geelong's season. Taking to his feet from the coaching bench, he looked out into the stands around the Dome to see how many fans decided to stick around and watch the team finish off the season on a defeat, his eyes counting senselessly as more and more supporters of the blue-and-white stood up and began to pour out of the stadium as the Hawthorn club song echoed throughout the stadium.

"There must have been only five-thousand here that quarter".

Thompson guessed the number of his club’s fans in the seats as his eyes naturally drew away from the crowd and back towards his exhausted team, all of whom had just finished limping off to the sidelines after 22 rounds of football that for this year, ultimately amounted to nothing. As the players leered at their coach as they each faltered and fell back into the changing rooms, his assistant coaches and development instructors letting out sighs of lassitude at the end of another long season as they all grabbed their white boards and too, shuffled off into the backrooms. The coach himself was one of the last to properly leave the field, taking his time to pat his players on the back and shake the hands of the young Alastair Clarkson (the Hawthorn coach) before he finally decided to withdraw quietly back into the changing rooms.

The thought of the final score was sickening;

“A sixty-one point loss”

Looking back on it, he did realized it wasn’t even the worst margin of the entire round, but a loss was still a loss, and it was tough for him to swallow nevertheless, especially after he finally came to terms with the fact that he’d have to be staying home this September to watch the better teams play it out in the finals. Hell, he managed to lead the team to two consecutive finals series in ’04 and ’05, and surely a tiny dip in form for season 2006 wouldn’t be as big as a blight as he had considered it. However, despite mulling over the growth that the squad experienced in the few years of his tenure, he still held high expectations for this season, and whilst tenth on the ladder wasn’t underwhelming (especially after Sanderson left after last year’s semi-final), he couldn’t help but feel just tired and sick after his fourth year without a finals campaign in a career of seven seasons. Letting out a deep, breath, he looked around the change room where his men were busy wiping the sweat from their brows and backing their equipment away.

“I really don’t have much to say this afternoon, so I’ll try to keep it brief. Brent, that was much better work out there this time around, but you need to focus on getting your handballs down the corridor and not outside to the wings, remember, that’s where they can cut us off. For you Abletts; Gary, that was a pretty good effort out there, but like what I said to Brent, you must focus on getting the handballs down the corridor, and Nathan, you really need to try and beat your man to the ball, no matter how hard they’re trying to block you off.”

“I realize that….”

“…and I hope you take it to mind. Paul, Corey, Steve, I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again; whilst you three were fine at gathering the ball at the twenty meter bend, you need to try harder to gather the ball in front of goal because we had five rush-behind today. Those could have all been goals if we all tried a bit harder. Alright, you midfielders, especially you Jimmy, do you all remember what I mentioned at three-quarter time?”

“Punch it in towards goal?”

“Exactly. Punch it in towards goal; punch it in, punch it in, punch it in. Don’t you all worry about setting sights at the big sticks from seventy, sixty, fifty meters out, just let the forwards handle it, because doing that consistently is what carried us so far during our last two seasons, and not doing it consistently is what cost us this year. Speaking of which, Matthew, remember what I told you before half-time; ‘don’t pretend to be a midfielder’. I realize the game plan in playing outside our positions, and it’s great that you managed to bag a goal today, but only do so if we’re free through the middle of the ground and don’t have a ton of Hawks bearing down on the back-fifty. For the rest of you, I’ll talk to you all later in private because I can see that you’re clearly tired, so I want to finish off by saying that whilst it’s been a pretty mediocre season, I am absolutely certain we can hit it through next season and break the top-four. Does anyone have any questions?”

Thompson glanced around the room to see a few heads turn away from him to return to their packing, whilst others simply took deep breaths of exhaustion as they shook their heads. Despite his words of reassurance, the coach didn’t feel particularly confidant of the team’s top-eight chances next season (let alone top-four), and for his blustering of a premiership for the club in the ‘near future’ during his interview with the managers that got him this job back in 2000, several years on that promise was seeming more and more unlikely to come to fruition. After seven years with only three finals campaigns and ‘poor draft picks’, as well as forty-three years without a single premiership, the Geelong board were beginning to grow tired of promise-after-promise of ‘certain victory’ in the league, and very soon Mark Thompson would find himself at the losing end of that fatigue.

__________

Geelong - September 10, 2006

The coach of Geelong was sitting at his Belmont home in the early-spring heat, the heat of the afternoon condensing on his skin as he tried to watch the elimination final playing out in front of him; the Western Bulldogs verse Collingwood, the Magpies winning at quarter-time with a score of 36-to-26. ‘Tried’ was the key word, for Thompson at least, the game was an attempt to escape from the reality that was falling around him at that very moment; the man attempting to wear the outward veneer of composure all whilst a thousand different thoughts rocketed around in his skull, the game on the screen before him doing nothing to blow over his agitation.

For the past eight days, members of the Geelong board had begun to act on the realization of how strong the general disenchantment with head coach actually had become inside the club, the Cat’s President, Frank Costa (a long-time friend and supporter of Thompson), being forced to request his employee come in for a preliminary interview/meeting with the shareholders to discuss his willingness to soldier on into season 2007 after the losses of 2006 (particularly the final round trashing at the hands of the Hawks). It was a predicament that only begun the coach’s spiral into fear of losing his job as media speculation and rumour, all of which he couldn’t escape, only fuelled the growing certainty that he would be forced from his position, a fear that was almost confirmed like a punch to the stomach when Costa announced to the footballing world that the leadership group (a committee of shareholders, board members, assistant coaches, and select players) would perform a review of Geelong’s ‘footballing operations’.

Only two days after the loss, Thompson was called into the leadership groups offices in East Geelong for the first post-season meeting that would decide on the Cat’s plan for the 2007 pre-season drafts, trades, and general line-up of the squad, the groups refusal to bring up the review (saying instead that they were “busy interviewing members of the club” and that it “shouldn’t weigh on his mind”) doing nothing to alleviate any fear of an abrupt forced departure from his team of seven years. Hell, media speculation fuelled the most nerve-wrecking fears for the 43 year-old man, rumours such as ‘Daryn Cresswell was coming to sweep the position of head coach away’ and that ‘his delisting from the coaching roster was planned for the immediate future’ making it seem like there was more going on in the leadership group than what he was being told. Hell, with Cresswell (a former Sydney Swans player-turned-coach) even declaring that he was preparing to “come down to Victoria in pursuit of several coaching opportunities”, Thompson felt the end was just a brief stop around the corner.

Suddenly, the ringing of his mobile shook the coach out of his half-dazed, laid-back state on the couch as he scrambled for the phone on the lounge-room desk, answering the other end of the line with a startled an exhausted “Hello”.

“Yes, hello; is this Mark Thompson?”

The voice was instantly recognizable to the coach; it was the club’s Chief Executive Brian Cook, the chairman of the leadership committee and Geelong’s de facto head.

“Yes, this is Mark speaking. Am I talking to Brian Cook?”

“Yeah Mark, it’s me, how are you doing?”

Thompson forced himself into a false grin, the fast beating of his heart revealing his true anxiety.

“Um, I’m doing fine thanks. I’m just watching the Pies and Bulldogs game right now, let me turn it down…alright, yeah, I’ve been doing just fine overall. I took a look through the drafting notes you gave out a few weeks back and I’ve been spending most of my time skimming over those….”

“…yeah, yeah, thanks great Mark” the Chief Executive announced as he cut off his employee, “however I just want to cut straight through the bullshit and give you this news before you say anything else. Now, Frank wanted to give you this news himself, but since he was called away it came down on me to make this call; Mark, I’m sad to say this, because I’ve been a supporter of your tenure since the very beginning, however the leadership group has wanted you to know that your contract with the Geelong Cats has been terminated.”

The announcement came down on Thompson like a massive brick. He felt this was coming, he felt it in all the fibre of his being, and yet no amount of mental preparation could prepare him for the words that boss and occasional acquaintance laid on him. Taking a deep breath from the other side of the line, Cook continued;

“Now, I know this is coming out of left field, and I want to say that I’m sorry that you have to hear the news this way, but I wanted to give you this news straight to you today before you headed into the next meeting, and with neither me nor Frank being in there this Tuesday, I wanted you to here this from a friend.”

The Chief Executive paused for a moment, wanting the now former head coach to respond, Thompson remaining silent as he simply rubbed his brow in his instinctive manner of frustration, his silence urging this employer to continue;

“Again Mark, I’m sorry you have to hear the news this way, and personally I would have liked to see you stay for one more year at the head of the squad, however it wasn’t my final decision, because that came down to the leadership group. We’ve spent the last few days discussing and debating over here, and they’ve decided that since you were brought on to help grow and support the new generation of players, however it’s time to let you go because they’ve seen this season as a sign of things to come in future years if we retain you at your current position, and that all we need now is a coach that’ll help the team get to the premiership. I want to personally commemorate you for what you’ve done these past ten years here in growing this current batch of kids, but your promises haven’t won over the majority in the leadership group and they feel that without a swift change, the club, and its brand, will stagnate. Again, I’m very, very sorry if I’m giving you such little information, but that will be gone over on Tuesday when we issue the press announcement, and frankly I felt that the club was going in the right direction.”

Cook paused again to allow the head coach to get a word in. Thompson himself was sitting at the edge of his couch with his phone resting on the lounge room table, the mobile turned to loudspeaker as he simply rubbed his forehead in a display of frustration.

“I knew this was coming.”

The words read themselves over and over in his head, the now ex-coach letting out deep, exasperated breaths as he wiped the sweat from his face. With a mixture of exhaustion, distress, fatigue, and irritation, he picked up his phone and after letting out a long and audible breath that penned his bitterness, he finally replied to the man on the other end of the line;

“So what happens now?”
 

Riain

Banned
I think I am unique on this website, a bombers supporter who lives in geelong.

Please continue.
 
Melbourne - September 20, 2006

Graham Smorgon was in trouble; 2006, his first year as President of Carlton Blues had gone down in metaphorical flames with three games throughout the course of the season, no thanks to the then head coach Dennis Pagan who had led the club to two wooden spoons in succession. The new President knew that the players were growing restless, especially those in the high profile like Anthony Koutoufides, Lance Whitnall, and Brendan Fevola, and in knowing full well the stagnation the club had been facing for the past half-decade, Smorgon knew he was being backed into a corner with very few options left open to him and the team.

The first option was to try and stick with Pagan. Despite winning only 21 games since 2003, it was at first (when the talks of a replacement came up) the most obvious and narrowly popular of the two alternatives the Blues had. Across the majority of the board with a number of stakeholders in support, the upper echelons of the club believed early in the post-season talks that such a sudden and erratic shift of club management (and presumably tactics and line-up) would leave the club in a worse position than what they were in in 2006. Furthermore, with such a change would ultimately come with the massive costs of bringing in new coaching staff to support the development squad the head coach would ultimately bring forth, and despite their rather large fan base at the time, the AFL's one million dollar fine against the club in 2002 due to gross salary-cap violations left Carlton's off-field negotiating position in a sport almost as bad as their one-field positions. Those were the risks that in early September the Blue's management were unwilling to take to simply get a change of coach, however after the events of September 12, many, including President Smorgon, began to change their tune.

First came the news that Mark Thompson, after a difficult on-and-off-field season in 2006, was being let go from his position as head coach at Geelong after seven years in the position. The news, at first, wasn't as shocking as it would later become due to the fact that the rumours of his departure (either forced or with his consent) permeated themselves throughout the season, however, in the days after the news finally broke that his contract was being terminated, the sheer risks Geelong was putting themselves in by dropping their head coach was realized. Whilst the Cat's had an abundance of outside financial support (underlined by Ford's sponsorship of the club), their general reliance of high-cost contracts overextended their finances to breaking points at times and in some cases, actually caused their shareholders to flee in bulk which would often times leave behind massive debt. As a result, the football world began to realize how dangerous (and courageous) such a move to rearrange their coaching sector had actually been; the move beginning to sway many in Carlton's management that they didn't have to maintain Pagan's contract, however it would be the events at St. Kilda that would completely win them over.

At the St. Kilda 'Saints' Football Club, their financial position in 2006 were in an utter shambles. From the projection of lower membership in 2007 to their general contract budget, the Saints were a club growing deeper in debt the more they invested in the high cost contracts of their best players. Moreover, despite their amiable on-field performances that season which saw them reach sixth on the ladder (before falling to Melbourne in the first round of the finals), the long-term injuries to their key-position players like Fraser Gehrig and Robert Harvey were putting them into a deeper economic disadvantage to the struggling, but economically sound teams such as the Essendon Bombers and Hawthorn. Nevertheless, despite the growing misery of their financial sector, the erratic decision by their President Rod Butterss to sack the head coach Grant Thomas shook the footballing world down to the core, especially when one was to consider his recent success at the club. Nevertheless, the deed was done, and with it, so was the minds of many at Carlton; they knew that a massive risk was going to have to be taken to re-engage their fan base, light up their financial sector, and return to their position as one of the most successful clubs in all of VFL/AFL history, and after looking at the courageous examples of Geelong and St. Kilda, the management's mind was firmly made up; Dennis Pagan had to go.

__________

Melbourne - November 15, 2006

In the end, the three coaching changes at the end of 2006 were performed in remarkably similar ways, but done so under differing circumstances, however the coaches they had got in return for each of their decisions were new; mostly untried, and mostly untested in the position of head coach when they would begin their regimes over their teams in 2007.

The first of the new coaches was that for the St. Kilda; a former North Melbourne 'Kangaroos' star who played during Dennis Pagan's tenure at the club during it's heyday in the 1990's, he served his role as an admirable forward during his playing days before turning to an assistant coaching position at the Sydney Swans in 2003 where he was instrumental in orchestrating the team's first premiership victory for 72 years in 2005. That man's name was John Longmire. Nicknamed 'horse' during his stint at the Kangaroos, St. Kilda had had him on the short-list of potential future coaches in that famous victory in the '05 Grand Final, and at the end of 2006 they finally decided to act on their impulses and pursue him as their next coach. After only a few weeks of contract negotiation and settlement that would ensure he would have general control over the management club's coaching staff, he finally accepted a deal to lead the Saints as their head coach on September 29 for $450,000 dollars a year for two seasons.

The second club to sign on their next coach would come in the form of the Carlton Blues. Having agreed with Pagan to let his contract expire a year early on 22 September, the general management of the club had to act quickly if they were to sign on the coach at the top of their extensive list of candidates. As a former Fitzroy player during the club's dying years, this player-turned-coach had proven himself to be a far greater assistant coach than a player, having served as a coach in Carlton's reserve VFL side from 2000 to 2004 before accepting a deal with his former Fitzroy team-mate (Paul Roos, the head coach for Sydney at the time) to come and join the Swans. This man was Ross Lyons. Diligent in his role as Sydney's midfield coach during their year of premiership glory in 2005, the development of the Swan's midfield during the '06 season was the deciding factor in Carlton's decision to try and bring Lyons into the club as head coach (especially after they had made their second consecutive Grand Final at the end of the year). Despite being far tougher man to bring onto the leadership team than his fellow Swans assistant coach in John Longmire (primarily due to the Blue's monetary constraints that significantly diminished their annual wage budget), he had finally accepted an extended contract where he was promised only $325,000 dollars a year on the obligation that he would serve his time as coach until the end of the 2010 season, the agreement taking place on October 6.

The final coaching change of 2006 came far later than the other two changes of club leadership, the Geelong management being far more unprepared after they laid of Thompson that their sort list of potential coaches was far less methodical to the point in which many of the candidates had to come into several interviews over a period as much as six weeks. In the end, after the lists were finally cut down to two men, President Frank Costa would find himself the deciding factor in the decision to select the new head coach of his club, a decision that he now remembers everyday. The man he picked was another one with a background at the Sydney Swans, this time having played there from 1992 to 2003. A mid-fielder, he had served out his squad industriously during his twelve seasons at his club before leaving to serve as an assistant coach at both Geelong and Brisbane for two short seasons, then signing onto the Tasmanian Devils for a short stint as their head coach in 2006. Recognized as having stopped the outright rot of the Devil's and almost leading them to another finals run during the year, the man Geelong choose as their new head of the coaching staff as none other than Daryn Cresswell. Having been disliked by Mark Thompson even during the year in which they worked together (primarily due to Cresswell's criticisms of the former head coach's fast style of play), the two men's hostility would grow even stronger when the assistant became the head, Cresswell accepting a far lower wage than Thompson ever did ($380,000 compared to $460,000) on a contract that would last until the end of the 2009 season, having accepted Geelong's arrangement on November 15.

The changes were made and the new coaches were now in their positions; now all that stood between them and their first year as head coaches would be the 2006 AFL draft.
 

Riain

Banned
It's funny reading about people I've met.

I was talking to Brian Cook last week at the A League game, I have met Frank Costa a couple of times and Stevie J lives around the corner from me, he rushes his backswing when he plays golf.
 

Riain

Banned
The coach of Geelong, Mark 'Bomber' Thompson is sacked in 2006. ITOL he stayed on in 2007 and despite looking like being sacked as late as round 5 or 6 Geelong won their first premiership in 43 years, and another in 2009 and after Bomber left another in 2011.
 
The coach of Geelong, Mark 'Bomber' Thompson is sacked in 2006. ITOL he stayed on in 2007 and despite looking like being sacked as late as round 5 or 6 Geelong won their first premiership in 43 years, and another in 2009 and after Bomber left another in 2011.

Thank you.
 
It's funny reading about people I've met.

I was talking to Brian Cook last week at the A League game, I have met Frank Costa a couple of times and Stevie J lives around the corner from me, he rushes his backswing when he plays golf.

Really? The only footballer I've ever seen up close was Brent Harvey, and seeing his face that close up made me want to punch it more than all the times I've seen him play :D

What's the PoD? I don't have a clue what OTL is like here, let alone how it differs from TTL.

It's almost like people outside of Australia have practically no clue what the AFL is...go figure :rolleyes:
 

Riain

Banned
A mate of mine is a councilor for geelong and the city owns kardinia park so he gets a ticket to the vip function for every home game. He does some swapping so he can take someone and I have been that someone on many occasions. I sat beside cookie at last year's VFL grand final.

You live in Queensland where AFL players aren't very thick on the ground.
 
Top