Hutchie:- Welcome to Footy Classified Mark.
Choco:- Great to be here.
Hutchie:- You’re all smiles tonight and you’ve finished with two great wins but it’s hard to get around the fact it’s been a shocking season for Port Adelaide.
Choco:- No we don’t ah….. we don’t walk away from it and I’m pretty pissed off. Last year we won a lot of close games. I think we won probably four or five close games by less than a goal. This year we lost seven by less than three goals so if you add some of those up to wins we’d have been close to making the eight again this year.
Hutchie:- To go from second though, to missing the finals is a drastic drop. One that needs some analysis and I guess some questions not only at you but the entire playing list. What on earth has happened?
Choco:- Well as I said, in 2006 we were out of the finals, we made some hard decisions got rid of some players and also sent some off for surgery and we had a great rise in 2007 way higher than anyone else expected including myself. We beat all the top teams including Geelong in that year so we really deserved to be in the Grand Final but I probably mouthed off to much during the build up and gave Geelong a real incentive to smash us. This year memories of the Grand Final probably haunted us a little and then we lost really close games early in the season. We had a tough draw, we had to play Geelong twice in twelve weeks, Sydney twice in 6 weeks, ah…….. you know we had to play in Perth twice and we didn’t play Melbourne until Round 21 so it wasn’t easy. Our senior players didn’t play as well, our clearance rates weren’t as good, Ah…Chad got injured early in the season, statistics will show that free kicks were against us, Shaun got suspended when he should not have, Toby missed about 3 games with injury, it rained in the last quarter against Brisbane, every team had worked out Peter Burgoyne playing on a half back flank and I lost a lot of sleep this year with the new baby but I don’t want to make any excuses.
Caro:- Massive news day yesterday at the Port Adelaide North Melbourne game. For a start it was the upset of the round and one of the big upsets of the year and it will have a massive bearing on the eight..
Choco interrupts:- Um.. I think it’s called Karma Caro
Caro:- Sure Mark but staggering to read that you had a meeting with your manager Ricky Nixon an hour before the game, we’ll just have a quick listen to what Ricky Nixon said later on an hour after that meeting on triple M...
Recording of Ricky Nixon:- “Well he might have to because they haven’t got a CEO, they haven’t got a CFO they haven’t got a president they haven’t got a marketing manager so I suggested he might have to work out how to cut the oranges and ah change the scoreboard at half time”
Caro:- Now we can have a bit of a laugh about it but that to me is a pretty unprofessional thing for a manager to say about his coach. You do have a president, you’ve got a new CEO who I hear comes highly recommended, I’m not sure where your marketing situation is at, why would he say that? Did you tell him to say that?
Choco:- No, not at all, in fact I didn’t know Ricky was going on the radio. The fact is I had the opportunity, I hardly ever see him so we got together and just chatted, he’d just come back from Ireland and I wanted to know what was going on over there and he wanted to know what was happening at Port Adelaide so I just let him know that Lonie was still getting a game ahead of Adam Thomson. I think this upset a bit.
Gary Lion:- We were in the middle of that at Triple M, you know innocent bystanders, and it got reported to us that you two were in, if not a heated discussion, “animated” was how it was described to us and you used the phrase “Get me out of here” was that used at all?
Choco:- Yeah I did say that but I was just having a bad flashback to last years Grand Final and felt I needed to get out of the ground. I felt much better after having a cold raspberry drink.
Caro interrupts:- Is it because maybe these people are leaving because they’ve had enough of you because you are a very very good coach, you are a very good leader but after a while you wear on people because you are such a strong forceful personality. Is any of that fair?
Choco:- I’m not a very, very good coach Caro, I’m a very, very, very good coach. Have you seen my certificates? But, you know, our CEO has gone overseas gold digging, I think he’s on a million dollars and he’s working in finance where he always used to work and he always wanted to work in New York in the US. Our eight year financial officer is in Dubai I’m not sure that I forced him to leave at all and he’s really enjoying his time there so I don’t really get the argument at all.
Caro:- Do you feel deserted I mean do you feel let down that these people have left in such close proximity?
Choco:- No, if those bastards want to move on they can but look it’s not perfect for our club and no one walks away from that. You know we’ve been lucky to have Greg Boulton as our president for fourteen or so years and he’s done a wonderful job but there’s been a succession plan with Brett Duncanson in place for the last couple of years and that was announced last Friday. I think Greg would have announced it earlier if he’d know the CEO was lucky enough to get that opportunity overseas so things haven’t worked out exactly and it’s not easy, you know Peter Rohde and I are the ones who’ve been there the whole time and the club have been very, very, very lucky to have me. The Football Department’ still pretty sound apart from Tony but the rest of the club are in a rebuilding phase and we’ll get some good outside help like John Buchanan with new ideas and the club will be stronger for it but right now it’s tough.
Lyon:- The cynics would suggest that you’re angling for a longer term contract, you want to put a bit of heat on the Port Adelaide Footy club to make the call, you’ve got a year to run on your contract, unusually I think, a couple of weeks ago you said you’d love to come back to coach in Melbourne. Does it all add up to the fact that you want a longer tenure?
Choco:- Well, the fact is that I’ve said to the club that I want to stay at the club and people who ask directive questions where they want the answer to be what they want to hear they might ask me seven times if I want to stay at Port Adelaide and I continually say yes and then in the end it’ll be yeah but if you’re not at Port Adelaide would you ever go back to Melbourne and I’ll say “Ah yeah, if I needed a job somewhere my wife comes from Melbourne”. So they’ll write that as the headline and you people in Melbourne haven’t heard the first eight answers I’ve made to the question so... you know the facts are that the Port Adelaide people know that I want to stay at Port Adelaide. My players know, my coaching staff know and that’s all so the angle of stability at the club is important but in the time that I’ve been at the club they’ve kept my contract to the last moment and I suppose they’ll do it again.
Lyon:- Can I have that again in English Mark?
Choco:- Yeah I’m angling for a longer contract Gary.
Hutchie:- Do you deserve a long term deal, after the year you’ve had do you deserve a new contract?
Choco:- Um….well yeah, I’m a very, very, very good coach Hutchy but I guess it will be up to the club to decide.
Hutchie:- What do you think?
Choco:- I’ll get a long term deal Hutchy, I’m a very, very, very good coach.
Glen Archer:- What about Warren Tredrea’s future do you see him getting a couple more years out of his body and if he does will you see him as captain?
Choco:- Well two years ago I didn’t think Warren would ever play again, you know he was really struggling but in the fact that he’s probably won 3 or 4 best and fairests and come second 2 or 3 times he’s been our most outstanding player over the journey and really should take a bow. He doesn’t owe Port Adelaide anything and you know probably similar to you he reckons he can play another year and I reckon this year has been his best in the last three. Apart from getting a sore shoulder at the end which he is spewin about we sent him off to get his shoulder fixed up and he’ll be no problems at all and I’m much more certain that he’ll play well next year than I was at this time last year. You know the captaincy thing we’ll work that through probably until February so we’ll see how that is but Warren and I have spoken about, and he’s fully understanding and appreciative of, that whatever is best for Port Adelaide will be best for him. You know the last five or six weeks we’ve had Shaun Burgoyne acting as captain and he’s done a wonderful job and we’ve got Toby Thurstans, Domenic Cassisi and Kane Cornes and Chad Cornes and Dean Brogan who’s just signed in the last couple of days and it’s pretty exciting for us that we’ve got good quality vice captains around the club.
Hutchie:- Josh Carr’s asked to be traded back to you guys, yesterday officially asked Fremantle...
Choco interjects:- Apparently so!!
Hutchie:- Which would suggest, he wouldn’t do that without a deal or an assurance in place from you, and I’m staggered that you would want to be that aggressive as to take him back given that his age and the way the game’s changed and the fact he left you after being a premiership player and the fact of the year you’ve had what...
Lyon interjects:- There’s also today too, Hutchie, that he’s been linked to Nathan Krakouer and coming out of the west that you’re prepared to trade Nathan Krakouer for Josh Carr.
Choco:- Yeah, in their dreams, that’s absolute rubbish, Nathan’s a very important player to us, played today, he’d been injured for a fair time and had some family bereavements back in Western Australia that we let him go back to be with his family over there so, ah, Nathan’s a long term player for us and certainly, as you said Josh is 28. As I said after the game I wouldn’t think Josh fits in our scheme of things. I only heard that Josh said that he wants to come back yesterday so...
Hutchie interrupts:- Fremantle announced it yesterday in a media release and confirmed that he’s gone to the club and said “trade me to Port Adelaide’ are you saying now that you don’t want him?
Choco:- I’m saying that I haven’t considered it, so. It’s a very short period of time after our last game so we’ll think about it but in the fact that why would we think about it? He was a fantastic leader for us and he was a premiership player and he’s a hard player and our players love him, our supporters love him but he’s 28 and I’m not sure if you look at our history I don’t think we’ve traded for too many 28 year olds.
Hutchie:- But in July you said “He was an exceptional player for us, a premiership player, a great leader for us and we'll seriously talk about Josh and if he's ringing me up wanting to come back I'll certainly see what we can do”
Choco:- Umm…….I don’t recall that.
Lyon:- We’ve only got a minute to go, Peter Burgoyne, 45 possessions yesterday, his last few weeks have been impressive, he’s had some off field problems, you’ve had to suspend him. What’s his future hold?
Choco:- Well I think his future, we gave him the opportunity to see if he could play AFL and wanted to play AFL and once we moved him off the half back flank after weeks of it not working and I blame Kingsley for that, it looks like he really wants to get into it. You know we have to negotiate his contract but I would suspect that he’ll still be at our club next 5 years so we will look forward to that.
Archer:- Also Daniel Motlop he’s had a fantastic season. I think he’s really added some consistency to his game; he’s got some amazing skills. Do you ever think he’d be able to move up to the midfield, as you know; he’s got a massive motor?
Choco:- I know the people at North would be so disappointed that he left your club for the better facilities we have at Alberton but he’s outstanding for us, he works really well for us. I think he should be All Australian myself and I certainly take credit for that. He kicks goal of the year, he takes mark of the day but what he also does is run out breath very quickly. He’s a fantastic team man, he’s a goal assist person, but he chases and tackles. Uh, I listened to David Parkin on the TV last night watching the tape and editing for my players and I almost couldn’t believe that he said he doesn’t chase or tackle. Now that’s just bizarre you know. Stupid old fossil has probably not seen any of our games this year. If you watch what he does he’s by far the most valuable chaser and tackler in our forward line and he’s just outstanding at it and the amount of times he’s given the ball to his team mates to kick goals so he’s been great value for us and we’re very lucky to have him.
Caro:- Can you leave us with a tip for the flag?
Choco:- I think you find it fairly hard to go past Geelong but as I was saying to the boys yesterday if I was a betting man I would have lost my house on Port Adelaide it seemed like everything was stacked up for North. I suppose if you want to have a look at the tanking issue Freo could have got pick three if they’d lost against Collingwood and they didn’t lose, we certainly could have got pick three and we won and missed out on pick three so I think Andrew Demetriou’s right on the mark that it’s impossible to stop players from trying and everyone’s out there trying to win and that’s the great thing of footy.
Caro:- I wasn’t asking about the tanking issue.
Choco:- Sorry Caro um……….you look pretty dolled up tonight, did you do that for me?
Hutchy:- Mark it’s always fascinating thanks for your time tonight.
Choco:- Thanks for being here.
Choco:- Great to be here.
Hutchie:- You’re all smiles tonight and you’ve finished with two great wins but it’s hard to get around the fact it’s been a shocking season for Port Adelaide.
Choco:- No we don’t ah….. we don’t walk away from it and I’m pretty pissed off. Last year we won a lot of close games. I think we won probably four or five close games by less than a goal. This year we lost seven by less than three goals so if you add some of those up to wins we’d have been close to making the eight again this year.
Hutchie:- To go from second though, to missing the finals is a drastic drop. One that needs some analysis and I guess some questions not only at you but the entire playing list. What on earth has happened?
Choco:- Well as I said, in 2006 we were out of the finals, we made some hard decisions got rid of some players and also sent some off for surgery and we had a great rise in 2007 way higher than anyone else expected including myself. We beat all the top teams including Geelong in that year so we really deserved to be in the Grand Final but I probably mouthed off to much during the build up and gave Geelong a real incentive to smash us. This year memories of the Grand Final probably haunted us a little and then we lost really close games early in the season. We had a tough draw, we had to play Geelong twice in twelve weeks, Sydney twice in 6 weeks, ah…….. you know we had to play in Perth twice and we didn’t play Melbourne until Round 21 so it wasn’t easy. Our senior players didn’t play as well, our clearance rates weren’t as good, Ah…Chad got injured early in the season, statistics will show that free kicks were against us, Shaun got suspended when he should not have, Toby missed about 3 games with injury, it rained in the last quarter against Brisbane, every team had worked out Peter Burgoyne playing on a half back flank and I lost a lot of sleep this year with the new baby but I don’t want to make any excuses.
Caro:- Massive news day yesterday at the Port Adelaide North Melbourne game. For a start it was the upset of the round and one of the big upsets of the year and it will have a massive bearing on the eight..
Choco interrupts:- Um.. I think it’s called Karma Caro
Caro:- Sure Mark but staggering to read that you had a meeting with your manager Ricky Nixon an hour before the game, we’ll just have a quick listen to what Ricky Nixon said later on an hour after that meeting on triple M...
Recording of Ricky Nixon:- “Well he might have to because they haven’t got a CEO, they haven’t got a CFO they haven’t got a president they haven’t got a marketing manager so I suggested he might have to work out how to cut the oranges and ah change the scoreboard at half time”
Caro:- Now we can have a bit of a laugh about it but that to me is a pretty unprofessional thing for a manager to say about his coach. You do have a president, you’ve got a new CEO who I hear comes highly recommended, I’m not sure where your marketing situation is at, why would he say that? Did you tell him to say that?
Choco:- No, not at all, in fact I didn’t know Ricky was going on the radio. The fact is I had the opportunity, I hardly ever see him so we got together and just chatted, he’d just come back from Ireland and I wanted to know what was going on over there and he wanted to know what was happening at Port Adelaide so I just let him know that Lonie was still getting a game ahead of Adam Thomson. I think this upset a bit.
Gary Lion:- We were in the middle of that at Triple M, you know innocent bystanders, and it got reported to us that you two were in, if not a heated discussion, “animated” was how it was described to us and you used the phrase “Get me out of here” was that used at all?
Choco:- Yeah I did say that but I was just having a bad flashback to last years Grand Final and felt I needed to get out of the ground. I felt much better after having a cold raspberry drink.
Caro interrupts:- Is it because maybe these people are leaving because they’ve had enough of you because you are a very very good coach, you are a very good leader but after a while you wear on people because you are such a strong forceful personality. Is any of that fair?
Choco:- I’m not a very, very good coach Caro, I’m a very, very, very good coach. Have you seen my certificates? But, you know, our CEO has gone overseas gold digging, I think he’s on a million dollars and he’s working in finance where he always used to work and he always wanted to work in New York in the US. Our eight year financial officer is in Dubai I’m not sure that I forced him to leave at all and he’s really enjoying his time there so I don’t really get the argument at all.
Caro:- Do you feel deserted I mean do you feel let down that these people have left in such close proximity?
Choco:- No, if those bastards want to move on they can but look it’s not perfect for our club and no one walks away from that. You know we’ve been lucky to have Greg Boulton as our president for fourteen or so years and he’s done a wonderful job but there’s been a succession plan with Brett Duncanson in place for the last couple of years and that was announced last Friday. I think Greg would have announced it earlier if he’d know the CEO was lucky enough to get that opportunity overseas so things haven’t worked out exactly and it’s not easy, you know Peter Rohde and I are the ones who’ve been there the whole time and the club have been very, very, very lucky to have me. The Football Department’ still pretty sound apart from Tony but the rest of the club are in a rebuilding phase and we’ll get some good outside help like John Buchanan with new ideas and the club will be stronger for it but right now it’s tough.
Lyon:- The cynics would suggest that you’re angling for a longer term contract, you want to put a bit of heat on the Port Adelaide Footy club to make the call, you’ve got a year to run on your contract, unusually I think, a couple of weeks ago you said you’d love to come back to coach in Melbourne. Does it all add up to the fact that you want a longer tenure?
Choco:- Well, the fact is that I’ve said to the club that I want to stay at the club and people who ask directive questions where they want the answer to be what they want to hear they might ask me seven times if I want to stay at Port Adelaide and I continually say yes and then in the end it’ll be yeah but if you’re not at Port Adelaide would you ever go back to Melbourne and I’ll say “Ah yeah, if I needed a job somewhere my wife comes from Melbourne”. So they’ll write that as the headline and you people in Melbourne haven’t heard the first eight answers I’ve made to the question so... you know the facts are that the Port Adelaide people know that I want to stay at Port Adelaide. My players know, my coaching staff know and that’s all so the angle of stability at the club is important but in the time that I’ve been at the club they’ve kept my contract to the last moment and I suppose they’ll do it again.
Lyon:- Can I have that again in English Mark?
Choco:- Yeah I’m angling for a longer contract Gary.
Hutchie:- Do you deserve a long term deal, after the year you’ve had do you deserve a new contract?
Choco:- Um….well yeah, I’m a very, very, very good coach Hutchy but I guess it will be up to the club to decide.
Hutchie:- What do you think?
Choco:- I’ll get a long term deal Hutchy, I’m a very, very, very good coach.
Glen Archer:- What about Warren Tredrea’s future do you see him getting a couple more years out of his body and if he does will you see him as captain?
Choco:- Well two years ago I didn’t think Warren would ever play again, you know he was really struggling but in the fact that he’s probably won 3 or 4 best and fairests and come second 2 or 3 times he’s been our most outstanding player over the journey and really should take a bow. He doesn’t owe Port Adelaide anything and you know probably similar to you he reckons he can play another year and I reckon this year has been his best in the last three. Apart from getting a sore shoulder at the end which he is spewin about we sent him off to get his shoulder fixed up and he’ll be no problems at all and I’m much more certain that he’ll play well next year than I was at this time last year. You know the captaincy thing we’ll work that through probably until February so we’ll see how that is but Warren and I have spoken about, and he’s fully understanding and appreciative of, that whatever is best for Port Adelaide will be best for him. You know the last five or six weeks we’ve had Shaun Burgoyne acting as captain and he’s done a wonderful job and we’ve got Toby Thurstans, Domenic Cassisi and Kane Cornes and Chad Cornes and Dean Brogan who’s just signed in the last couple of days and it’s pretty exciting for us that we’ve got good quality vice captains around the club.
Hutchie:- Josh Carr’s asked to be traded back to you guys, yesterday officially asked Fremantle...
Choco interjects:- Apparently so!!
Hutchie:- Which would suggest, he wouldn’t do that without a deal or an assurance in place from you, and I’m staggered that you would want to be that aggressive as to take him back given that his age and the way the game’s changed and the fact he left you after being a premiership player and the fact of the year you’ve had what...
Lyon interjects:- There’s also today too, Hutchie, that he’s been linked to Nathan Krakouer and coming out of the west that you’re prepared to trade Nathan Krakouer for Josh Carr.
Choco:- Yeah, in their dreams, that’s absolute rubbish, Nathan’s a very important player to us, played today, he’d been injured for a fair time and had some family bereavements back in Western Australia that we let him go back to be with his family over there so, ah, Nathan’s a long term player for us and certainly, as you said Josh is 28. As I said after the game I wouldn’t think Josh fits in our scheme of things. I only heard that Josh said that he wants to come back yesterday so...
Hutchie interrupts:- Fremantle announced it yesterday in a media release and confirmed that he’s gone to the club and said “trade me to Port Adelaide’ are you saying now that you don’t want him?
Choco:- I’m saying that I haven’t considered it, so. It’s a very short period of time after our last game so we’ll think about it but in the fact that why would we think about it? He was a fantastic leader for us and he was a premiership player and he’s a hard player and our players love him, our supporters love him but he’s 28 and I’m not sure if you look at our history I don’t think we’ve traded for too many 28 year olds.
Hutchie:- But in July you said “He was an exceptional player for us, a premiership player, a great leader for us and we'll seriously talk about Josh and if he's ringing me up wanting to come back I'll certainly see what we can do”
Choco:- Umm…….I don’t recall that.
Lyon:- We’ve only got a minute to go, Peter Burgoyne, 45 possessions yesterday, his last few weeks have been impressive, he’s had some off field problems, you’ve had to suspend him. What’s his future hold?
Choco:- Well I think his future, we gave him the opportunity to see if he could play AFL and wanted to play AFL and once we moved him off the half back flank after weeks of it not working and I blame Kingsley for that, it looks like he really wants to get into it. You know we have to negotiate his contract but I would suspect that he’ll still be at our club next 5 years so we will look forward to that.
Archer:- Also Daniel Motlop he’s had a fantastic season. I think he’s really added some consistency to his game; he’s got some amazing skills. Do you ever think he’d be able to move up to the midfield, as you know; he’s got a massive motor?
Choco:- I know the people at North would be so disappointed that he left your club for the better facilities we have at Alberton but he’s outstanding for us, he works really well for us. I think he should be All Australian myself and I certainly take credit for that. He kicks goal of the year, he takes mark of the day but what he also does is run out breath very quickly. He’s a fantastic team man, he’s a goal assist person, but he chases and tackles. Uh, I listened to David Parkin on the TV last night watching the tape and editing for my players and I almost couldn’t believe that he said he doesn’t chase or tackle. Now that’s just bizarre you know. Stupid old fossil has probably not seen any of our games this year. If you watch what he does he’s by far the most valuable chaser and tackler in our forward line and he’s just outstanding at it and the amount of times he’s given the ball to his team mates to kick goals so he’s been great value for us and we’re very lucky to have him.
Caro:- Can you leave us with a tip for the flag?
Choco:- I think you find it fairly hard to go past Geelong but as I was saying to the boys yesterday if I was a betting man I would have lost my house on Port Adelaide it seemed like everything was stacked up for North. I suppose if you want to have a look at the tanking issue Freo could have got pick three if they’d lost against Collingwood and they didn’t lose, we certainly could have got pick three and we won and missed out on pick three so I think Andrew Demetriou’s right on the mark that it’s impossible to stop players from trying and everyone’s out there trying to win and that’s the great thing of footy.
Caro:- I wasn’t asking about the tanking issue.
Choco:- Sorry Caro um……….you look pretty dolled up tonight, did you do that for me?
Hutchy:- Mark it’s always fascinating thanks for your time tonight.
Choco:- Thanks for being here.
