Coach Women's Senior Coach: Natalie Wood

[Lore]

Only a one year deal says a lot.

Felt this team should have performed better, and 7th (albeit with finals to be played out) was not satisfactory.

Yeah they should but the main issues we had were injuries to key players and getting a bit over-excited, particularly the young ones (like Paige Scott). They're a young group, I don't think it's necessarily a coaching issue so much as a lack of time and experience.

Like she's been in the gig only about 18 months, and has an almost entirely different set of assistants now than she did a year ago too. There's not a lot of consistency in a 6 month program 6 months apart with different people in charge of each line (excepting Tash Hardy who is still there, and Bernard Shepheard is still a development coach).


I guess the other ??? is whether we might go for Peta Searle in the big chair.

 

[yodellinhank]

Yeah they should but the main issues we had were injuries to key players and getting a bit over-excited, particularly the young ones (like Paige Scott). They're a young group, I don't think it's necessarily a coaching issue so much as a lack of time and experience.

Like she's been in the gig only about 18 months, and has an almost entirely different set of assistants now than she did a year ago too. There's not a lot of consistency in a 6 month program 6 months apart with different people in charge of each line (excepting Tash Hardy who is still there, and Bernard Shepheard is still a development coach).

When you consider Brendan Major didn't get a look at much of a role after what he achieved with the VFLW. And I did suggest it'd be good to bring a core group up. Not sure why Marshall hasn't had a look in this season?

The team still don't seem to set up across the ground very well, for my eye. We make it look harder than it should be most weeks.p

I guess the other ??? is whether we might go for Peta Searle in the big chair.

That would be pretty on brand for This ******* Club.

 

[Lore]

When you consider Brendan Major didn't get a look at much of a role after what he achieved with the VFLW. And I did suggest it'd be good to bring a core group up. Not sure why Marshall hasn't had a look in this season?

The team still don't seem to set up across the ground very well, for my eye. We make it look harder than it should be most weeks.p

That would be pretty on brand for This ******* Club.

I think Major was supposed to stay, so was Charlotte Miller. They had roles as Head of AFLW and Coach/Player Development Manager, I think? Something weird happened there and half the leadership of the VFLW program at the club left for greener pastures almost as soon as we got an AFLW team.

I think it was really, really unfortunate that the club decided to implode at that time. The entire AFLW program was not given the clean air it needed to get lift off with the supporter base, and the club was so busy worrying about self-preservation of individuals that they didn't give due respect, support or attention to it (still don't).

I don't see any problem with Wood though, and I don't know that Maj would have done better. The fact we didn't get Daisy or put Cloke or Michael Hurley or something in charge of our AFLW team was always a good thing, even though I didn't know Woody from a bar of soap when they appointed her she's actually very well credentialed. So to me it's kind of a draw between Maj and Woody.

That said, Cloke did alright with the VFLW team too this year. I think once a team knows what they're doing they're a lot easier to coach.


As far as a core group, we brought through Nanscawen, Barba and JZ for our midfield group last year, Amelia Radford and Jo Doonan came up as well for the wing/HF type role, Tierney for the forward line, Dani Marshall for the backline. And then Morcs got added as an injury replacement. So that's 8 out of 30. Not sure we could've brought up many more than that, they'd end up floundering at the level which would be mean

We lost Simone Nalder to St Kilda and Sarah Ford signed with Sydney before the VFLW season was even done, so those weren't options. And I think we were trying to get some of our previous VFLW girls back from interstate as well. Maddy P was always gonna come to Essendon as soon as we had a team too, and Bonnie is great. I wish we could get the other Prespakis back Georgie played for our VFLW team a couple times before she was drafted.

Another 7 came from the draft fwiw. So about half of the 30 are AFLW transfers, and the other half are our own VFLW team & draftees, with Jorja Borg coming across from Carlton VFLW and I think we had one other VFLW player that wasn't from our own team.




I think the real issue is that without a year round program, with a short season and short playing lists, we aren't investing as much in our players. So you're not bringing in project players that have a few good traits and training them up... you just get 30 that are good enough to play an exhibition series right now and that's it. It's almost like a rep team. And then if they don't get selected much or get injured then they get delisted with zero qualms.

We have 12 month contracts now but still a really long off-season, which seems daft. I don't think it would be that expensive to put on a full 17 rounds from the AFL's perspective tbh. You might not get every game broadcast, but I don't think that's the end of the world. If the VFLW can afford the grounds, the commentary, the broadcast equipment on the gate they get, then why can't AFLW?

And longer playing lists shouldn't be the end of the world either, just make the VFLW list shorter and have the non-selected AFLW players play in the VFLW team

Like at the end of the day, the costs of putting on a game are as simple as getting 32 women on the same bit of grass, at the same time, with a Sherrin. If that means hosting at the Hangar then so be it.

So more games means more time practicing the game plan, better alignment with the VFLW, better skill development, and competition integrity... if the trade off is that we don't get every game on TV then

 

[yodellinhank]

I think Major was supposed to stay, so was Charlotte Miller. They had roles as Head of AFLW and Coach/Player Development Manager, I think? Something weird happened there and half the leadership of the VFLW program at the club left for greener pastures almost as soon as we got an AFLW team.

I think it was really, really unfortunate that the club decided to implode at that time. The entire AFLW program was not given the clean air it needed to get lift off with the supporter base, and the club was so busy worrying about self-preservation of individuals that they didn't give due respect, support or attention to it (still don't).

I don't see any problem with Wood though, and I don't know that Maj would have done better. The fact we didn't get Daisy or put Cloke or Michael Hurley or something in charge of our AFLW team was always a good thing, even though I didn't know Woody from a bar of soap when they appointed her she's actually very well credentialed. So to me it's kind of a draw between Maj and Woody.

That said, Cloke did alright with the VFLW team too this year. I think once a team knows what they're doing they're a lot easier to coach.


As far as a core group, we brought through Nanscawen, Barba and JZ for our midfield group last year, Amelia Radford and Jo Doonan came up as well for the wing/HF type role, Tierney for the forward line, Dani Marshall for the backline. And then Morcs got added as an injury replacement. So that's 8 out of 30. Not sure we could've brought up many more than that, they'd end up floundering at the level which would be mean

We lost Simone Nalder to St Kilda and Sarah Ford signed with Sydney before the VFLW season was even done, so those weren't options. And I think we were trying to get some of our previous VFLW girls back from interstate as well. Maddy P was always gonna come to Essendon as soon as we had a team too, and Bonnie is great. I wish we could get the other Prespakis back Georgie played for our VFLW team a couple times before she was drafted.

Another 7 came from the draft fwiw. So about half of the 30 are AFLW transfers, and the other half are our own VFLW team & draftees, with Jorja Borg coming across from Carlton VFLW and I think we had one other VFLW player that wasn't from our own team.




I think the real issue is that without a year round program, with a short season and short playing lists, we aren't investing as much in our players. So you're not bringing in project players that have a few good traits and training them up... you just get 30 that are good enough to play an exhibition series right now and that's it. It's almost like a rep team. And then if they don't get selected much or get injured then they get delisted with zero qualms.

We have 12 month contracts now but still a really long off-season, which seems daft. I don't think it would be that expensive to put on a full 17 rounds from the AFL's perspective tbh. You might not get every game broadcast, but I don't think that's the end of the world. If the VFLW can afford the grounds, the commentary, the broadcast equipment on the gate they get, then why can't AFLW?

And longer playing lists shouldn't be the end of the world either, just make the VFLW list shorter and have the non-selected AFLW players play in the VFLW team

Like at the end of the day, the costs of putting on a game are as simple as getting 32 women on the same bit of grass, at the same time, with a Sherrin. If that means hosting at the Hangar then so be it.

So more games means more time practicing the game plan, better alignment with the VFLW, better skill development, and competition integrity... if the trade off is that we don't get every game on TV then

They should've got a year out of Mia Rae-Clifford. I think she'd be huge for culture, which actually seems reasonable in the women's sides, if they can get her an AFLW role.

From what I've heard of Natalie Wood she seems okay and the players seem to absolutely love her, so that should be huge for buy-in and squad retention. But as I said earlier the way the team plays a lot of the time they make things look really difficult. The talent is out there, but there isn't much cohesion and we seem to rely on individual efforts scattered about rather than looking like we are ever totally in control.

The champion VFLW side made footy look easy with the way they set up, because they were in the right spots ahead of time. Win a clearance and they were away and at the same time lose a clearance and they could shut down the outlet ball very quickly. They all looked yards faster than they actually were. I think we should have been able to achieve similar in the higher level. The contest is hotter, but the ball doesn't travel much faster. (Especially when you don't have Danielle Marshall booting it clear from defence.)

Similarly, the VFLW looks a different prospect than what it was under Cloke. He seems to be more of a motivation style coach than tactically up for it. Though I note Bonnie Toogood credited him for helping her develop in one-on-one stuff, so there's that. The VFLW seem to have re-signed a lot and brought in a few new players so hopefully that shows developing from the bottom up as a club focus.

 

[Lore]

They should've got a year out of Mia Rae-Clifford. I think she'd be huge for culture, which actually seems reasonable in the women's sides, if they can get her an AFLW role.

I don't know why she wasn't picked up, but I think when they made Mia and G co-captains of the VFLW side they did it so that G could go to the AFLW side and Mia could lead the VFLW side without skipping a step.

So whatever decision was made there was made well before the nonsense started, perhaps even her own choice.

From what I've heard of Natalie Wood she seems okay and the players seem to absolutely love her, so that should be huge for buy-in and squad retention. But as I said earlier the way the team plays a lot of the time they make things look really difficult. The talent is out there, but there isn't much cohesion and we seem to rely on individual efforts scattered about rather than looking like we are ever totally in control.

I disagree, I think there is cohesion, the players certainly speak of it as well (unprompted). It probably depends which games you watch though, there were a couple towards the end of the season where the opposition took away our game plan and we didn't collectively seem to know what plan B was, and on another occasion we seemed to just get way ahead of ourselves, assumed the cards would fall the way we preferred and just sorta flew at everything and fumbled a lot.

It will take a bit of time to find that cohesion in every gear and every plan, but so far they've made massive progress with limited resources. Meanwhile the boys wouldn't know what team cohesion was if it bit them on the bum.

The champion VFLW side made footy look easy with the way they set up, because they were in the right spots ahead of time. Win a clearance and they were away and at the same time lose a clearance and they could shut down the outlet ball very quickly. They all looked yards faster than they actually were. I think we should have been able to achieve similar in the higher level. The contest is hotter, but the ball doesn't travel much faster. (Especially when you don't have Danielle Marshall booting it clear from defence.)

You don't get to the right spots ahead of time because of cohesion – you get to the right spots because you know where the right spots are in a particular role and in a variety of different circumstances (i.e. red time, loss the stoppage, won the stoppage, win the stoppage but the ball winner is being tagged out, etc).

Having team cohesion is about knowing not only your own role inside out and backwards in every circumstance and what your right spots are, but also having done it a thousand times and knowing exactly where all of your teammates should be in every circumstances as well, and then being reliable and being able to trust each other to do the job required.

You can teach theory over zoom like Freo did during 2020 and that'll help, but at the end of the day it comes down to practice practice practice. Something you don't get much of on a limited hours contract unless you're doing a lot of extra unpaid work (which they are but that's not really the point, some of them also have jobs and lives to get back to in other parts of the state/country and can't be at the Hangar doing match sim between seasons).

The fact we're somehow good enough with a brand new team 18 months down the track to not only make finals but have coughed up our chance at top 4 entirely by our own hand is something of a marvel on several fronts; one being that we've progressed surprisingly quickly, another being that perhaps it isn't as competitive as we might like.

Similarly, the VFLW looks a different prospect than what it was under Cloke. He seems to be more of a motivation style coach than tactically up for it. Though I note Bonnie Toogood credited him for helping her develop in one-on-one stuff, so there's that. The VFLW seem to have re-signed a lot and brought in a few new players so hopefully that shows developing from the bottom up as a club focus.

Cloke is the VFLW head coach, AFLW midfield coach, and AFL development coach for the forwards. I think he just hangs around tbh It makes sense he'd be able to teach Toogood one on one stuff, since he was a forward and would know it backwards, but doing forwards stuff with the AFLW players is actually not one of his three jobs at the club.

 

[yodellinhank]

Cloke is the VFLW head coach, AFLW midfield coach, and AFL development coach for the forwards. I think he just hangs around tbh It makes sense he'd be able to teach Toogood one on one stuff, since he was a forward and would know it backwards, but doing forwards stuff with the AFLW players is actually not one of his three jobs at the club.

Succeeding only in one of his many roles, and it's one which he doesn't even hold. He's truly one of our own now