Coaching Staff AFL Assistant Coaches 2022

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eth-dog

eth-dog

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Jan 11, 2007
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Melbourne
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Essendon
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2022 Coaching Structure
Senior Coach – Ben Rutten (thread)
Assistant coach (midfield and team offence) – Blake Caracella
Assistant coach (back line and team defence) – Daniel Giansiracusa
Assistant coach (forward) - Dale Tapping
Assistant coach (ruck) - Tom Bellchambers
Development coach – Leigh Tudor
Development coach – Cameron Roberts
Development coach - Natalie Wood (also our AFLW Coach)
VFL Head Coach - Brent Stanton
VFL Assistant Coach (defence) - Dustin Fletcher
VFL Assistant Coach (midfield) - Ben Jolley
VFL Assistant coach (forward) - Michael Hurley
 
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The Prosecutor said:
Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I always was under the belief that his role would mainly be for preseason Indeed, I believe I read an article a few months ago saying it would largely run until now where he has other commits that were his priority.
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Nope, you’re right, I recalled it differently.

Was always just a preseason thing.



… until we draft him
 
FPyyUvJakAM7qII.jpeg

I think he was happy not to be senior coach/doesn't like the pressure/attention of that role, right? Watching these out of curiosity since I haven't heard him speak much...

And it turns out that he does now have senior coaching on his radar. ha.

www.essendonfc.com.au

Rd 4 | Caracella media conference

Stand-in senior coach Blake Caracella speaks to the media at the NEC Hangar ahead of our round four match against Adelaide.
www.essendonfc.com.au www.essendonfc.com.au

www.essendonfc.com.au

Rd 4 | Caracella on three changes

Stand-in senior coach Blake Caracella discusses the changes to the side ahead of Sunday's clash against the Crows.
www.essendonfc.com.au www.essendonfc.com.au
 
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As much as I vouched for the club to recruit Caracella, i'm pretty disappointed with what he's served up so far. He's responsible for offensive ball movement yeah? We have the most predictable kick-long-down-the-line style of game in the AFL. I also feel as if Giansiracusa is being wasted as a "defensive" coach when his talent lies up the ground.

If we miss finals, then the spotlight will be on them both. Gia at least as an excuse as not having been a defensive coach before, Cara has nothing to shield him.
 
Godzke said:
As much as I vouched for the club to recruit Caracella, i'm pretty disappointed with what he's served up so far. He's responsible for offensive ball movement yeah? We have the most predictable kick-long-down-the-line style of game in the AFL. I also feel as if Giansiracusa is being wasted as a "defensive" coach when his talent lies up the ground.

If we miss finals, then the spotlight will be on them both. Gia at least as an excuse as not having been a defensive coach before, Cara has nothing to shield him.
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He's our winningest coach since...
 
Godzke said:
As much as I vouched for the club to recruit Caracella, i'm pretty disappointed with what he's served up so far. He's responsible for offensive ball movement yeah? We have the most predictable kick-long-down-the-line style of game in the AFL. I also feel as if Giansiracusa is being wasted as a "defensive" coach when his talent lies up the ground.

If we miss finals, then the spotlight will be on them both. Gia at least as an excuse as not having been a defensive coach before, Cara has nothing to shield him.
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We did win today, didn’t we?
 
So. This year has been a cluster*.

We have the best forwards coach in the AFL (won AFLCA assistant of the year 2 years ago) coaching the back line and overall team defence
We have no stoppages coach
We have one of the best midfield coaches in the AFL coaching the forward line
We have Blake Caracella doing both the midfield and overall team offence

We should already be planning for next year. For me, Caracella indicating that he wants a senior job means that one of the vacancies this year will probably be his (whether it be GC, GWS, PA or maybe even WC) meaning he'll probably go. What I want to happen:

Head coach: Ben Rutten
Back line: Troy Chaplin
Midfield: Dale Tapping
Stoppages: Josh P Kennedy
Forward line: Daniel Giansiracusa

Chaplin has been at Melbourne since 2016 so he crossed over with Roos and obviously has worked with Goodwin for a while
Tapping was a great midfield coach at Brisbane and was fantastic with Collingwood as VFL head coach.
I've always liked the thought of having someone recently out of the game as part of the coaching group, and Kennedy has been under Roos, Clarkson and Longmire so has that going for him, and doing stoppages first eases him into it as a sort of subsection.
Giansiracusa was assistant coach of the year as a forwards coach, therefore we should probably put him there.

Keep Tudor and Stanton where they are for now though.
 
owen87 said:
Who's coaching our VFLW side?

Can we just get them to coach? Those players are getting it done.
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Brendan Major — I think he’s also head of development or something now (presumably for the womens side)
 
So this came through Jake Niall's article for The Age this morning (addresses a few topics, but this wasone of them):

Essendon, irrespective of this review, should be asking themselves four broad questions:

  1. Is our list management up to the standard of the best clubs? If not, how can this be rectified?
  2. Our coaching group, while good on paper, does not appear to be getting the most out of these players this year. Why?
  3. Is our development of players up to the mark, and if not, how can we lift this? Andy McGrath, the No.1 draft pick, is a case to ponder given his relative stagnation, compared to his perceived capability.
  4. Are there any cultural issues – deep-seated factors unique to Essendon (coterie groups, past players, messiah complex et al) – that hinder the club and team performance, even slightly?
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I wonder if it's the fact we bring in these highly rated assistants and don't actually put them where they became highly rated? Fair enough putting team offence in Blake Caracella's purview but why is he also the midfield coach? I'd rather have his time focussed on one or the other. Why is the guy who won assistant coach of the year as a forwards coach (and played his entire career forward) now in charge of defence, where he's never actually coached before coming here? Why is the man behind Brisbane's midfield dominance doing the forward line? Why is Leigh Tudor, known as a great defensive coach in development? Admittedly that one isn't too bad if we had a better defensive coach, but we don't.

We've got these highly rated assistants and yet we're either spreading them too thin (Caracella) or misusing them as resources (Tapping, Gianseracusa, Tudor). Why is this the case?
 
eth-dog said:
So this came through Jake Niall's article for The Age this morning (addresses a few topics, but this wasone of them):



I wonder if it's the fact we bring in these highly rated assistants and don't actually put them where they became highly rated? Fair enough putting team offence in Blake Caracella's purview but why is he also the midfield coach? I'd rather have his time focussed on one or the other. Why is the guy who won assistant coach of the year as a forwards coach (and played his entire career forward) now in charge of defence, where he's never actually coached before coming here? Why is the man behind Brisbane's midfield dominance doing the forward line? Why is Leigh Tudor, known as a great defensive coach in development? Admittedly that one isn't too bad if we had a better defensive coach, but we don't.

We've got these highly rated assistants and yet we're either spreading them too thin (Caracella) or misusing them as resources (Tapping, Gianseracusa, Tudor). Why is this the case?
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I can't remember who / where it was posted, but the idea that we get these coaches across with the promise of helping develop them in to head coaches by giving them broader experience was one I thought had merit.

To me, yes we should be looking to develop the people we have internally, but that should come after the on-field structure is performing well.

Get the midfield group humming with the coach who's got midfield experience, then give them the opportunity to work with a different line to see if they can bring something new.

It seems instead like we've put them all in new roles from the outset, whilst the role they were highly regarded in is crying out for someone with experience.
 

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owen87 said:
I can't remember who / where it was posted, but the idea that we get these coaches across with the promise of helping develop them in to head coaches by giving them broader experience was one I thought had merit.

To me, yes we should be looking to develop the people we have internally, but that should come after the on-field structure is performing well.

Get the midfield group humming with the coach who's got midfield experience, then give them the opportunity to work with a different line to see if they can bring something new.

It seems instead like we've put them all in new roles from the outset, whilst the role they were highly regarded in is crying out for someone with experience.
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That makes sense. I agree, look to get the on field stuff sorted first before we mix and match. And besides, the methodology clearly isn't working.
 
I know I have given Ben Rutten a lot of flack, as ultimately this all falls on him as head coach but perhaps it is time to start questioning the response of Caracella and Giansiracusa as forward and defensive coaches?

Who is our development coach as well? (just being lazy here and cba looking it up)
 
Yoda_ said:
I know I have given Ben Rutten a lot of flack, as ultimately this all falls on him as head coach but perhaps it is time to start questioning the response of Caracella and Giansiracusa as forward and defensive coaches?

Who is our development coach as well? (just being lazy here and cba looking it up)
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See sticky post
 
I don't understand why we have Tapping not as midfield coach when that's what he was known for.
We don't have Gia in the role he was assistant coach of the year....
Hang on! We can't even get the assistants into the role's they're best proficient at, no wonder our players barely know what they're doing because the assistants probably don’t!
 
naraku said:
I don't understand why we have Tapping not as midfield coach when that's what he was known for.
We don't have Gia in the role he was assistant coach of the year....
Hang on! We can't even get the assistants into the role's they're best proficient at, no wonder our players barely know what they're doing because the assistants probably don’t!
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I literally just came him to write this. Why isn’t tapping our midfield/ stoppages coach, that’s the role he did so well at Brisbane. Why isn’t gia our forwards coach, just makes little sense.
 
naraku said:
I don't understand why we have Tapping not as midfield coach when that's what he was known for.
We don't have Gia in the role he was assistant coach of the year....
Hang on! We can't even get the assistants into the role's they're best proficient at, no wonder our players barely know what they're doing because the assistants probably don’t!
Click to expand...

andleanback said:
I literally just came him to write this. Why isn’t tapping our midfield/ stoppages coach, that’s the role he did so well at Brisbane. Why isn’t gia our forwards coach, just makes little sense.
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This is what I keep saying. They’re all out of position and they’re all on senior coach pathways with the Level 4 course completed.

They seem to have been sold some personal growth/career trajectory stuff along with a decent pay packet (Caro mentioned their wages being high while Rutten’s are one of the lowest if not the lowest for a senior coach; but it’s also kind of obvious that they would be expensive compared to someone you haven’t heard of who used to be a VFL coach).

I.e. whoever hired them sold the job to them on a different basis than what the club actually needs. And why? Are they the right people for the job? Is it a good use of the soft cap?

And now the president is commenting on the soft cap being an issue during his radio rounds last week….
 
Lore said:
This is what I keep saying. They’re all out of position and they’re all on senior coach pathways with the Level 4 course completed.

They seem to have been sold some personal growth/career trajectory stuff along with a decent pay packet (Caro mentioned their wages being high while Rutten’s are one of the lowest if not the lowest for a senior coach; but it’s also kind of obvious that they would be expensive compared to someone you haven’t heard of who used to be a VFL coach).

I.e. whoever hired them sold the job to them on a different basis than what the club actually needs. And why? Are they the right people for the job? Is it a good use of the soft cap?

And now the president is commenting on the soft cap being an issue during his radio rounds last week….
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People are finally listening to us Lore. It's happening.
 
David Mundy is retiring. We should be on the phone to his manager right away to be our stoppages coach
 
Honestly feel that we need a cleanout of these guys. Hoping that Caracella gets a senior gig somewhere, Gia goes as well and Tudor probably needs to go as well.
 
It's hard to know how much of our poor performance comes down to these guys. Caracella and Tudor have been mentioned as potential senior coach candidates in previous years so presumably they are quite good at their jobs. Likewise I've only ever heard good things about Gia. As far as I can see they've all come across from high performing clubs so should know what a strong system looks like, and in theory should be able to replicate that here.

I suspect it's going to be the same with the assistants as it is with the senior coaching position. We can sack people are re-hire from good clubs, but until the rot at Essendon is cut out these roles will be a revolving door.
 
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