Coaching Staff Former Coach Ben "Truck" Rutten - Sacked for real this time - 21/8

Apr 26, 2007
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Thats my concern. The pressure will come and listening him bumble through a few soft interviews in the off season has me worried.

And yeah there is a correlation between his coaching performance and his media performance. Wasn't there a half time interview with him during the season where he looked dumbfounded on another insipid team effort? Time will tell of course and again i hope Im wrong and have been many times.
Sheedy was and continues to be a lunatic in front of the camera, Clarkson is aggressive and so was Malthouse, Teague is all “buts and ums”, Lyon was like the Riddler and Hardwick is arrogant (pre premiership as well).

Truck is all about blue collar. It’s hard work for him but he gets the job done.
 
Apr 26, 2007
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Depends.

Can be needed if the cake is dry. Can also be needed, in MODERATION, to compliment something like a carrot cake.

But on the whole it does make cake too sweet.
I immediately pictured a carrot cake. A good carrot cake with cream cheese frosting is the best of all cakes. Without the cream cheese frosting it’s just a drab cake with sneaky veg.
 

BrunoV

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Sheedy was and continues to be a lunatic in front of the camera, Clarkson is aggressive and so was Malthouse, Teague is all “buts and ums”, Lyon was like the Riddler and Hardwick is arrogant (pre premiership as well).

Truck is all about blue collar. It’s hard work for him but he gets the job done.


You definitely don't have to sound like a politician or an intellectual. Neither Scott used big words or spoke in riddles but both are very clear in the way they talk about the game. Sam Mitchell, much as people hate him, is excellent. Adam Simpson is always good too. Scott Burns is impressive. Kern is borderline, in the sense that he doesn't say much and it doesn't sound great, but there are signs of life. All of this much better than Malthouse's posturing as an intellectual.

Clarkson is the same in the sense that whether he's in a bad mood or deflecting, when he's talking about the game he's clear and simple. Hird was arguably the most complete package.

I'm looking for clear communication that is not meaningless clichés. To date, Rutten's pitch amounts to "we want to be good". It's empty and it's extremely concerning that we trust this guy as our next coach, having not even bothered to canvass the available options, and that 12 months in the job (let's not keep pretending Worsfold was coaching the side) he sounds like an amateur. We shouldn't pretend that there is some tactical advantage in hiding a basic game plan or anything like that. Every club will know what we are trying to do by the time round 1 starts. The clear majority of the clubs then spend 22 rounds refusing to change what they did over summer and sucking because of it.
 
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ghostdog

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You definitely don't have to sound like a politician or an intellectual. Neither Scott used big words or spoke in riddles but both are very clear in the way they talk about the game. Sam Mitchell, much as people hate him, is excellent. Adam Simpson is always good too. Scott Burns is impressive. Kern is borderline, in the sense that he doesn't say much and it doesn't sound great, but there are signs of life. All of this much better than Malthouse's posturing as an intellectual.

Clarkson is the same in the sense that whether he's in a bad mood or deflecting, when he's talking about the game he's clear and simple. Hird was arguably the most complete package.

I'm looking for clear communication that is not meaningless clichés. To date, Rutten's pitch amounts to "we want to be good". It's empty and it's extremely concerning that we trust this guy as our next coach, having not even bothered to canvass the available options, and that 12 months in the job (let's not keep pretending Worsfold was coaching the side) he sounds like an amateur. We shouldn't pretend that there is some tactical advantage in hiding a basic game plan or anything like that. Every club will know what we are trying to do by the time round 1 starts. The clear majority of the clubs then spend 22 rounds refusing to change what they did over summer and sucking because of it.
I don't see any pretense in suggesting that Rutten wasn't wholly in charge. In fact, it's pretense to suggest otherwise. We've been told that Worsfold was the Head Coach. Is there clear evidence, like a statement of fact from Campbell or otherwise, to say that he wasn't?

I agree that we should be concerned about the process by which he was appointed, but unless there are facts that dictate otherwise, we must presume that Worsfold had one hand on the wheel.
 

BrunoV

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I don't see any pretense in suggesting that Rutten wasn't wholly in charge. In fact, it's pretense to suggest otherwise. We've been told that Worsfold was the Head Coach. Is there clear evidence, like a statement of fact from Campbell or otherwise, to say that he wasn't?

I agree that we should be concerned about the process by which he was appointed, but unless there are facts that dictate otherwise, we must presume that Worsfold had one hand on the wheel.


It's a matter of form over substances.

Wasn't Rutten in the main seat on game day and addressing the players?
 

ghostdog

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It's a matter of form over substances.

Wasn't Rutten in the main seat on game day and addressing the players?
He may well have been, but that doesn't amount to being in charge as Head Coach. Don't get me wrong, I think in all likelihood a lot of the decision making fell to Rutten, but I'd draw the line at suggesting this was without overarching influence, or even overruling, from Worsfold.

As amateur as he may be, I reckon Rutten would have breathed a sigh of relief when Woosha left the building. He finally gets to steer the ship. Reasonable argument to be made, though, that the team has been set up to fail due to the lack of a thorough appointment process.
 

BrunoV

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He may well have been, but that doesn't amount to being in charge as Head Coach. Don't get me wrong, I think in all likelihood a lot of the decision making fell to Rutten, but I'd draw the line at suggesting this was without overarching influence, or even overruling, from Worsfold.

As amateur as he may be, I reckon Rutten would have breathed a sigh of relief when Woosha left the building. He finally gets to steer the ship. Reasonable argument to be made, though, that the team has been set up to fail due to the lack of a thorough appointment process.



There is no way the handover could be functional if Worsfold had any meaningful say to the extent it contradicted what Rutten wanted. By default, that's the end of Worsfold's tenure as anything other than an irrelevant figurehead. His inability to perform at a press conference in a way that could shield the club speaks to how irrelevant he had become.

You can't implement a handover during which an incumbent coach can spend 12 months making decisions which compromise the position of the incoming coach.

We read the articles during the year about Worsfold fronting press conferences to explain a game plan that wasn't his. We saw Rutten in the box on match day and Worsfold sitting on the bench about as involved as I was from my couch. We saw Rutten address the players.

If you're making all the decisions and giving all the important speeches you're the coach, it really doesn't matter what your title says. We need to avoid getting sucked into to corporate public relations exercises because the same idiots who oversaw this debacle appointed Rutten without engaging in any meaningful process to determine whether he was the best coach. It is beyond belief that they managed to keep a detailed recruitment process secret and have then decided to maintain the secret because it undermines the selection of Rutten to do so.

Brasher, the chief idiot, talks a tough game wanting to shift the blame onto the players but Essendon wont publicly address being in a rebuild (or whatever term with the identical meaning you want to assign). Blaming the players makes some sense but they're not the one who select themselves and despite losing 4 of our best players we're still stuck with a midfield that doesn't work without the spots on the ground to change anything.

Essendon fans need to maintain the rage because all signs point to us being in year 16 in one of those 30-50 year ruts and it may be that the boys club needs to be destroyed once and forever via a board spill. There is no chance of that happening if fans fall for club spin.
 
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Worsfold sitting on the bench about as involved as I was from my couch
That would be a more notable observation if it represented a change from previous years – he has always appeared uninvolved.
 

ghostdog

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There is no way the handover could be functional if Worsfold had any meaningful say to the extent it contradicted what Rutten wanted. By default, that's the end of Worsfold's tenure as anything other than an irrelevant figurehead. His inability to perform at a press conference in a way that could shield the club speaks to how irrelevant he had become.

You can't implement a handover during which an incumbent coach can spend 12 months making decisions which compromise the position of the incoming coach.

We read the articles during the year about Worsfold fronting press conferences to explain a game plan that wasn't his. We saw Rutten in the box on match day and Worsfold sitting on the bench about as involved as I was from my couch. We saw Rutten address the players.

If you're making all the decisions and giving all the important speeches you're the coach, it really doesn't matter what your title says. We need to avoid getting sucked into to corporate public relations exercises because the same idiots who oversaw this debacle appointed Rutten without engaging in any meaningful process to determine whether he was the best coach. It beyond belief that they managed to keep a detailed recruitment process secret and have then decided to maintain the secret because it undermines.

Brasher, the chief idiot, talks a tough game wanting to shift the blame onto the players but Essendon wont publicly address being in a rebuild (or whatever term with the identical meaning you want to assign). Blaming the players makes some sense but they're not the one who select themselves and despite losing 4 of our best players we're still stuck with a midfield that doesn't work without the spots on the ground to change anything.

Essendon fans need to maintain the rage because all signs point to us being in year 16 in one of those 30-50 year ruts and it may be that the boys club needs to be destroyed once and forever via a board spill. There is no chance of that happening if fans fall for club spin.
"There is no way the handover could be functional if Worsfold had any meaningful say to the extent it contradicted what Rutten wanted."
This is exactly the point I was trying to convey. Worsfold must have had one hand on the wheel in terms of the decision making and coaching and team selection and so on. To the extent that it was, and because their styles are so far apart, it became dysfunctional. The lack of a transparent appointment process, I think, enabled that dysfunction. It explains why the players didn't know what to do at times - they were likely receiving mixed messages.

"You can't implement a handover during which an incumbent coach can spend 12 months making decisions which compromise the position of the incoming coach."
Again, I agree. That's why everything turned to s***.

"If you're making all the decisions and giving all the important speeches you're the coach..."
This is the part that can not be demonstrated without any evidence or statements of fact. The official line is that Worsfold mentored Rutten. By extension, this implies collaborative decision making to an extent. Is there evidence to show that it wasn't? The same goes for 'the important speeches.'


It's more likely that he was being mentored than he wasn't. Both have previously said they had agreed on their clearly defined roles in this regard and the players have also remarked on how noticeable this was. It's also more likely that their coaching styles and philosophies were miles apart, however, and the players' confusion was reflective of this - they didn't know whose message to listen to or give more credence to. In the end, as you've said, this is the club's fault for not being more rigorous and transparent in their process instead of simply headhunting Rutten on his promise.

I'd go a bit further as well, though, and suggest that because this type of coaching arrangement was unconventional, both Worsfold and Rutten were to some extent playing it by ear. Their styles needed to be more closely aligned for it to really work, or the club needed to take a more traditional approach altogether; sack Worsfold and go through a transparent appointment process. That would have ruled a line underneath it all and probably made it more palatable to the fans.
 
I think the reason why it did not work in the end was they where at different ends of the scale when it came to standards. Worsfold was happy to lay out what he wanted and then let the players run with it with the line coaches working on the game plan for the various zones. It appears Rutten is going to be a lot more hands on in driving what culture he wants. With Worsfold as the top man Rutten was not really going to be able to coach like he absolutely wanted and most likely saw some big issues on how the culture was driven but was unable to do anything with that.

I do know their defensive strategy was very similar as far as a team defense plan goes so there will not be a massive change in that other than you would think Rutten will be more about driving the plan himself and leading the players rather than letting the players drive it and it falling apart.

I still say do not under estimate how much effect the hub had on things. It is not an excuse for us not being top 6 but it certainly created a toxic environment when things started to go bad. The teams that survived this year where sides that had and established list and game plan or got to play a decent amount of home footy.
 

ghostdog

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I think the reason why it did not work in the end was they where at different ends of the scale when it came to standards. Worsfold was happy to lay out what he wanted and then let the players run with it with the line coaches working on the game plan for the various zones. It appears Rutten is going to be a lot more hands on in driving what culture he wants. With Worsfold as the top man Rutten was not really going to be able to coach like he absolutely wanted and most likely saw some big issues on how the culture was driven but was unable to do anything with that.

I do know their defensive strategy was very similar as far as a team defense plan goes so there will not be a massive change in that other than you would think Rutten will be more about driving the plan himself and leading the players rather than letting the players drive it and it falling apart.

I still say do not under estimate how much effect the hub had on things. It is not an excuse for us not being top 6 but it certainly created a toxic environment when things started to go bad. The teams that survived this year where sides that had and established list and game plan or got to play a decent amount of home footy.
First paragraph is definitely agreeable.
 
The concerning part I think is simply that he was just brought in.
They head hunted Rutten as Worsfold replacement. Make no mistake about that. There was no proper process but they certainly looked around for the young coach they could groom as out next coach.
The issue is they did it to avoid sacking Worsfold. They knew they had stuffed up with his extension and they knew he was not going to coach on past his contract.
The only thing we can hope is the reviews Rutten received from a number of sources where right.
 
They head hunted Rutten as Worsfold replacement. Make no mistake about that. There was no proper process but they certainly looked around for the young coach they could groom as out next coach.
The issue is they did it to avoid sacking Worsfold. They knew they had stuffed up with his extension and they knew he was not going to coach on past his contract.
The only thing we can hope is the reviews Rutten received from a number of sources where right.
That would make more sense if we didn't hire Rutten at the end of 2017 with encouragement from Richardson, who himself started at Essendon in Feb 2018, with Worsfold's original contract running to the end of 2018, and then they re-hired Worsfold in like April 2018?

It seems like aspirational assistant coaches are a thing for us, we did it with Goodwin and Egan, we did it with Skipworth, then Rutten and now Giansiracusa. Always have a plan B I suppose?
 
That would make more sense if we didn't hire Rutten at the end of 2017 with encouragement from Richardson, who himself started at Essendon in Feb 2018, with Worsfold's original contract running to the end of 2018, and then they re-hired Worsfold in like April 2018?

It seems like aspirational assistant coaches are a thing for us, we did it with Goodwin and Egan, we did it with Skipworth, then Rutten and now Giansiracusa. Always have a plan B I suppose?

Rutten came to us at the end of 2018.
 
Rutten came to us at the end of 2018.
Could've sworn it was the other way around. Fair enough.
 
Jul 15, 2008
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Eat your cake and have it too

though you can argue whether and is linear or not.
The way most people say it can work if you go all Nolan/Tenet on it. :p
Thank you!! The amount of times people don’t get me when I say in response to “have your cake and eat it too” with “why on earth would you have a cake if you weren’t going to eat it too?”. They don’t see why it’s not the right saying.
 
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