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

[faible]

So you think the club likes and rates Worsfold as a coach? And that this is only happening because he wants to go home and fortunately we happen to have Ben Rutten in the wings to take over? And the Club is just doing it's best given Worsfold (who we want to stay) wants out...

Obviously people on here agree with this - I don't and I don't hold suspicion over some of the club's decisions because we can't win a final either. Think more along the lines of the management of the club that saw Bomba put in charge and you're closer.

Dear god you're a negative person aren't you? Is there anything that the club could have done without your disapproval here?

They've made a plan for a professional handover period - most large companies will prefer to do this with a change in management as opposed to your scorched earth mentality - and everyone is losing their minds.

What the hell?

 

[Shanghaistu]

Could've done without the unplanned pregnancies and delivering an infant coach analogy, but interesting enough other than that.

For some reason I now have the image of Rutten's head on an infant's body in my mind.

Cool - We can draft him under the Father-Son rule in 18 years’ time

 

[CBombers17]

Dear god you're a negative person aren't you? Is there anything that the club could have done without your disapproval here?

They've made a plan for a professional handover period - most large companies will prefer to do this with a change in management as opposed to your scorched earth mentality - and everyone is losing their minds.

What the hell?

I should be able to express a dissenting opinion without being branded by people on here as negative.

Only a tiny mind would think otherwise.

My record for posting is fairly positive I would think over the years.

 

[faible]

I should be able to express a dissenting opinion without being branded by people on here as negative.

Only a tiny mind would think otherwise.

My record for posting is fairly positive I would think over the years.

Personal insults already?

It's not a dissenting opinion, there's no discussion, it's just you drowning in negativity no matter what the club does or what anyone tries to say might be some positives here. Dozens of posts of the same negative rant really, polluting every single thread anywhere near the topic.

 

[Shanghaistu]

Was having a chat with my GM the other day, amongst the chat which I pretty quickly dismissed as management speak was something he called the circles of control – it wasn’t until I got home that I realised I quite liked the idea and pursued it further.

Anyhow I reckon when applied to our footy club it may speak volumes..

im sure you all know it, but there are three circles, the circle of control, the outer circle of influence then the perimeter circle of concern.

View attachment 748286


The circle of control is what we can directly control by our actions, this is where proactive people operate.
The circle of influence are things we can influence via our relationships or actions but have no absolute control of its outcomes
The circle of concern are things that we are aware of that can impact us but have little or no control over. Reactive people operate a lot here.

Heres a go at us

View attachment 748287


Anyhow, after ruminating on it, I reckon we are a really reactive footy club who spend more time reacting to the circle of concern (addressing rumours, spruiking big club status, whining about fixtures, complaining about weather, worrying what others think of us, worrying what the media say about us, creating succession plans to appease baying media, asking for clarification on umpiring mistakes, trying to copy other teams game plans or poach their staff……. Rather than really controlling what we can control in the middle.

If what is written is right, the successful people work in the inner circle and work on things in the second circle knowing they have no control over the third.

as some bloke said "focus on what you can control, don't waste energy on the things you cannot"

clearly a quiet day in the office here... but im running with this.

That’s actually good stuff.... unfortunately here in china it works 100% the other way around and/or the government ‘takes care’ of those bits ...

 

[calyam]

I'm not really sure what a coaching appointment looks like with due dilligence. Does anyone in the industry do it?

The most "professional" clubs don't sack coaches, so don't need to appoint them very often.

- Sydney had a succession plan for Roos > Longmire. Longmire was their assistant coach from 2002 until 2006, when he got a "super assistant" role in order to facilitate his continued development after he missed out on the Saints job and they were scared he was gonna leave. That involved taking charge of the entire squad over the pre-season, including the pre-season competition, as well as being the line coach for the midfield. He held that role until 2008, when Longmire was appointed as their "coaching co-ordinator" as part of the transition into the big chair when Roos retired in 2011. 4-5 years as a regular assistant, "super assistant" (which sounds similar to our 'senior assistant' jobs to me) for 2 years, and a three year period named as the transition.

- West Coast poached Adam Simpson from Clarkson's stable at Hawthorn when Worsfold stepped down from coaching. He retired from playing in 2009, joined Hawthorn as an assistant in 2010, and was appointed at West Coast at the end of 2013. So three years experience.. but he was a premiership winning midfield/forward assistant coach so I guess that's something.

- Chris Scott retired in 2007, was an assistant at Fremantle for three seasons (08-10) before he got the job at Geelong, when Bomber somewhat famously stepped down due to burnout at the end of 2010.

- 300 years ago Hawthorn poached Clarkson out of Port Adelaide's coaching box (it was actually 2005). He'd had one year of experience as an assistant at St Kilda in 1999, and two years with Port in 2003-04. In between he coached a VFL team for a year and then a SANFL team for two years, winning one SANFL premiership and losing the other. So a grand total of three years in the senior competition, with some promise shown as a head coach at a lower level.

And for the sake of the other side of it, the Buckley/Malthouse scenario;
- Nathan Buckley retired in 2007. He seems to have spent 2008 and 2009 writing a memoir, working in the media and working with the AIS. He was linked to coaching jobs at a couple of other clubs around that period, but in mid 2009 Collingwood announced he and Malthouse had both signed 5 year deals, with Buckley being an assistant for two years and then taking over as senior coach, with Malthouse moving to a director of coaching role. 2010 was Collingwood's premiership year, and 2011 they made the grand final but lost to Geelong. Malthouse didn't stick around to be a director of coaching after that, and Buckley basically threw all the babies out of the bath but kept the bathwater, which took a while but seems to finally be working in his favour.

Lets not mention the Hirdy/Bomber coaching arrangement. Whatever that could've been, it certainly was not. Best not spoken of.


Rutten's story so far is retiring from playing in 2014, four years as an assistant at Richmond 2015-2018, one year as a senior assistant at Essendon (team defence and KPP). If it goes how it's supposed to, his role next year could be anything from what he's doing now with a seat at the list management and selection committee tables and some mentoring from Worsfold around "here's a scenario, what would you do, here's what I would do and why, what do you think", to what Longmire was doing as "super assistant" and taking charge of the entire pre-season as well.

He's got more experience at senior level than what Bucks, Clarkson, Scott or Simpson had. He'll have a quicker transition than Buckley or Longmire had. And more buy in from Worsfold than Buckley did with Malthouse. He doesn't have quite as much glitter on his apprenticeship compared to Clarkson, although we haven't actually tried putting Truck in charge of a SANFL team so who knows what would happen with the same opportunities. Worsfold does at least seem to be on board with it, and his family reasons are legit.


If Essendon wins a premiership next year that would certainly put an interesting spin on the situation (as it did for Collingwood) but so long as there is buy in from the coaches themselves, it can't really go too far wrong in the immediate future imo. The longer term will just have to take care of itself, as it always has.

Most teams don't have a Knights / Hird / Bomber / Hird period in their recent history. We have a record for not asking the right questions or going through a professional process.

I am in no way saying that Rutten is not capable. As an outsider you'd never really know. Merely that I hope that we asked all the right questions, ticked all the boxes and that he wasn't the only person considered for the role. It'd be horrible if we continued to track sideways, while some other team signs another Clarko gun assistant and leapfrogs to premiership contention.

 

[I Remember Bluey]

Most teams don't have a Knights / Hird / Bomber / Hird period in their recent history. We have a record for not asking the right questions or going through a professional process.

I am in no way saying that Rutten is not capable. As an outsider you'd never really know. Merely that I hope that we asked all the right questions, ticked all the boxes and that he wasn't the only person considered for the role. It'd be horrible if we continued to track sideways, while some other team signs another Clarko gun assistant and leapfrogs to premiership contention.

Gun assistant to Clarko doesn't guarantee success, eg: Brendon Bolton.

 

[daffo]

There is 99 ways this will end in disaster and 1 that will work out.

This succession plan will destroy out 2020 season and its depressing to think about it.

Our position by the bye
1-4 . Pressure will come on the club from members and media for Woosh to stay
5-8. Trending water. Not what we want
9-18. Gone backwards. Woosha let go

 

[DapperJong]

This succession plan will destroy out 2020 season and its depressing to think about it.

Only if you had a flag in mind. And if you do, that's depressing to think about.

 

[calyam]

There is 99 ways this will end in disaster and 1 that will work out.

This succession plan will destroy out 2020 season and its depressing to think about it.

Our position by the bye
1-4 . Pressure will come on the club from members and media for Woosh to stay
5-8. Trending water. Not what we want
9-18. Gone backwards. Woosha let go

A succession plan is fine if you have buy-in from the senior coach. There were no issues with Paul Roos - at either Sydney or Melbourne. The Malthouse / Buckley succession was problematic because Malthouse hated the idea. As far as we know, Woosha is on board and that suggests the succession should run smoothly.

 

[CBombers17]

There is 99 ways this will end in disaster and 1 that will work out.

This succession plan will destroy out 2020 season and its depressing to think about it.

Our position by the bye
1-4 . Pressure will come on the club from members and media for Woosh to stay
5-8. Trending water. Not what we want
9-18. Gone backwards. Woosha let go

All these scenarios are distinct possibilities and its logical to consider these outcomes for 2020.

 

[rumply]

There is 99 ways this will end in disaster and 1 that will work out.

This succession plan will destroy out 2020 season and its depressing to think about it.

Our position by the bye
1-4 . Pressure will come on the club from members and media for Woosh to stay
5-8. Trending water. Not what we want
9-18. Gone backwards. Woosha let go

1-4.Pressure will come on the club from members and media for Woosh to stay - unlikely seeing it will be Trucks gameplan in place from r1
5-8. Trending water. Not what we want - first year coach implementing his vision, allowances rightly will be made
9-18. Gone backwards. Woosha let go - first year coach implementing his vision, allowances rightly will be made

I really don't get the angst surrounding this decision.

 

[BrunoV]

My major concern is simple. Football clubs are run increasingly with PR as #1. The reasons for that make sense: the media and public scrutiny on football is beyond any other industry or field. Politics and business included. That puts extreme pressure on people making decisions. And I mean extreme pressure. Nerve shattering, life ruining pressure.

I understand the logic but I don't think it holds.

The news cycle is so short these days it makes no difference.

Don't play the game. It's a game that cant be won because its rules are not set up to allow victory for anyone.

 

[MarkJohnson#1]

The bold decision would have been to actually get rid of Woosha following our finals trashing and appoint someone else for day 1 of the pre-season.

Putting in this succession plan is just a fence sitting exercise and before you know it another 12 months passes by and the club goes nowhere.

Nope. It would’ve been irrational and a waste of money paying Woosha out. Why not have him showing the ropes to a young up and coming coach?

 

[yaablet]

I like it. Obviously they are content on Truck being their man. I would love to add Solly to the ranks as an assistant.

Look I love Solly as much as anyone but we need to be carful not to become inbred again. The club will give Truck all the support he needs as we charge towards our next flag.

 

[yodellinhank]

Nope. It would’ve been irrational and a waste of money paying Woosha out. Why not have him showing the ropes to a young up and coming coach?

It'd be better if we had somebody good show a young up and coming coach the ropes

 

[Lore]

ICYMI | Worsfold on 3AW

John Worsfold spoke on 3AW on Tuesday 18th September.

www.essendonfc.com.au

Transcribing the relevant questions from this interview from 3AW (Gerard and Caro), for those who haven't or can't listen to it:


Who first proposed the succession plan?

It was the club first, yeah. Really it depends on the way you look at it because when I first told Xavier that my family was moving back to Perth which was nearly 2 years ago now um we had an agreement that as much as I was signing on for the club for an extra two years, by the end of the year if that wasn't working, if the relocation of the family and me being based in Melbourne didn't feel quite right then Xavier and I had an agreement that we would honour the fact that I had to move back to Perth for family reasons.

So that's been ongoing communication for the last couple of years, which has meant that really Essendon has had no true security around who is going to lead them year to year for the last couple of years until really early August. In that regard we needed to start thinking about who have we got at the club, whose out there, who potentially would know the system that we're working to and that if required to step in at fairly short notice would at least be a really promising candidate. So in that regard it's sort of been ongoing for a couple of years, I'm sure the club has had to consider it's position in that regard.


Are you saying that in early August of this year (2019), you told Essendon that you wanted to stay on for the rest of your contract?

I told them that I was able to maintain my level of commitment for another 12 months and that was the deal. So I've got a year on my contract, early August, my agreement with Xavier was that I would let him know if I still had the commitment and the ability and desire to stay on and do the job with the family still based remotely, so after discussions with the family, which is always the first priority, I then informed Xavier that I was up for the challenge of taking the club forward next year.


Did Xavier have the same out-clause? They would have had to have paid you. Could Xavier have said "well look this isn't working out, we're going to end it now". Could he have done that and not had to pay you out?

No, it wasn't a full payout figure that we'd negotiated, so we had taken that into account. It wasn't like they had to pay a full year salary if the club decided to end my contract if they didn't feel it was working. But their decision was obviously not going to be based around what was best for me and my family, because they wouldn't have known the situation. They would have been judging me on my performance.


When did Ben Rutten get brought into the circle?

Well Ben was the coach who came in when we started to say which potential high candidates are out there that we could add to our coaching structure moving forward, that would be someone to consider as we go forward. So we clearly have identified Hayden Skipworth in the past and I still think as a really high potential future coach going forward but Hayden is not ready yet and he's very clear on that, he believes he needs a few more years of experience and learning and Ben came on board as someone who potentially would be ready to go fairly quickly as well. Really since Ben came to Essendon he came along and we had communicated to him that we really rate his prospects to be a future senior coach not necessarily at Essendon, but that we believed he has the capability to become a senior coach and I was more than happy to assist in his development along the way, as I do with Hayden Skipworth currently.


Was this decision or announcement expedited by the Adelaide situation and the fact they might have been looking at a new coach?

I don't think so no, I'm pretty sure... it's been a pretty hectic couple of weeks Caro but this decision was underway before Don Pyke resigned so I'm pretty sure about that.


Woosha can I ask you about how it's going to work? There's been a few succession plans over the last 4-5 years, Roosy has been involved with a couple of them, is there a set formula, is there a way that you are going to gradually hand over the hands on the tiller if you like to Ben Rutten, or is it just going to be he stays in the same job and takes over when you leave?

The majority of it is that Ben will remain in the same role, he will be titled now as the "Senior Assistant Coach". He will continue to coach our defence, but he will have a lot more say over the overall game plan. Blake Caracella will be coming in with some new ideas and Ben will be tasked with working really strongly with Blake on implementing the game plan that he would like, that Blake will be a big part of, and tying that in with the other coaches.

There is no sort of real gradual progression through but there will be a lot of tutoring or mentoring of Ben throughout the year where when there's are issues I'm dealing with, whether it's communicating with the board, the CEO, list management committee around selection criteria things like that, I will talk Ben through or ask him to consider how he would have dealt with certain situations and give him some feedback on how I may go about it, but ultimately the decision will still be mine in that regard but I will certainly be asking Ben to give consideration. So we even discuss things like the current Toby Greene situation. I'll ask Ben how would you deal with it if you had a player that was in Toby's situation, what would you consider, talk to me about as senior coach what your communication might be with your player, and we will share ideas like that.


You mentioned your family, and that's a deeply personal issue and you are living apart from them and we all think that that must be difficult. How close did you get to pulling the pin, particularly when you were under a lot of pressure at several times this year, high profile players from Tim Watson and Matthew Lloyd questioning the Essendon coaching. There was a Bulldogs game, et cetera, a lot of people talked about your body language on the bench. Did you think that you might, that it was all to hard and you wouldn't mind going home and being with the family again?

Certainly not because it was all too hard or coaching was too hard or I was disappointed with one game or anything like that. The only thing that would have, like the key thing I weigh up, I talk to my family throughout the year but certainly as we get closer to August around how we are all feeling if we push on and if we commit to this family structure for another twelve months. Nothing about whether..

My motivation hasn't wavered at all. My focus about where this group is going hasn't wavered at all. I knew there was going to be absolute times where things wouldn't go to plan or would look like they were falling apart because it's a very young group, we have some real senior players out but that young group are heading towards their best years there's no doubt about that. If you add Daniher, Smith, Zaharakis back in all of a sudden our experience starts to head up towards some of the more experienced teams in the competition. And you add another 20 games next season into Parish, Mcgrath, Redman Francis, and these really talented young players, their improvement is going to be exponential again in their growth phase. So there's so much room for improvement at the Essendon footy club, whereas some of the clubs that are flying at the top of the ladder they are looking to maintain, they may not necessarily the same levels of growth as we do and that's where we can see ourselves closing the gap.


So you are pushing on, and you'll move home to WA at the end of next year?

I'm not sure, no. There's a lot to play out with that.


You might stay on at Essendon in a more senior developmental role?

That's a possibility yeah that I've spoken to Xavier about. They're all things that aren't ruled out. It's exactly what I've said to Xavier: come August next year I need to sit down and say where is everything at, how is my family feeling, how is it all going in Perth, how are we coping with the structure that we're living through at the moment..


Might they come back and spend next year with you, given it's one more year as the senior coach?

These are all unknowns at the moment Caro, yeah, my son finishes school this year, I've got another daughter going into year 11 next year. So your family situation, we're at that age where things are moving, kids are starting to make their own decisions as young adults and really I can't answer those questions at the moment. That's been the challenge with the Essendon football club is I can't look them in the eye honestly and say I've got the ability to commit to you beyond next year because I just can't give them that guarantee.


Looking back at this year, made the 8 with a poor percentage etc. did so without some really serious players. Where do you think you need to get it right next year to give yourself that chance, that clearly is on the cusp, to play big finals.

Yeah well there's a couple of things. One is we need to keep getting that experience into the group. We went into the final against West Coast on average 60 games per player less than West Coast, so they are a very mature, experienced and finals experienced side and we're compared to them very very young and inexperienced. We believe in the squad we've got, we'll be adding another 20 games into that group next year and close that gap.

When we lost Bellchambers midway through the year everything changed, our stoppage work our numbers really dropped away. We were tracking pretty well, when TBell went out of the side everything went backwards from there. Our clearance numbers, our contested possession numbers, because we were on the back foot really. So we learned from that, we need a healthy ruckman who is going to be able to help us through the whole season.

Really I think the other thing is best players fit every week so we carried Heppell and Fantasia for the second part of the year not being able to get up to 100% and we didn't have Daniher, Smith and then Zaharakis for the last part of the year. So all of those things are going to mean a lot more consistent performance.

It'll be our second year under Ben Rutten's defensive game plan. The players will start the season a lot more aware with a lot more understanding of it. We'll start the season with Redman, Saad and McKenna having a lot better understanding of how each other plays alongside each other. So they're all the building blocks to say there's a lot of improvement going forward.

 

[Lore]

There are two more interviews here:

ICYMI | Worsfold on 6PR

John Worsfold spoke to 6PR on Tuesday 18th September.

www.essendonfc.com.au

ICYMI | Campbell on RSN

Xavier Campbell spoke on RSN on Wednesday 18th September.

www.essendonfc.com.au

The Worsfold on 6PR one seems to be roughly the same in content to the 3AW one above, done on the same day for the same reason under basically the same circumstances so that's not surprising.

If the Campbell one is worthwhile (I haven't listened to it yet) then I might try and post some cliff notes tomorrow or whenever I get some time.

 

[ghostdog]

ICYMI | Worsfold on 3AW

John Worsfold spoke on 3AW on Tuesday 18th September.

www.essendonfc.com.au

Transcribing the relevant questions from this interview from 3AW (Gerard and Caro), for those who haven't or can't listen to it:


Who first proposed the succession plan?

It was the club first, yeah. Really it depends on the way you look at it because when I first told Xavier that my family was moving back to Perth which was nearly 2 years ago now um we had an agreement that as much as I was signing on for the club for an extra two years, by the end of the year if that wasn't working, if the relocation of the family and me being based in Melbourne didn't feel quite right then Xavier and I had an agreement that we would honour the fact that I had to move back to Perth for family reasons.

So that's been ongoing communication for the last couple of years, which has meant that really Essendon has had no true security around who is going to lead them year to year for the last couple of years until really early August. In that regard we needed to start thinking about who have we got at the club, whose out there, who potentially would know the system that we're working to and that if required to step in at fairly short notice would at least be a really promising candidate. So in that regard it's sort of been ongoing for a couple of years, I'm sure the club has had to consider it's position in that regard.


Are you saying that in early August of this year (2019), you told Essendon that you wanted to stay on for the rest of your contract?

I told them that I was able to maintain my level of commitment for another 12 months and that was the deal. So I've got a year on my contract, early August, my agreement with Xavier was that I would let him know if I still had the commitment and the ability and desire to stay on and do the job with the family still based remotely, so after discussions with the family, which is always the first priority, I then informed Xavier that I was up for the challenge of taking the club forward next year.


Did Xavier have the same out-clause? They would have had to have paid you. Could Xavier have said "well look this isn't working out, we're going to end it now". Could he have done that and not had to pay you out?

No, it wasn't a full payout figure that we'd negotiated, so we had taken that into account. It wasn't like they had to pay a full year salary if the club decided to end my contract if they didn't feel it was working. But their decision was obviously not going to be based around what was best for me and my family, because they wouldn't have known the situation. They would have been judging me on my performance.


When did Ben Rutten get brought into the circle?

Well Ben was the coach who came in when we started to say which potential high candidates are out there that we could add to our coaching structure moving forward, that would be someone to consider as we go forward. So we clearly have identified Hayden Skipworth in the past and I still think as a really high potential future coach going forward but Hayden is not ready yet and he's very clear on that, he believes he needs a few more years of experience and learning and Ben came on board as someone who potentially would be ready to go fairly quickly as well. Really since Ben came to Essendon he came along and we had communicated to him that we really rate his prospects to be a future senior coach not necessarily at Essendon, but that we believed he has the capability to become a senior coach and I was more than happy to assist in his development along the way, as I do with Hayden Skipworth currently.


Was this decision or announcement expedited by the Adelaide situation and the fact they might have been looking at a new coach?

I don't think so no, I'm pretty sure... it's been a pretty hectic couple of weeks Caro but this decision was underway before Don Pyke resigned so I'm pretty sure about that.


Woosha can I ask you about how it's going to work? There's been a few succession plans over the last 4-5 years, Roosy has been involved with a couple of them, is there a set formula, is there a way that you are going to gradually hand over the hands on the tiller if you like to Ben Rutten, or is it just going to be he stays in the same job and takes over when you leave?

The majority of it is that Ben will remain in the same role, he will be titled now as the "Senior Assistant Coach". He will continue to coach our defence, but he will have a lot more say over the overall game plan. Blake Caracella will be coming in with some new ideas and Ben will be tasked with working really strongly with Blake on implementing the game plan that he would like, that Blake will be a big part of, and tying that in with the other coaches.

There is no sort of real gradual progression through but there will be a lot of tutoring or mentoring of Ben throughout the year where when there's are issues I'm dealing with, whether it's communicating with the board, the CEO, list management committee around selection criteria things like that, I will talk Ben through or ask him to consider how he would have dealt with certain situations and give him some feedback on how I may go about it, but ultimately the decision will still be mine in that regard but I will certainly be asking Ben to give consideration. So we even discuss things like the current Toby Greene situation. I'll ask Ben how would you deal with it if you had a player that was in Toby's situation, what would you consider, talk to me about as senior coach what your communication might be with your player, and we will share ideas like that.


You mentioned your family, and that's a deeply personal issue and you are living apart from them and we all think that that must be difficult. How close did you get to pulling the pin, particularly when you were under a lot of pressure at several times this year, high profile players from Tim Watson and Matthew Lloyd questioning the Essendon coaching. There was a Bulldogs game, et cetera, a lot of people talked about your body language on the bench. Did you think that you might, that it was all to hard and you wouldn't mind going home and being with the family again?

Certainly not because it was all too hard or coaching was too hard or I was disappointed with one game or anything like that. The only thing that would have, like the key thing I weigh up, I talk to my family throughout the year but certainly as we get closer to August around how we are all feeling if we push on and if we commit to this family structure for another twelve months. Nothing about whether..

My motivation hasn't wavered at all. My focus about where this group is going hasn't wavered at all. I knew there was going to be absolute times where things wouldn't go to plan or would look like they were falling apart because it's a very young group, we have some real senior players out but that young group are heading towards their best years there's no doubt about that. If you add Daniher, Smith, Zaharakis back in all of a sudden our experience starts to head up towards some of the more experienced teams in the competition. And you add another 20 games next season into Parish, Mcgrath, Redman Francis, and these really talented young players, their improvement is going to be exponential again in their growth phase. So there's so much room for improvement at the Essendon footy club, whereas some of the clubs that are flying at the top of the ladder they are looking to maintain, they may not necessarily the same levels of growth as we do and that's where we can see ourselves closing the gap.


So you are pushing on, and you'll move home to WA at the end of next year?

I'm not sure, no. There's a lot to play out with that.


You might stay on at Essendon in a more senior developmental role?

That's a possibility yeah that I've spoken to Xavier about. They're all things that aren't ruled out. It's exactly what I've said to Xavier: come August next year I need to sit down and say where is everything at, how is my family feeling, how is it all going in Perth, how are we coping with the structure that we're living through at the moment..


Might they come back and spend next year with you, given it's one more year as the senior coach?

These are all unknowns at the moment Caro, yeah, my son finishes school this year, I've got another daughter going into year 11 next year. So your family situation, we're at that age where things are moving, kids are starting to make their own decisions as young adults and really I can't answer those questions at the moment. That's been the challenge with the Essendon football club is I can't look them in the eye honestly and say I've got the ability to commit to you beyond next year because I just can't give them that guarantee.


Looking back at this year, made the 8 with a poor percentage etc. did so without some really serious players. Where do you think you need to get it right next year to give yourself that chance, that clearly is on the cusp, to play big finals.

Yeah well there's a couple of things. One is we need to keep getting that experience into the group. We went into the final against West Coast on average 60 games per player less than West Coast, so they are a very mature, experienced and finals experienced side and we're compared to them very very young and inexperienced. We believe in the squad we've got, we'll be adding another 20 games into that group next year and close that gap.

When we lost Bellchambers midway through the year everything changed, our stoppage work our numbers really dropped away. We were tracking pretty well, when TBell went out of the side everything went backwards from there. Our clearance numbers, our contested possession numbers, because we were on the back foot really. So we learned from that, we need a healthy ruckman who is going to be able to help us through the whole season.

Really I think the other thing is best players fit every week so we carried Heppell and Fantasia for the second part of the year not being able to get up to 100% and we didn't have Daniher, Smith and then Zaharakis for the last part of the year. So all of those things are going to mean a lot more consistent performance.

It'll be our second year under Ben Rutten's defensive game plan. The players will start the season a lot more aware with a lot more understanding of it. We'll start the season with Redman, Saad and McKenna having a lot better understanding of how each other plays alongside each other. So they're all the building blocks to say there's a lot of improvement going forward.

I appreciate the transcription, Lore. Cheers.

 

[Old Campaigner]

ICYMI | Worsfold on 3AW

John Worsfold spoke on 3AW on Tuesday 18th September.

www.essendonfc.com.au

Transcribing the relevant questions from this interview from 3AW (Gerard and Caro), for those who haven't or can't listen to it:


Who first proposed the succession plan?

It was the club first, yeah. Really it depends on the way you look at it because when I first told Xavier that my family was moving back to Perth which was nearly 2 years ago now um we had an agreement that as much as I was signing on for the club for an extra two years, by the end of the year if that wasn't working, if the relocation of the family and me being based in Melbourne didn't feel quite right then Xavier and I had an agreement that we would honour the fact that I had to move back to Perth for family reasons.

So that's been ongoing communication for the last couple of years, which has meant that really Essendon has had no true security around who is going to lead them year to year for the last couple of years until really early August. In that regard we needed to start thinking about who have we got at the club, whose out there, who potentially would know the system that we're working to and that if required to step in at fairly short notice would at least be a really promising candidate. So in that regard it's sort of been ongoing for a couple of years, I'm sure the club has had to consider it's position in that regard.


Are you saying that in early August of this year (2019), you told Essendon that you wanted to stay on for the rest of your contract?

I told them that I was able to maintain my level of commitment for another 12 months and that was the deal. So I've got a year on my contract, early August, my agreement with Xavier was that I would let him know if I still had the commitment and the ability and desire to stay on and do the job with the family still based remotely, so after discussions with the family, which is always the first priority, I then informed Xavier that I was up for the challenge of taking the club forward next year.


Did Xavier have the same out-clause? They would have had to have paid you. Could Xavier have said "well look this isn't working out, we're going to end it now". Could he have done that and not had to pay you out?

No, it wasn't a full payout figure that we'd negotiated, so we had taken that into account. It wasn't like they had to pay a full year salary if the club decided to end my contract if they didn't feel it was working. But their decision was obviously not going to be based around what was best for me and my family, because they wouldn't have known the situation. They would have been judging me on my performance.


When did Ben Rutten get brought into the circle?

Well Ben was the coach who came in when we started to say which potential high candidates are out there that we could add to our coaching structure moving forward, that would be someone to consider as we go forward. So we clearly have identified Hayden Skipworth in the past and I still think as a really high potential future coach going forward but Hayden is not ready yet and he's very clear on that, he believes he needs a few more years of experience and learning and Ben came on board as someone who potentially would be ready to go fairly quickly as well. Really since Ben came to Essendon he came along and we had communicated to him that we really rate his prospects to be a future senior coach not necessarily at Essendon, but that we believed he has the capability to become a senior coach and I was more than happy to assist in his development along the way, as I do with Hayden Skipworth currently.


Was this decision or announcement expedited by the Adelaide situation and the fact they might have been looking at a new coach?

I don't think so no, I'm pretty sure... it's been a pretty hectic couple of weeks Caro but this decision was underway before Don Pyke resigned so I'm pretty sure about that.


Woosha can I ask you about how it's going to work? There's been a few succession plans over the last 4-5 years, Roosy has been involved with a couple of them, is there a set formula, is there a way that you are going to gradually hand over the hands on the tiller if you like to Ben Rutten, or is it just going to be he stays in the same job and takes over when you leave?

The majority of it is that Ben will remain in the same role, he will be titled now as the "Senior Assistant Coach". He will continue to coach our defence, but he will have a lot more say over the overall game plan. Blake Caracella will be coming in with some new ideas and Ben will be tasked with working really strongly with Blake on implementing the game plan that he would like, that Blake will be a big part of, and tying that in with the other coaches.

There is no sort of real gradual progression through but there will be a lot of tutoring or mentoring of Ben throughout the year where when there's are issues I'm dealing with, whether it's communicating with the board, the CEO, list management committee around selection criteria things like that, I will talk Ben through or ask him to consider how he would have dealt with certain situations and give him some feedback on how I may go about it, but ultimately the decision will still be mine in that regard but I will certainly be asking Ben to give consideration. So we even discuss things like the current Toby Greene situation. I'll ask Ben how would you deal with it if you had a player that was in Toby's situation, what would you consider, talk to me about as senior coach what your communication might be with your player, and we will share ideas like that.


You mentioned your family, and that's a deeply personal issue and you are living apart from them and we all think that that must be difficult. How close did you get to pulling the pin, particularly when you were under a lot of pressure at several times this year, high profile players from Tim Watson and Matthew Lloyd questioning the Essendon coaching. There was a Bulldogs game, et cetera, a lot of people talked about your body language on the bench. Did you think that you might, that it was all to hard and you wouldn't mind going home and being with the family again?

Certainly not because it was all too hard or coaching was too hard or I was disappointed with one game or anything like that. The only thing that would have, like the key thing I weigh up, I talk to my family throughout the year but certainly as we get closer to August around how we are all feeling if we push on and if we commit to this family structure for another twelve months. Nothing about whether..

My motivation hasn't wavered at all. My focus about where this group is going hasn't wavered at all. I knew there was going to be absolute times where things wouldn't go to plan or would look like they were falling apart because it's a very young group, we have some real senior players out but that young group are heading towards their best years there's no doubt about that. If you add Daniher, Smith, Zaharakis back in all of a sudden our experience starts to head up towards some of the more experienced teams in the competition. And you add another 20 games next season into Parish, Mcgrath, Redman Francis, and these really talented young players, their improvement is going to be exponential again in their growth phase. So there's so much room for improvement at the Essendon footy club, whereas some of the clubs that are flying at the top of the ladder they are looking to maintain, they may not necessarily the same levels of growth as we do and that's where we can see ourselves closing the gap.


So you are pushing on, and you'll move home to WA at the end of next year?

I'm not sure, no. There's a lot to play out with that.


You might stay on at Essendon in a more senior developmental role?

That's a possibility yeah that I've spoken to Xavier about. They're all things that aren't ruled out. It's exactly what I've said to Xavier: come August next year I need to sit down and say where is everything at, how is my family feeling, how is it all going in Perth, how are we coping with the structure that we're living through at the moment..


Might they come back and spend next year with you, given it's one more year as the senior coach?

These are all unknowns at the moment Caro, yeah, my son finishes school this year, I've got another daughter going into year 11 next year. So your family situation, we're at that age where things are moving, kids are starting to make their own decisions as young adults and really I can't answer those questions at the moment. That's been the challenge with the Essendon football club is I can't look them in the eye honestly and say I've got the ability to commit to you beyond next year because I just can't give them that guarantee.


Looking back at this year, made the 8 with a poor percentage etc. did so without some really serious players. Where do you think you need to get it right next year to give yourself that chance, that clearly is on the cusp, to play big finals.

Yeah well there's a couple of things. One is we need to keep getting that experience into the group. We went into the final against West Coast on average 60 games per player less than West Coast, so they are a very mature, experienced and finals experienced side and we're compared to them very very young and inexperienced. We believe in the squad we've got, we'll be adding another 20 games into that group next year and close that gap.

When we lost Bellchambers midway through the year everything changed, our stoppage work our numbers really dropped away. We were tracking pretty well, when TBell went out of the side everything went backwards from there. Our clearance numbers, our contested possession numbers, because we were on the back foot really. So we learned from that, we need a healthy ruckman who is going to be able to help us through the whole season.

Really I think the other thing is best players fit every week so we carried Heppell and Fantasia for the second part of the year not being able to get up to 100% and we didn't have Daniher, Smith and then Zaharakis for the last part of the year. So all of those things are going to mean a lot more consistent performance.

It'll be our second year under Ben Rutten's defensive game plan. The players will start the season a lot more aware with a lot more understanding of it. We'll start the season with Redman, Saad and McKenna having a lot better understanding of how each other plays alongside each other. So they're all the building blocks to say there's a lot of improvement going forward.

I hope you have software to transcribe all this and didn’t just sit there was hours typing all that out

 

[Lore]

I hope you have software to transcribe all this and didn’t just sit there was hours typing all that out

I type close to the speed of a person speaking so it’s not really a big deal. There is software out there but by the time you clean up whatever it spits out it’s almost faster to type it.

 

[Lore]

I type close to the speed of a person speaking so it’s not really a big deal. There is software out there but by the time you clean up whatever it spits out it’s almost faster to type it.

*unless it’s Conor McKenna speaking

 

[Vander18]

I type close to the speed of a person speaking so it’s not really a big deal. There is software out there but by the time you clean up whatever it spits out it’s almost faster to type it.

Far out....great effort.

Thanks for doing this!

 

[orco]

This

Essendon coaching plan lacks courage and conviction

"It was an easy option designed to alleviate the pressure and media speculation that has built around Worsfold all season."

www.sen.com.au

 

[Lore]

This

Essendon coaching plan lacks courage and conviction

"It was an easy option designed to alleviate the pressure and media speculation that has built around Worsfold all season."

www.sen.com.au

That article reeks of ignorance. At least Barrett takes the time to get the facts before he twists it into the worst possible light.