Universal Love Breakfast with Doedee, Sloane and Pyke [PYKE INTERVIEW NOW UP]
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jenny61_99
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We were surprised that he came, but he honestly was fine.
Billie
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Thanks Jenny, very interesting.
Kane McGoodwin
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Cheers jenny61_99 - much appreciated for reporting the insights into our players.
Drugs Are Bad Mackay?
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Nice to know we have tackling/grappling coaches
GreyCrow
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SPP is a busy boy
jenny61_99
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Pykes interview is pretty good too. I’ll try to get that up tomorrow.
Does she wash your clothes and tuck you in at night too?
Thegibbsgamble
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Well done Jenny thanks for the effort!
SugarShane
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Super content here Jenny. Thanks for the insights.
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Love some of the questions being asked here. So very different and insightful compared to the usual plain jane s**t that gets trotted out in your weekly interviews
I know who asks the questions and they are always great and worked on well in advance. Anyone going up for a Brisbane game should try and get to this breakfast.
jenny61_99
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The breakfast was pretty good!
GreyCrow
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Pancakes - little ones
mtbkym
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I went along, and really enjoyed the honesty, particularly from the coach, MC did a great job, was well researched and insightful.
Loved the cheer for Eddie when he delivered Pykeys Coffee
Loved the cheer for Eddie when he delivered Pykeys Coffee
jenny61_99
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Finally got a chance to do the Pyke interview. It’s a long one! Apologies for typos and missed bits.
Pyke:
On the game: (Missed first bit). They sort of got on top on towards the end of that first quarter but I thought our second and third quarters were really strong but unfortunately in the last quarter we lost Tom and Lachy which meant we were down to only two on the bench and the way the game was played was high speed, quick transition and we were trying to do a few things like hold on to the ball a bit longer so that we didn’t burn our guys out. When sides are down they try to come rushing at you and they tried that and they got a little bit of assistance along the way... to our guys credit we just hung in there and a very important result for us because we don’t have any real margin for error from here and the players found a way which was really pleasing.
I thought we did see an introduction of a new rule last night where some of the Brisbane players were allowed to wear green guernseys. (Laughter). There were a couple of perplexing ones....
Last week tried something different with Gibbs coming out of the goal square at the beginning of the game and Sloaney changing with him, Greenwood was up there as well and we started again that way last night until we lost the rotations. What’s the idea of that move, are you trying to introduce forward pressure? It’s a combination of a bit of forward pressure and a bit of an option for our midfielders to play forward as well and we are sort of seeing a trend through the league where you’ve got sort of eight or nine guys through the midfield. Unfortunately due to some injuries earlier in the year we were restricted with the guys we could play through there, so the guys that came in like Miles and Jordan and Lachy were primarily small forwards and at this stage aren’t really ready to play midfield but when we’ve got a bigger list of those players available, like Cam Ellis Yolman didn’t play last night and he’s another one, but we want them to play forward so it gives them an opportunity for on-ground rotations which does two things, it gives them quality ahead of the ball, I mean Sloane and Gibbs and as you saw last night with Hughy, are different match-ups for the backs as well as it gives us fresh legs through the middle for us and allows them to do a burst in the middle and then push forward and trying to add some more flex in there and last night, Hughy kicked four, Gibbs kicked one and Sloane missed his shot and we’ll sort of keep the avenues to keep a combination of freshness through the midfield and something different down forward.
They are all great tackling players aren’t they - Greenwood, Sloane, Gibbs and I noticed this really had an impact last week with the tackling. The first quarter last night, we didn’t have a single forward tackle [NO] which was a little bit surprising but on the other hand in the second quarter when we really took things over, Greenwood was unbelievable with his tackling in the forward and I thought it really sort of got us going. Our game seems to be surging a little bit this year, we kicked three in the first, and six in the second, three in the third and then one in the last I think, is this been a trend for the year? It would be nice to kick 5, 5, 5, 5! [laughter followed by much cheering as Eddie interrupts and brings in a coffee for the coach]. Did you bring that up for me mate, you’re a nice man! Now, what we were talking about? Well I think that’s sort of happened since the bye. We sort of had a break and were able to assess how we’ve sort of gone for the first half of the year, and probably inconsistent was the word we came up with not only in our performance but basically to keep a consistent group on the park. The injuries have been one thing but it’s just been the ability to keep the same guys playing with each other week in and week out which had a significant impact on the flow of the team and that had an impact on some of those things. But we sort of looked at what we think when we play our best footy we do really well, and what we came back to was purely pressure on the ball, especially forward of the ball, last year we were really high at locking the ball in our front half, forcing turnovers from our front half and scoring from that as a score source and this year through the drop off in that, we’ve found we’re defending the game longer which means we are winning the ball back deeper which means we’re winning the ball back with some pressure on us on the basis of (a) we’ve lost meterage and (b) we’ve run 120 metres defending our front half so we had fatigue so the message is pretty clear, if we can maintain the pressure in the front half when the ball goes forward, turn more balls over there, or at least get dirtier ball out of our forward line then we are in a better position to attack against the opposition. That’s probably been the thing in the last two weeks that’s been most pleasing, is that our pressure has got back up to a level that our backs can sort of play really good positioning, our mids get an opportunity and time to transition back and win the ball back. We’ve got a bit more energy about us to go back to the opposition, so speed of ball back has really improved. You know it’s always been in their DNA, there’s been a whole range of factors which led us to some of the games we had earlier in the year but the signs are good, and we’ve got to keep going.
When you were at West Coast at the end of your time there, before you came here, you were assistant coach for strategies, stoppages and structure. Do you have someone like that in your team that sits in the box or analyses the game and also, people would like to know how the coaching structure works. Do the line coaches have an opportunity to make moves during the game? Or is it mainly restricted to the rotations? Or does someone call you and say “Can we move such and such to a position? how does it work? It works in all those sort of ways. The role I had a West Coast, the similar role we have Scott Camporeale does that, so he does our stoppage stuff. So a stoppage is not just the mid fielders and the ruckman, it’s what’s ahead of the ball, what’s behind the ball and that is a little bit dictated to by what the opposition are doing, as well. So he’s sort of analysing that as well. But the line coaches are looking at that as well. So last night we had six forwards ahead of the ball, Brisbane we know want to play with six forwards ahead of the ball so we look at what do we want in that space and we would say take Rory Laird and get him to play more proactive in the back half, to actually put pressure on the front of that stoppage. The other end we had Tom Lynch up a bit higher as well because he was being followed by Robertson, so we can actually manipulate where they were going and what they’ll bring. You sort of look at it like a game of chess, going what are they throwing at us, what can we throw at them and what gets us an advantage given what they might want in the game, If they’re tagging a player, a run with whatever else, we can try and move things around. So Scott has a bit of an overview of that. The line coach basically own their lines, and they’ll communicate with their players as need be in the course of the game, because they’ve got far more detail in terms of the individual and the coaching aspects than I do, so if there is a move to be made, that gets discussed in the box. Every move has a ripple effect so if we want to put Rory Laird in the midfield, you know, like Campo says we’ve lost two guys, we need a runner, and Rory went in there for like three minutes and he was buggered and he had to get out of there. He did say he kicked his goal, did his work and had to go back. So that will be thrown up in the box in terms of what the ripple would be of that if he says I want to access Rory on the half back line, and what’s it look like on the bench for our rotations, and if we’ve got enough backs or who goes back to fill that role; So those conversations happen ongoing in the box.
So, to be a head coach these days presumably is quite different to the days when you were a player, and you had Malthouse and these sorts of guys who were a very specific way of coaching and way of motivating the players, what do you think a head coaches roll is now? Is it more about management and delegating to the line coaches and perhaps concentrating on other things? Do you have to be a psychologist for example, to look into each players personality and try to get the best out of them? Yeah it’s certainly different to when say Mick was coaching, we had one coach and one assistant. Now we’ve got three line assistants, you’ve got Matthew Clarke and you’ve got Tate looking after our team too so we’ve got five coaches in the box. Each of the coaches has an analyst so there’s another three analysts looking at information, data, video etc etc - there’s a lot of information going around, and they’re all building relationships with all the players as well and so on, and so it’s a matter for a feel of coaches and the players and so it’s more management than anything else because it’s almost impossible to sustain relationships with 60 odd people and spend all that time, so I have to allocate my time as best I can to do that and make sure I’ve still got some energy at the end of the week to be able to get ready to coach a game of footy. I mean it has changed and it continues to change and it’s just a matter of a feel for the group and sometimes it’s why your leadership group becomes important because they are representing what the players are feeling, they need a lighter session or they need something else... they need to be really clear with us because as coaches we’d just keep training them and the leadership group go... no we want to go a bit lighter... It’s a wide range.... Then there’s the other side of it, the media management and that sort of thing which again takes a little focus.
I want talk to you about the physical and mental side of the game, and the preparation that we put in, and what people learned this year... you don’t have to go into too much detail. But have we actually learned something coming from last year into this year about how we should be physically managing our players and also what sort of mental issues we need to address, to get the players better? Yeah, look, it’s a good question because the two are linked but not linked if you like, they are two separate components. The physical side allows the players to feel confident to play the game style we play, which is a fairly high intensity game style so we need to have a good level of conditioning in the players and good level of strength to be able to execute our game style. And then the mental side is something we’ve done some work on and we continue to work on. And you’re right, there’s some lessens learned in both phases this year, you know I don’t think we’d sit here and say we came back in the greatest shape to be able to prepare for the season. And that’s not all the guys, but there some guys where we were probably chasing ourselves a little bit. And then all you need are some injuries and next minute you’ve got yourself a little problem and can’t get your best players out on the ground. So there’s lessens learned every pre-season and it’s going to really interesting to review at the end of the year and we did some of it at the mid season to around what we actually need and what we are going to focus on and we hope to focus on some of the mental side of the program and some of that worked - we got some really good results out of it, and some of it didn’t, I won’t go through all the details here, I’m sure you read all the mistruths about that, but anyway....so there’s learnings all the way, but they are certainly key areas in the game, and what we are seeing now is the players... it’s weird in a lot of ways, because of the intense focus that is on the industry now, there’s more pressure on players that ever I reckon, and it’s a really challenging environment to operate within because your’re there... I mean we saw it last week when a guy like Curtly Hampton retires and he’d been thinking about that for 6,7,8 months and more about his love and passion for the game which is often driven by external input into him as to whether he’s seen as a success or failure, which is a fine line for a player because he’s completely invested 100% in his career, between him seeing himself as a success or as a failure depending on how he plays a game of footy and that’s really difficult for those young men because they are getting constant and regular feedback about how they are and who they are, and some of them internalise it and it’s about them as a person versus them as a player. Sometimes, it’s really hard for them to separate that, but the reality is, that’s the lanscape we operate in, we’ve got everyone’s got a keyboard, everyone’s got an opinion, everyone’s got a voice and they don’t really think about the individuals that they are actually potting at the time, it’s just the “I’m frustrated, I want to get this off” and that’s media people as well. You know they are very quick to be negative, very quick to - you know, in the case of our captain this year, several times, one minute he’s the best leader in the AFL, next minute he fumbles a ground ball and should be taken out and hung from the bridge in Adelaide, you know it’s that sort of flip that I really struggle with, it’s not fair on the players, and they’ve got to... they get paid well, they’ve got a great job, but we need to make sure we manage them so that their mental side of things are in a good space so they can be able to do what they do, and be able to enjoy what they do in the pressures that exist in the current environment.
One thing I learned this year is a term called “hamstring awareness”, you are probably aware of your hamstrings as well...[Pyke laughs] When I was at the freeze at the G and Chris Fagan tore his off the bone I walked into the room (when he fell out of the ice bath) I walked around the corner and said “what have you done?” And He said “looks like I’ve torn my hamstring” and I said “Well mate, you’re talking to the wrong guy here!” [much laughter]
So players coming back from injury I guess it’s always a gamble to put the straight back in, we did that last night with McGovern and what made you think that he would be ready for playing AFL opposed to SANFL, or did we just need him? A bit what you said really. He’d missed 10 weeks... he trained roughly for the last five, so it’s not as if he’d not been running and cross training, and we knew it was going to be a bit of a risk for gov... but we know he’s an AFL player, probably we looked at the alternatives, and Darc Fogarty was probably the most likely to take that same spot and we probably felt like he’s carried a fair load Darc, for a first year player, so he’s sort of at the point where is he ready to play more AFL footy or not and we made the decision, probably not. It was probably better to go with Gov. But um... it was nice of Gov to turn up in the second half....[much laugher]. The thing is with Gov, he’s got speed he’s got power, he took a couple of nice marks in the second half, at the end he's had 9 or 10 possessions, a couple of shots at goal and it took him a while to get back into it, but that’s you know.... we were having a bit of a laugh at half time about it. I said “mate, what’s going on?” And he said “yeah, it’s taking me a little while to get into it”. I said “you’ll be right, you’ll get there!” You don’t forget how to play, sometimes you’ve just got to get back into the speed of the game, and it wasn’t unexpected to be honest, because he’s missed a lot of footy and to his credit, he fought it out really well. He was looking for the bench in that last quarter, for a few rotations, but he’ll get better. And again, it wasn’t so much a risk, we just felt there’d be more balance of the team, with Tex out, if McGov was there.
What about Smithy? What is his preparation going forward. Do you rush it, take him as soon as possible or let him get a bit of match fitness? We’ll see how he’s pulled up. It was great that he’s back firstly, obviously it was tragic what happened 12 months... or 10 and a half months ago that he went down, and he’s attacked his rehab in an outstanding fashion and it’s just allowed himself to get back to playing sooner so we’ll see how he pulls up. I got asked this question at the press conference and whether I’d look at him for AFL selection and I said “I’m pretty sure we’ll have a look at an All Australian half back”.... we’ll see. Whether it’s two weeks, or one week, I can’t say. It’ll be more on his conditioning match wise and how he’s recovering...I mean that’s really his JLT 1, he’ll wake up this morning knowing he’s played a game of footy which you can’t get out at training or doing rehab drills and things, so he’ll have to recover from that, go again and I know he’ll be back at my door....He’s the sort of guy, I know I’ll come in one day and find Smith on the magnet board... and he’s just been in my office....
Can I ask you about changes to the rules? There’s been a lot of discussion about whether we should bring in a lot of new rules or just a couple... some people want to reduce the interchange, others want to have more clarity around the rules and less interpretation, I’m just wondering what your reaction is. We’ve had a lot of coaches come out in the last week and comment on this. Yeah, it’s interesting. I would have liked some clarity last night..... I think the AFL is going through a really good process. They’re engaging with pretty much all the clubs, and whole range of other stakeholders in the game, to give clarity on what they are going to do, because I think in the past as an industry they are guilty of just bringing rule changes because it looked like a good idea to someone somewhere in AFL house, and all of a sudden there’s a rule change but they are actually considering and deciding what the best thing for the game is... my view is: I’m not massive for the zones, I don’t like the fact that we’ve got this nomadic game that we started 120 years ago in paddocks outside the MCG and now all of a sudden we are going to restrict people to zones...to solve a problem that I’m not sure is as big an issue as some have it. You know, you get good games of footy and you’ll get high scoring games of footy. I would say last night was an example of... you know you’d be disappointed if people walked away thinking that was an ordinary game of footy. It was close, it was entertaining. The ball was humming up and down, there wasn’t massive congestion around there, and really that’s what they are trying to target, is congestion. So I think there’s a few solutions in there. I personally prefer a simple solution, but we’ll see where they end up. And make sure that everything’s considered and see what’s happened in the past. You get the unintended consequences of rules changes which we as coaches exploit and change things and what happens the game looks fundamentally different. I think there’s something to be said for trying to keep the game as traditional as possible, I’m just not sure a zone does it.
What about interchanges? Would you be opposed to eliminating interchanges all together and just having four substitutes on the bench? As in one on one off? No I think you’ve got to take into consideration player welfare that's the probably bigger issue. And I think what the industry wants, and we’re seeing it already, we want our best players to play for as long as possible. We start exposing them to higher and longer game time does that mean we lose the best players out of the game early? And it’s a matter of whether we need 22 games ... I mean 22 games seems to be this number that’s come from somewhere, but in actual fact it doesn’t work with an 18 team comp. You could mount an argument to say if we had an 18 game season where you played everyone once and maybe played the showdowns and derbies twice and some block busters twice, you’d have 18 games but then the AFL want games and 4 by 9 is 36 games and you do the math and it’s going to cost them in TV rights and also... there’s a solution in there somewhere, but to me they can make adjustments but I’d like to see a simple solution... and one thing which I’ve been fortunate to go to the AFL and talk to them, they showed some of the vision of the secret trials, which weren’t very secret, but anyway, that they ran with Brisbane and Hawthorn and Fremantle, and some of the things they are trialling are worth looking at, but it's a small sample size and again, as I said to them, as soon as you change something, the coaches will sit down and go “well how can we exploit this, for us and our group”, and you might change the way the game looks. And i don’t think that’s what anyone wants. The reality is, we’ve got a game that’s evolved over 100 years and we’ve now got fitter faster, bigger stronger athletes occupying the same space, so congestion by nature, means it goes up, because our guys can get to the door in three seconds, whereas when I was playing it’d take me five seconds so the congestion doesn’t happen and the ball flows from there. Maybe a simple solution, for me, you just take a couple of guys off the ground. If there’s less players out there, there’s less congestion but again, I don’t know where they sit with regards to the overall....If there’s only 16 out there, would you notice? Probably wouldn’t? You’ve got the same size ground, but less guys, there’d be less congestion. If you still had 22 and 6 on the bench... I mean these days, there’s not too many games I’m watching where a club finishes with one guy... I mean we’ve only had one game this year where we’ve finished with 22 fit players. Now we are probably unique but I’d suggest most weeks, most clubs would have someone who’s either down with concussion protocol, or injured and not finishing the game with 22.
Last year I finished up with a hypothetical... I don’t know if you remember this one? Yeah I do... says Pyke with a big grin on his face. [Referring to a hypothetical put to him at the last breakfast in June last year, where Adelaide were in the Grand Final, down by five goals at half time, Hartigan down, JJ down... would you swap them? - MUCH laughter]. But... I want to ask you some questions about some of our players and maybe you can give me a yes, no maybe.... Milera into the midfield next year, if he gets a bit more muscle and bit more stamina? Possible, but we’re really happy with what he’s doing down back and you can see how he moves out of the back lines... it’s possible, but I think we’d like to have the flex to play him in the midfield as well as off half back. It’s good with Wayne, because he grew a good four centimetres over the pre-season. It was really interesting... like he’s had these patella tendon problems in his knees and he came out and I walked past him and I said “He’s bigger” because normally I look at him here and I was looking up at him. He put on 3 or 4 centimetres and whacked on 3 or 4 kilos. Wait another 6 months and hell be Paddy Ryder!
What about Smithy on the wing instead of half back? Could he give us something in the midfield with his penetrating kicks? We’ve played him on the wing before, but not with great success... he goes alright at half back.
General comments on whether if the midfield changed Atkins could go forward and how Atkins told us last year at the breakfast that he’d kicked thirty goals as a junior to which Pyke responded “I wouldn’t mind him kicking 30 goals at AFL!
What about McGovern at centre half back.... Jeremy that is.... [much laughter]. I think the numbers that are being thrown around are a little big out of our league. And I don’t know if you’ve notices but we have just resigned a few....
In the draft will we be looking for mids, or talls? Draft is going to interesting because there’s some really high ranked south Australians which is great, but some of that is going to be right at the pointy end so we we’ve got Melbourne’s first round pick, our first round pick and Carlton’s second round pick, so we’ll have three picks in the top 20, which at this stage is a good spot to be in... there’s also live trading now, so we can trade up to - not entirely sure how it works - but we can trade up to the draft or the night of the draft... which means we could package up something if we want to move up to try and get one of those high end SA talented players. Do we need particular players? I think we need some speed. I’m keen to introduce some speed. And I think we probably need to look at the age of our forward half, we might need another tall forward, but we’ll see and look at the talent pool from there and pick best available, because of course, everyone else has picks as well.
How does that work, does the coaching panel decide on what they think they need going forward and then lease with Hamish?...We’ll sit out our interviews and look at our current list, and we’re obliged to move on 6 players each year, so we’ll look at so who’s staying, who’s going off, that’s based on performance, and then we offer other guys contracts or we say goodbye... then we look and see what’s our depth in each of the positions we have and where are we short, and what happens if we lose a guy from there or there, and from there we identify the three or four gaps, if you like, on the list and that becomes our priority. Now that said, we always have a discussion that if there’s a young ruckman available early in the draft, that’s the point where I’d say we’re not taking the ruckman with our early pick... we’re not going to see the best of him for four years, so I’d rather take him at a later pick.
Pyke:
On the game: (Missed first bit). They sort of got on top on towards the end of that first quarter but I thought our second and third quarters were really strong but unfortunately in the last quarter we lost Tom and Lachy which meant we were down to only two on the bench and the way the game was played was high speed, quick transition and we were trying to do a few things like hold on to the ball a bit longer so that we didn’t burn our guys out. When sides are down they try to come rushing at you and they tried that and they got a little bit of assistance along the way... to our guys credit we just hung in there and a very important result for us because we don’t have any real margin for error from here and the players found a way which was really pleasing.
I thought we did see an introduction of a new rule last night where some of the Brisbane players were allowed to wear green guernseys. (Laughter). There were a couple of perplexing ones....
Last week tried something different with Gibbs coming out of the goal square at the beginning of the game and Sloaney changing with him, Greenwood was up there as well and we started again that way last night until we lost the rotations. What’s the idea of that move, are you trying to introduce forward pressure? It’s a combination of a bit of forward pressure and a bit of an option for our midfielders to play forward as well and we are sort of seeing a trend through the league where you’ve got sort of eight or nine guys through the midfield. Unfortunately due to some injuries earlier in the year we were restricted with the guys we could play through there, so the guys that came in like Miles and Jordan and Lachy were primarily small forwards and at this stage aren’t really ready to play midfield but when we’ve got a bigger list of those players available, like Cam Ellis Yolman didn’t play last night and he’s another one, but we want them to play forward so it gives them an opportunity for on-ground rotations which does two things, it gives them quality ahead of the ball, I mean Sloane and Gibbs and as you saw last night with Hughy, are different match-ups for the backs as well as it gives us fresh legs through the middle for us and allows them to do a burst in the middle and then push forward and trying to add some more flex in there and last night, Hughy kicked four, Gibbs kicked one and Sloane missed his shot and we’ll sort of keep the avenues to keep a combination of freshness through the midfield and something different down forward.
They are all great tackling players aren’t they - Greenwood, Sloane, Gibbs and I noticed this really had an impact last week with the tackling. The first quarter last night, we didn’t have a single forward tackle [NO] which was a little bit surprising but on the other hand in the second quarter when we really took things over, Greenwood was unbelievable with his tackling in the forward and I thought it really sort of got us going. Our game seems to be surging a little bit this year, we kicked three in the first, and six in the second, three in the third and then one in the last I think, is this been a trend for the year? It would be nice to kick 5, 5, 5, 5! [laughter followed by much cheering as Eddie interrupts and brings in a coffee for the coach]. Did you bring that up for me mate, you’re a nice man! Now, what we were talking about? Well I think that’s sort of happened since the bye. We sort of had a break and were able to assess how we’ve sort of gone for the first half of the year, and probably inconsistent was the word we came up with not only in our performance but basically to keep a consistent group on the park. The injuries have been one thing but it’s just been the ability to keep the same guys playing with each other week in and week out which had a significant impact on the flow of the team and that had an impact on some of those things. But we sort of looked at what we think when we play our best footy we do really well, and what we came back to was purely pressure on the ball, especially forward of the ball, last year we were really high at locking the ball in our front half, forcing turnovers from our front half and scoring from that as a score source and this year through the drop off in that, we’ve found we’re defending the game longer which means we are winning the ball back deeper which means we’re winning the ball back with some pressure on us on the basis of (a) we’ve lost meterage and (b) we’ve run 120 metres defending our front half so we had fatigue so the message is pretty clear, if we can maintain the pressure in the front half when the ball goes forward, turn more balls over there, or at least get dirtier ball out of our forward line then we are in a better position to attack against the opposition. That’s probably been the thing in the last two weeks that’s been most pleasing, is that our pressure has got back up to a level that our backs can sort of play really good positioning, our mids get an opportunity and time to transition back and win the ball back. We’ve got a bit more energy about us to go back to the opposition, so speed of ball back has really improved. You know it’s always been in their DNA, there’s been a whole range of factors which led us to some of the games we had earlier in the year but the signs are good, and we’ve got to keep going.
When you were at West Coast at the end of your time there, before you came here, you were assistant coach for strategies, stoppages and structure. Do you have someone like that in your team that sits in the box or analyses the game and also, people would like to know how the coaching structure works. Do the line coaches have an opportunity to make moves during the game? Or is it mainly restricted to the rotations? Or does someone call you and say “Can we move such and such to a position? how does it work? It works in all those sort of ways. The role I had a West Coast, the similar role we have Scott Camporeale does that, so he does our stoppage stuff. So a stoppage is not just the mid fielders and the ruckman, it’s what’s ahead of the ball, what’s behind the ball and that is a little bit dictated to by what the opposition are doing, as well. So he’s sort of analysing that as well. But the line coaches are looking at that as well. So last night we had six forwards ahead of the ball, Brisbane we know want to play with six forwards ahead of the ball so we look at what do we want in that space and we would say take Rory Laird and get him to play more proactive in the back half, to actually put pressure on the front of that stoppage. The other end we had Tom Lynch up a bit higher as well because he was being followed by Robertson, so we can actually manipulate where they were going and what they’ll bring. You sort of look at it like a game of chess, going what are they throwing at us, what can we throw at them and what gets us an advantage given what they might want in the game, If they’re tagging a player, a run with whatever else, we can try and move things around. So Scott has a bit of an overview of that. The line coach basically own their lines, and they’ll communicate with their players as need be in the course of the game, because they’ve got far more detail in terms of the individual and the coaching aspects than I do, so if there is a move to be made, that gets discussed in the box. Every move has a ripple effect so if we want to put Rory Laird in the midfield, you know, like Campo says we’ve lost two guys, we need a runner, and Rory went in there for like three minutes and he was buggered and he had to get out of there. He did say he kicked his goal, did his work and had to go back. So that will be thrown up in the box in terms of what the ripple would be of that if he says I want to access Rory on the half back line, and what’s it look like on the bench for our rotations, and if we’ve got enough backs or who goes back to fill that role; So those conversations happen ongoing in the box.
So, to be a head coach these days presumably is quite different to the days when you were a player, and you had Malthouse and these sorts of guys who were a very specific way of coaching and way of motivating the players, what do you think a head coaches roll is now? Is it more about management and delegating to the line coaches and perhaps concentrating on other things? Do you have to be a psychologist for example, to look into each players personality and try to get the best out of them? Yeah it’s certainly different to when say Mick was coaching, we had one coach and one assistant. Now we’ve got three line assistants, you’ve got Matthew Clarke and you’ve got Tate looking after our team too so we’ve got five coaches in the box. Each of the coaches has an analyst so there’s another three analysts looking at information, data, video etc etc - there’s a lot of information going around, and they’re all building relationships with all the players as well and so on, and so it’s a matter for a feel of coaches and the players and so it’s more management than anything else because it’s almost impossible to sustain relationships with 60 odd people and spend all that time, so I have to allocate my time as best I can to do that and make sure I’ve still got some energy at the end of the week to be able to get ready to coach a game of footy. I mean it has changed and it continues to change and it’s just a matter of a feel for the group and sometimes it’s why your leadership group becomes important because they are representing what the players are feeling, they need a lighter session or they need something else... they need to be really clear with us because as coaches we’d just keep training them and the leadership group go... no we want to go a bit lighter... It’s a wide range.... Then there’s the other side of it, the media management and that sort of thing which again takes a little focus.
I want talk to you about the physical and mental side of the game, and the preparation that we put in, and what people learned this year... you don’t have to go into too much detail. But have we actually learned something coming from last year into this year about how we should be physically managing our players and also what sort of mental issues we need to address, to get the players better? Yeah, look, it’s a good question because the two are linked but not linked if you like, they are two separate components. The physical side allows the players to feel confident to play the game style we play, which is a fairly high intensity game style so we need to have a good level of conditioning in the players and good level of strength to be able to execute our game style. And then the mental side is something we’ve done some work on and we continue to work on. And you’re right, there’s some lessens learned in both phases this year, you know I don’t think we’d sit here and say we came back in the greatest shape to be able to prepare for the season. And that’s not all the guys, but there some guys where we were probably chasing ourselves a little bit. And then all you need are some injuries and next minute you’ve got yourself a little problem and can’t get your best players out on the ground. So there’s lessens learned every pre-season and it’s going to really interesting to review at the end of the year and we did some of it at the mid season to around what we actually need and what we are going to focus on and we hope to focus on some of the mental side of the program and some of that worked - we got some really good results out of it, and some of it didn’t, I won’t go through all the details here, I’m sure you read all the mistruths about that, but anyway....so there’s learnings all the way, but they are certainly key areas in the game, and what we are seeing now is the players... it’s weird in a lot of ways, because of the intense focus that is on the industry now, there’s more pressure on players that ever I reckon, and it’s a really challenging environment to operate within because your’re there... I mean we saw it last week when a guy like Curtly Hampton retires and he’d been thinking about that for 6,7,8 months and more about his love and passion for the game which is often driven by external input into him as to whether he’s seen as a success or failure, which is a fine line for a player because he’s completely invested 100% in his career, between him seeing himself as a success or as a failure depending on how he plays a game of footy and that’s really difficult for those young men because they are getting constant and regular feedback about how they are and who they are, and some of them internalise it and it’s about them as a person versus them as a player. Sometimes, it’s really hard for them to separate that, but the reality is, that’s the lanscape we operate in, we’ve got everyone’s got a keyboard, everyone’s got an opinion, everyone’s got a voice and they don’t really think about the individuals that they are actually potting at the time, it’s just the “I’m frustrated, I want to get this off” and that’s media people as well. You know they are very quick to be negative, very quick to - you know, in the case of our captain this year, several times, one minute he’s the best leader in the AFL, next minute he fumbles a ground ball and should be taken out and hung from the bridge in Adelaide, you know it’s that sort of flip that I really struggle with, it’s not fair on the players, and they’ve got to... they get paid well, they’ve got a great job, but we need to make sure we manage them so that their mental side of things are in a good space so they can be able to do what they do, and be able to enjoy what they do in the pressures that exist in the current environment.
One thing I learned this year is a term called “hamstring awareness”, you are probably aware of your hamstrings as well...[Pyke laughs] When I was at the freeze at the G and Chris Fagan tore his off the bone I walked into the room (when he fell out of the ice bath) I walked around the corner and said “what have you done?” And He said “looks like I’ve torn my hamstring” and I said “Well mate, you’re talking to the wrong guy here!” [much laughter]
So players coming back from injury I guess it’s always a gamble to put the straight back in, we did that last night with McGovern and what made you think that he would be ready for playing AFL opposed to SANFL, or did we just need him? A bit what you said really. He’d missed 10 weeks... he trained roughly for the last five, so it’s not as if he’d not been running and cross training, and we knew it was going to be a bit of a risk for gov... but we know he’s an AFL player, probably we looked at the alternatives, and Darc Fogarty was probably the most likely to take that same spot and we probably felt like he’s carried a fair load Darc, for a first year player, so he’s sort of at the point where is he ready to play more AFL footy or not and we made the decision, probably not. It was probably better to go with Gov. But um... it was nice of Gov to turn up in the second half....[much laugher]. The thing is with Gov, he’s got speed he’s got power, he took a couple of nice marks in the second half, at the end he's had 9 or 10 possessions, a couple of shots at goal and it took him a while to get back into it, but that’s you know.... we were having a bit of a laugh at half time about it. I said “mate, what’s going on?” And he said “yeah, it’s taking me a little while to get into it”. I said “you’ll be right, you’ll get there!” You don’t forget how to play, sometimes you’ve just got to get back into the speed of the game, and it wasn’t unexpected to be honest, because he’s missed a lot of footy and to his credit, he fought it out really well. He was looking for the bench in that last quarter, for a few rotations, but he’ll get better. And again, it wasn’t so much a risk, we just felt there’d be more balance of the team, with Tex out, if McGov was there.
What about Smithy? What is his preparation going forward. Do you rush it, take him as soon as possible or let him get a bit of match fitness? We’ll see how he’s pulled up. It was great that he’s back firstly, obviously it was tragic what happened 12 months... or 10 and a half months ago that he went down, and he’s attacked his rehab in an outstanding fashion and it’s just allowed himself to get back to playing sooner so we’ll see how he pulls up. I got asked this question at the press conference and whether I’d look at him for AFL selection and I said “I’m pretty sure we’ll have a look at an All Australian half back”.... we’ll see. Whether it’s two weeks, or one week, I can’t say. It’ll be more on his conditioning match wise and how he’s recovering...I mean that’s really his JLT 1, he’ll wake up this morning knowing he’s played a game of footy which you can’t get out at training or doing rehab drills and things, so he’ll have to recover from that, go again and I know he’ll be back at my door....He’s the sort of guy, I know I’ll come in one day and find Smith on the magnet board... and he’s just been in my office....
Can I ask you about changes to the rules? There’s been a lot of discussion about whether we should bring in a lot of new rules or just a couple... some people want to reduce the interchange, others want to have more clarity around the rules and less interpretation, I’m just wondering what your reaction is. We’ve had a lot of coaches come out in the last week and comment on this. Yeah, it’s interesting. I would have liked some clarity last night..... I think the AFL is going through a really good process. They’re engaging with pretty much all the clubs, and whole range of other stakeholders in the game, to give clarity on what they are going to do, because I think in the past as an industry they are guilty of just bringing rule changes because it looked like a good idea to someone somewhere in AFL house, and all of a sudden there’s a rule change but they are actually considering and deciding what the best thing for the game is... my view is: I’m not massive for the zones, I don’t like the fact that we’ve got this nomadic game that we started 120 years ago in paddocks outside the MCG and now all of a sudden we are going to restrict people to zones...to solve a problem that I’m not sure is as big an issue as some have it. You know, you get good games of footy and you’ll get high scoring games of footy. I would say last night was an example of... you know you’d be disappointed if people walked away thinking that was an ordinary game of footy. It was close, it was entertaining. The ball was humming up and down, there wasn’t massive congestion around there, and really that’s what they are trying to target, is congestion. So I think there’s a few solutions in there. I personally prefer a simple solution, but we’ll see where they end up. And make sure that everything’s considered and see what’s happened in the past. You get the unintended consequences of rules changes which we as coaches exploit and change things and what happens the game looks fundamentally different. I think there’s something to be said for trying to keep the game as traditional as possible, I’m just not sure a zone does it.
What about interchanges? Would you be opposed to eliminating interchanges all together and just having four substitutes on the bench? As in one on one off? No I think you’ve got to take into consideration player welfare that's the probably bigger issue. And I think what the industry wants, and we’re seeing it already, we want our best players to play for as long as possible. We start exposing them to higher and longer game time does that mean we lose the best players out of the game early? And it’s a matter of whether we need 22 games ... I mean 22 games seems to be this number that’s come from somewhere, but in actual fact it doesn’t work with an 18 team comp. You could mount an argument to say if we had an 18 game season where you played everyone once and maybe played the showdowns and derbies twice and some block busters twice, you’d have 18 games but then the AFL want games and 4 by 9 is 36 games and you do the math and it’s going to cost them in TV rights and also... there’s a solution in there somewhere, but to me they can make adjustments but I’d like to see a simple solution... and one thing which I’ve been fortunate to go to the AFL and talk to them, they showed some of the vision of the secret trials, which weren’t very secret, but anyway, that they ran with Brisbane and Hawthorn and Fremantle, and some of the things they are trialling are worth looking at, but it's a small sample size and again, as I said to them, as soon as you change something, the coaches will sit down and go “well how can we exploit this, for us and our group”, and you might change the way the game looks. And i don’t think that’s what anyone wants. The reality is, we’ve got a game that’s evolved over 100 years and we’ve now got fitter faster, bigger stronger athletes occupying the same space, so congestion by nature, means it goes up, because our guys can get to the door in three seconds, whereas when I was playing it’d take me five seconds so the congestion doesn’t happen and the ball flows from there. Maybe a simple solution, for me, you just take a couple of guys off the ground. If there’s less players out there, there’s less congestion but again, I don’t know where they sit with regards to the overall....If there’s only 16 out there, would you notice? Probably wouldn’t? You’ve got the same size ground, but less guys, there’d be less congestion. If you still had 22 and 6 on the bench... I mean these days, there’s not too many games I’m watching where a club finishes with one guy... I mean we’ve only had one game this year where we’ve finished with 22 fit players. Now we are probably unique but I’d suggest most weeks, most clubs would have someone who’s either down with concussion protocol, or injured and not finishing the game with 22.
Last year I finished up with a hypothetical... I don’t know if you remember this one? Yeah I do... says Pyke with a big grin on his face. [Referring to a hypothetical put to him at the last breakfast in June last year, where Adelaide were in the Grand Final, down by five goals at half time, Hartigan down, JJ down... would you swap them? - MUCH laughter]. But... I want to ask you some questions about some of our players and maybe you can give me a yes, no maybe.... Milera into the midfield next year, if he gets a bit more muscle and bit more stamina? Possible, but we’re really happy with what he’s doing down back and you can see how he moves out of the back lines... it’s possible, but I think we’d like to have the flex to play him in the midfield as well as off half back. It’s good with Wayne, because he grew a good four centimetres over the pre-season. It was really interesting... like he’s had these patella tendon problems in his knees and he came out and I walked past him and I said “He’s bigger” because normally I look at him here and I was looking up at him. He put on 3 or 4 centimetres and whacked on 3 or 4 kilos. Wait another 6 months and hell be Paddy Ryder!
What about Smithy on the wing instead of half back? Could he give us something in the midfield with his penetrating kicks? We’ve played him on the wing before, but not with great success... he goes alright at half back.
General comments on whether if the midfield changed Atkins could go forward and how Atkins told us last year at the breakfast that he’d kicked thirty goals as a junior to which Pyke responded “I wouldn’t mind him kicking 30 goals at AFL!
What about McGovern at centre half back.... Jeremy that is.... [much laughter]. I think the numbers that are being thrown around are a little big out of our league. And I don’t know if you’ve notices but we have just resigned a few....
In the draft will we be looking for mids, or talls? Draft is going to interesting because there’s some really high ranked south Australians which is great, but some of that is going to be right at the pointy end so we we’ve got Melbourne’s first round pick, our first round pick and Carlton’s second round pick, so we’ll have three picks in the top 20, which at this stage is a good spot to be in... there’s also live trading now, so we can trade up to - not entirely sure how it works - but we can trade up to the draft or the night of the draft... which means we could package up something if we want to move up to try and get one of those high end SA talented players. Do we need particular players? I think we need some speed. I’m keen to introduce some speed. And I think we probably need to look at the age of our forward half, we might need another tall forward, but we’ll see and look at the talent pool from there and pick best available, because of course, everyone else has picks as well.
How does that work, does the coaching panel decide on what they think they need going forward and then lease with Hamish?...We’ll sit out our interviews and look at our current list, and we’re obliged to move on 6 players each year, so we’ll look at so who’s staying, who’s going off, that’s based on performance, and then we offer other guys contracts or we say goodbye... then we look and see what’s our depth in each of the positions we have and where are we short, and what happens if we lose a guy from there or there, and from there we identify the three or four gaps, if you like, on the list and that becomes our priority. Now that said, we always have a discussion that if there’s a young ruckman available early in the draft, that’s the point where I’d say we’re not taking the ruckman with our early pick... we’re not going to see the best of him for four years, so I’d rather take him at a later pick.
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GreyCrow
TheBrownDog
- Mar 21, 2016
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Fantastic stuff Jenny
Interesting a few comments .
I liked his dig at the men in green
There is no way the club is spending any pick under 38 on a ruckman
Interesting a few comments .
This goes back to the idea that Don doesnt have control over who plays and who doesnt. The delegation to the assistants ( as an old school old head person) concerns me. I 100% understand the need to save energy but even Don needs to recognise a player isnt 100% and make the effort to spend that extra time to personally assess and not take the feedback from the assistant all the time
I liked his dig at the men in green
There is no way the club is spending any pick under 38 on a ruckman
jenny61_99
Premium Platinum
- Thread starter
- #50
Agreed. It really surprised me how little control he has on game day.Fantastic stuff Jenny
Interesting a few comments .
This goes back to the idea that Don doesnt have control over who plays and who doesnt. The delegation to the assistants ( as an old school old head person) concerns me. I 100% understand the need to save energy but even Don needs to recognise a player isnt 100% and make the effort to spend that extra time to personally assess and not take the feedback from the assistant all the time
I liked his dig at the men in green
There is no way the club is spending any pick under 38 on a ruckman
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