GoNorth
Norm Smith Medallist
Veteran
North Melbourne - 2015 Daw & MacMillan Player Sponsor
North Melbourne - 2014 Daw, Black, Gibson Player Sponsor
North Melbourne - 2013 Daw, Black and Gibson Player Sponsorship
North Melbourne - North 2012 Player Sponsor
North Melbourne - North 2011 Player Sponsor
North Melbourne - North 2010 Player Sponsor
North Melbourne - North 2009 Player Sponsor
- Joined
- Apr 13, 2003
- Posts
- 5,907
- Reaction score
- 3,929
- Location
- Arden St - HOME of NMFC
- AFL Club
- North Melbourne
- Other Teams
- North Melbourne
From www.realfooty.com.au
Present tense
Rohan Connolly
July 15, 2006
EVERY AFL coach knows he is going to be thrown his share of curve balls during the course of a season.
But for Dean Laidley, 2006 at times must have felt more like being stuck in the batting cage while a machine stuck on "full" spat out a series of fast pitches aimed squarely at his head.
If the Kangaroos' ordinary form was not sufficient to occupy his consciousness, there's been a series of issues so broad, unexpected and on occasion tragic enough, to test anyone's mettle. Which Laidley freely admits has been the case.
"We went through a patch there for about five or six weeks where every morning, I was waking up and thinking, 'What's it going to be today?'," he said.
"There just seemed to be one thing after another. It was a tough period, no doubt about that; probably the toughest period I've had in four years here."
That rollcall of issues is long. There was the coach's supposed "dummy spit"at his players on the training track. The kerfuffle that followed Nathan Thompson's decision to take himself from the ground in the last minutes of a tight game against Melbourne. Flak aimed at the coach for his non-responsiveness at post-match news conferences.
Then the on- and off-field troubles of Jonathan Hay. The continuing and distracting debate about Canberra or the Gold Coast as a second home. Speculation about his own future.
And then there's the truly unthinkable. Like Laidley's "brush" after the round-nine loss to St Kilda, with a Kangaroo fan who later the same day took his own life.
Save for a brief public statement the next day, Laidley has not talked publicly about that sad afternoon late in May, an incident with which he is still grappling, particularly this week, when the man charged with the recent assault on former Geelong champion Gary Ablett suicided.
"To be honest, I was probably past it a bit, but then you see the Gary Ablett incident in the news this week and that sort of brings it back up," he said. "His brother sent me a letter not so long ago, and it was very touching.
"When I was first told, I was pretty emotional about it, because it's bigger than footy, you know someone's lost their life, so you start rehashing the events of the afternoon. As soon as I was told, I basically just went home and got all my mates to come around, and we just sat there and talked about it. Then, obviously, your phone goes wild. I didn't get much sleep for a few days.
"It probably couldn't have happened at a worse time because my family was away. My father-in-law was sick and my wife had gone over to Perth for two weeks to help him with his business. There was just my daughter at home, and she was working, so it was a pretty lonely house."
And home and family (wife Joanne, daughters Brooke, 19, and Molly, 6, and son Kane, 15) are Laidley's shelter from the storm. One that has provided even greater refuge than usual in a turbulent year.
"One thing I've learnt is that I've got a very supportive wife," he said. "Some nights you come home with your bottom lip dragging on the ground, and she's very refreshing from that point of view about life's choices."
Thursdays are a rare day off to enjoy time in the company of those he loves most. It's sacrosanct family time. But it's never enough.
"I've seen my son play football once this year because he plays at 2pm on Sundays, and I've really missed that. With Brooke, I grew up very closely with her, because I was playing when she was at primary school, so I was taking her to school every day and picking her up, and I was able to spend more time with her. Kane's sort of had half and half, but Molly's probably missed out a bit."
If Laidley is acutely conscious of the importance of family, he has good reason. His own upbringing was far from easy, growing up in the northern Perth suburb of Balga, which he likens to Broadmeadows, "a low socio-economic area, an estate housing area".
His own parents divorced when he was young, and he lived with his grandparents, then his father, who sent him to live with his mother.
"It was different. And that's part of life," he said. "There's another thing I'm going through right now. There's a guy, Tom James, that's probably been the biggest influence on my life as a male growing up, my junior coach all the way through to the under 19s, and he's on his deathbed right now." The public perception of Laidley is one of intensity. Is it close to the mark? "Yeah, it is, it is," he shrugged. "I've had to be like that to get where I am today. I just enjoy the competitiveness of the whole thing."
But that does not mean he cannot see the benefits of occasionally showing the public, via the media, a little more of a persona seemingly cast in stone as stern, unflinching and unfriendly.
"You are very conscious of it," Laidley said. "I took this job on four years ago and probably the biggest part of your training is about (dealing with) the media. The two best teachers I've had are Denis Pagan and Mick Malthouse, and I suppose they haven't had great love affairs with the media over the journey.
"But I'm ever mindful of it, and that's why I do things like let the cameras in for Friday Night Footy, or try to get on Before The Game and that that sort of stuff, try to balance it up, and keep a positive perception of the 'Dean Laidley brand', if you like."
Is he getting better? "Yeah, I'm getting a lot better at it. You learn a little bit more as you go, and I'm learning by my mistakes."
But it's the perceived mistakes directly connected to the performance of his team that have thrown up inevitable speculation about Laidley's future in the job he loves beyond, or even before the end of his contract, which expires at the end of next season.
The Kangaroos have won 39, lost 41 and drawn one game in just over 3½ seasons with Laidley at the helm, a strike rate of 48 per cent. And a side that finished the home-and-away season fifth last year sat a dismal 14th before last week's upset of the Western Bulldogs.
"There's a number of reasons I won't go into, but we've changed dramatically a lot of things in terms of how we train," he said.
Veteran Roo Sav Rocca, whose continued absence from the seniors remains a sore point for both him and many supporters, said pointedly recently that he did not believe his side had prepared well enough for the rule changes introduced this season. Laidley, perhaps surprisingly, is quick to agree.
"Yep, no doubt." Isn't that the coach's fault? "Well, you're planning for pre-season when the last season finishes. You go through and put together a program, then they change the rules. I think we've turned it around. But we've still got a lot of work to do.
"We thought: 'OK, we've gone in with this structure and it probably hasn't worked, let's try a few things.' We've done that, and a few things have come off pretty well, and I think some of the younger guys we've added this year are really making an impact for us."
But not enough to keep the wolves from the door, and the name of a former Kangaroo favourite son in John Longmire, an assistant at Sydney, from being constantly thrown forward as a potential replacement.
"Yeah, I've heard that and I've asked about it," Laidley said, for now satisfied by the reassurances of chief executive Geoff Walsh and chairman Graham Duff that his position is safe. "My father-in-law rang me and said the big rumour was that I was going back to coach Fremantle. But look, if that (his replacement at Arden Street) was the case, and they want to go down a different track, that's fine by me. I'm fully confident of my own abilities to be able to work somewhere else.
"I see myself as a football person. I love the game … If I wasn't the senior coach here, I'd like to think I'd still have a hell of a lot to offer someone, somewhere.
"I think I have an ability to get a message across to the players about what we're trying to achieve, about the respect you're trying to gain. Every time I go back to Perth, I'm still striving for the respect of the football world in Perth, and I talk to the players about that a lot. It's a lifetime thing.
"To win a premiership, that's what we all strive for … Not everyone has the opportunity to win one, and if at the end of the day you can walk away with that, it can help you in life as well, I suppose."
Laidley the player has that flag to his name. But Laidley the coach might want one a little more. Winning a premiership with the Roos back in 1996, having overcome injuries and setbacks, was pretty good. But winning another from the coach's box after dealing with the stuff he has had lately might be more satisfying still.
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2006/07/14/1152637870978.html
Present tense
Rohan Connolly
July 15, 2006
EVERY AFL coach knows he is going to be thrown his share of curve balls during the course of a season.
But for Dean Laidley, 2006 at times must have felt more like being stuck in the batting cage while a machine stuck on "full" spat out a series of fast pitches aimed squarely at his head.
If the Kangaroos' ordinary form was not sufficient to occupy his consciousness, there's been a series of issues so broad, unexpected and on occasion tragic enough, to test anyone's mettle. Which Laidley freely admits has been the case.
"We went through a patch there for about five or six weeks where every morning, I was waking up and thinking, 'What's it going to be today?'," he said.
"There just seemed to be one thing after another. It was a tough period, no doubt about that; probably the toughest period I've had in four years here."
That rollcall of issues is long. There was the coach's supposed "dummy spit"at his players on the training track. The kerfuffle that followed Nathan Thompson's decision to take himself from the ground in the last minutes of a tight game against Melbourne. Flak aimed at the coach for his non-responsiveness at post-match news conferences.
Then the on- and off-field troubles of Jonathan Hay. The continuing and distracting debate about Canberra or the Gold Coast as a second home. Speculation about his own future.
And then there's the truly unthinkable. Like Laidley's "brush" after the round-nine loss to St Kilda, with a Kangaroo fan who later the same day took his own life.
Save for a brief public statement the next day, Laidley has not talked publicly about that sad afternoon late in May, an incident with which he is still grappling, particularly this week, when the man charged with the recent assault on former Geelong champion Gary Ablett suicided.
"To be honest, I was probably past it a bit, but then you see the Gary Ablett incident in the news this week and that sort of brings it back up," he said. "His brother sent me a letter not so long ago, and it was very touching.
"When I was first told, I was pretty emotional about it, because it's bigger than footy, you know someone's lost their life, so you start rehashing the events of the afternoon. As soon as I was told, I basically just went home and got all my mates to come around, and we just sat there and talked about it. Then, obviously, your phone goes wild. I didn't get much sleep for a few days.
"It probably couldn't have happened at a worse time because my family was away. My father-in-law was sick and my wife had gone over to Perth for two weeks to help him with his business. There was just my daughter at home, and she was working, so it was a pretty lonely house."
And home and family (wife Joanne, daughters Brooke, 19, and Molly, 6, and son Kane, 15) are Laidley's shelter from the storm. One that has provided even greater refuge than usual in a turbulent year.
"One thing I've learnt is that I've got a very supportive wife," he said. "Some nights you come home with your bottom lip dragging on the ground, and she's very refreshing from that point of view about life's choices."
Thursdays are a rare day off to enjoy time in the company of those he loves most. It's sacrosanct family time. But it's never enough.
"I've seen my son play football once this year because he plays at 2pm on Sundays, and I've really missed that. With Brooke, I grew up very closely with her, because I was playing when she was at primary school, so I was taking her to school every day and picking her up, and I was able to spend more time with her. Kane's sort of had half and half, but Molly's probably missed out a bit."
If Laidley is acutely conscious of the importance of family, he has good reason. His own upbringing was far from easy, growing up in the northern Perth suburb of Balga, which he likens to Broadmeadows, "a low socio-economic area, an estate housing area".
His own parents divorced when he was young, and he lived with his grandparents, then his father, who sent him to live with his mother.
"It was different. And that's part of life," he said. "There's another thing I'm going through right now. There's a guy, Tom James, that's probably been the biggest influence on my life as a male growing up, my junior coach all the way through to the under 19s, and he's on his deathbed right now." The public perception of Laidley is one of intensity. Is it close to the mark? "Yeah, it is, it is," he shrugged. "I've had to be like that to get where I am today. I just enjoy the competitiveness of the whole thing."
But that does not mean he cannot see the benefits of occasionally showing the public, via the media, a little more of a persona seemingly cast in stone as stern, unflinching and unfriendly.
"You are very conscious of it," Laidley said. "I took this job on four years ago and probably the biggest part of your training is about (dealing with) the media. The two best teachers I've had are Denis Pagan and Mick Malthouse, and I suppose they haven't had great love affairs with the media over the journey.
"But I'm ever mindful of it, and that's why I do things like let the cameras in for Friday Night Footy, or try to get on Before The Game and that that sort of stuff, try to balance it up, and keep a positive perception of the 'Dean Laidley brand', if you like."
Is he getting better? "Yeah, I'm getting a lot better at it. You learn a little bit more as you go, and I'm learning by my mistakes."
But it's the perceived mistakes directly connected to the performance of his team that have thrown up inevitable speculation about Laidley's future in the job he loves beyond, or even before the end of his contract, which expires at the end of next season.
The Kangaroos have won 39, lost 41 and drawn one game in just over 3½ seasons with Laidley at the helm, a strike rate of 48 per cent. And a side that finished the home-and-away season fifth last year sat a dismal 14th before last week's upset of the Western Bulldogs.
"There's a number of reasons I won't go into, but we've changed dramatically a lot of things in terms of how we train," he said.
Veteran Roo Sav Rocca, whose continued absence from the seniors remains a sore point for both him and many supporters, said pointedly recently that he did not believe his side had prepared well enough for the rule changes introduced this season. Laidley, perhaps surprisingly, is quick to agree.
"Yep, no doubt." Isn't that the coach's fault? "Well, you're planning for pre-season when the last season finishes. You go through and put together a program, then they change the rules. I think we've turned it around. But we've still got a lot of work to do.
"We thought: 'OK, we've gone in with this structure and it probably hasn't worked, let's try a few things.' We've done that, and a few things have come off pretty well, and I think some of the younger guys we've added this year are really making an impact for us."
But not enough to keep the wolves from the door, and the name of a former Kangaroo favourite son in John Longmire, an assistant at Sydney, from being constantly thrown forward as a potential replacement.
"Yeah, I've heard that and I've asked about it," Laidley said, for now satisfied by the reassurances of chief executive Geoff Walsh and chairman Graham Duff that his position is safe. "My father-in-law rang me and said the big rumour was that I was going back to coach Fremantle. But look, if that (his replacement at Arden Street) was the case, and they want to go down a different track, that's fine by me. I'm fully confident of my own abilities to be able to work somewhere else.
"I see myself as a football person. I love the game … If I wasn't the senior coach here, I'd like to think I'd still have a hell of a lot to offer someone, somewhere.
"I think I have an ability to get a message across to the players about what we're trying to achieve, about the respect you're trying to gain. Every time I go back to Perth, I'm still striving for the respect of the football world in Perth, and I talk to the players about that a lot. It's a lifetime thing.
"To win a premiership, that's what we all strive for … Not everyone has the opportunity to win one, and if at the end of the day you can walk away with that, it can help you in life as well, I suppose."
Laidley the player has that flag to his name. But Laidley the coach might want one a little more. Winning a premiership with the Roos back in 1996, having overcome injuries and setbacks, was pretty good. But winning another from the coach's box after dealing with the stuff he has had lately might be more satisfying still.
This story was found at: http://www.theage.com.au/realfooty/articles/2006/07/14/1152637870978.html
yeah right.