Geelong's 3 worst coaches in the last 50 years

[David the Cat]

I was just reading the Brett Spinks thread when the name Gary Ayres was mentioned as being the coach who "stiffed" him during the nineties. It made me thankful that those days were long gone.

But who have been Geelong's 3 worst coaches since say the 1963 Premiership?

My top three in order of incompetence is as follows.......what do you guys think?


1 Gary Ayres ( by the length of the straight)

2) John Devine ( tough player but uhmmmm....)

3) Peter Pianto ( ...but he could play)

 

[Catsmaninamerica]

agree on ayres and devine. Ayres basically rode Malcolm Blights coat tails twice. A rubbish coach who finished Abletts career as well as many other great servants. And John Devine... Horrible coach. But in fairness, the administration back then was horrible as well. the Williams fiasco, losing toohey and Bolton as well as Hafey. Still think if we'd been able to keep those 3, 89 would have been a very different story. The way devine treated Jacko was a disgrace. You might not have like Jacko's crazy antics, but he brought people theough the gate, and had a 4 goal a game average, something not many Full Forwards can boast. He was a very good player in all honesty. I remember his last game for the Cats, at Windy Hill and we got flogged. He was hung out to dry by that bald tasmanian freak, and we were a poorer side because of it. Rant over.

 

[SmothOperRaider]

1. Ayres
2. Ayres
3. Ayres

 

[Darwin Cat]

1) Gary Ayres

2) Gary Ayres

3) Gary Ayres

Total Rubbish, and caused heaps of damage, lost us the greatest player to ever play VFL/AFL

No other coach comes close to Ayres as the worst.

 

[Partridge]

agree on ayres and devine. Ayres basically rode Malcolm Blights coat tails twice. A rubbish coach who finished Abletts career as well as many other great servants. And John Devine... Horrible coach. But in fairness, the administration back then was horrible as well. the Williams fiasco, losing toohey and Bolton as well as Hafey. Still think if we'd been able to keep those 3, 89 would have been a very different story. The way devine treated Jacko was a disgrace. You might not have like Jacko's crazy antics, but he brought people theough the gate, and had a 4 goal a game average, something not many Full Forwards can boast. He was a very good player in all honesty. I remember his last game for the Cats, at Windy Hill and we got flogged. He was hung out to dry by that bald tasmanian freak, and we were a poorer side because of it. Rant over.

Agree totally about Ayres (obviously), I'm a little more lenient on Devine. Fact was he'd been out of the game for a long time, and as soon as he arrived we'd lost Williams, Toohey and Bolton. We had a very young and inexperienced side as a result. Not surprising that remains the last time we finished in the bottom four to date.

The other thing in Devine's favour was who was recruited in his time, from 1986-88. Stoneham, Garry Hocking, Brownless, Exell etc. A lot of fine players arrived while he was in charge, something that stands in stark contrast to the incompetence of Gary Ayres.

 

[sarah.13]

1. Ayres
2. Ayres
3. Ayres

Totally agree

 

[sarah.13]

1) gary ayres

2) gary ayres

3) gary ayres

total rubbish, and caused heaps of damage, lost us the greatest player to ever play vfl/afl

no other coach comes close to ayres as the worst.

totally agre again!

 

[deej_36]

1. Ayres
2. Ayres
3. Ayres

hahah i think most will agree with you there!!

 

[witsend]

Ayres
Ayres
Ayres
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Ayres

 

[krisholio14]

Gary Ayres

 

[David the Cat]

Ayres
Ayres
Ayres
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Ayres

Maybe I should have named the thread "Geelongs 2nd worst coach since 1963". Seems universal...

Perhaps Ayers has contributed to my almost pathological dislike of "King-hit" Clarkson and his mob....

Did Ayers do anything right?....er...apart from leaving?

 

[bulletproof]

I think Ablett Snr ended his own career. He was 34, had a drug problem and bad knees. Put a few things at Ayres's foot but to blame him for Ablett's end is absurd.

We played some good football under him, most notably in 97 when we were very unlucky.

 

[jim boy]

Just to go against the flow - I don't mind Ayres as a match-day coach, other times, not so keen about, especially list-management.

I have to say Devine was the worst. He came to my school to give us a 'motivational' speech before his first match as coach. Said something along the lines about he didn't believe in motivation and I knew from that point onwards that Geelong would never be any good under him. Despite losing Bolton, Toohey and Williams, we still had a pretty good line-up and we under-achieved massively.

 

[year of the cat]

The only time I ever felt compelled to abuse a coach was during Ayres' tenure. We were playing Richmond and he left Tim McGrath on Richo all night despite the fact that he was murdering us. Richo must have taken 15 marks that night and was the difference between us winning and losing (which we did). I ran down to the boundary line and gave Ayres a huge spray which I regretted immediately after (not really my style!!).

Terrible terrible coach in so many ways.

 

[winty]

Gary Ayres by the width of the Pacific Ocean.

As said before, he inherited a good side from Malcolm Blight, and ran it into the ground.

During his tenure, he shafted loyal GFC servants like Ablett, Brownless, Hinkley and Couch, and replaced them with duds like Brett Spinks, Leigh Brockman, Gerrard Bennett, Joel McKay, Tim Finocchiaro, Peter Street, Brady Anderson and Stuart Lamond.

Not happy with filling up our list with spuds, he waited until Geelong was on their knees financially, then decided to show his true character and **** off to Adelaide.

 

[Ninty]

tl;dr

Anyone say Ayres yet?

 

[year of the cat]

Do you think the fact that he played for the hawks affects our view of him a bit?!!!!

 

[Catsace]

Do you think the fact that he played for the hawks affects our view of him a bit?!!!!

Geelong from 1995 to 1999 lost FOUR times to Hawthorn at K.P by a goal or less. In 1995 and 1999, that defeat ended out winning sequence of 5-0 that our season started with. Genuinely, i think he did not equip Geelong with the knowledge and importance of knocking over a side like that, especially when by 1995 Hawthorn were falling away from the powerhouse of the 80's and early 90's. A Geelong coach then should have rubbed their noses into the ground while we had a powerful side (especially from '95 to '97), to get back a bit of what they had over us. Alas, i will always think of Ayers as someone who didn't embrace Geelong fully and in the end became somewhat diffident to us in general.

Maybe stupidly, but in my now closed '30 years of Hawk torment' thread i believe still that our string of losses to the Hawks in that era perpetuated the belief that Hawthorn have that they can take us any time, any where. We could have buried the hoodoo under Ayers, instead it grew wings.

Shane Crawford always possessed that belief. He always dominated for the Hawks against us then, grabbing three Brownlow votes regularly. Just read his piece in the Hun yesterday, he still believes that in his own way by saying we will fall.

 

[OldStyle2007]

Geelong from 1995 to 1999 lost FOUR times to Hawthorn at K.P by a goal or less. In 1995 and 1999, that defeat ended out winning sequence of 5-0 that our season started with. Genuinely, i think he did not equip Geelong with the knowledge and importance of knocking over a side like that, especially when by 1995 Hawthorn were falling away from the powerhouse of the 80's and early 90's. A Geelong coach then should have rubbed their noses into the ground while we had a powerful side (especially from '95 to '97), to get back a bit of what they had over us. Alas, i will always think of Ayers as someone who didn't embrace Geelong fully and in the end became somewhat diffident to us in general.

Maybe stupidly, but in my now closed '30 years of Hawk torment' thread i believe still that our string of losses to the Hawks in that era perpetuated the belief that Hawthorn have that they can take us any time, any where. We could have buried the hoodoo under Ayers, instead it grew wings.

Shane Crawford always possessed that belief. He always dominated for the Hawks against us then, grabbing three Brownlow votes regularly. Just read his piece in the Hun yesterday, he still believes that in his own way by saying we will fall.

Yeah, I would love to know exactly what it is but blokes like Ayres and Brereton really hate Geelong. Is it because they know in their hearts GA was a much better player than them and their egos couldn't handle it?

Great point about us not being able to knock the Hawks off in the late 90s. You would think that would be one task Ayres could have gotten us up for

As for second worst coach, apparently not a bad bloke, but it has to go to John Devine. If you can just see what Blight did in 1 season with exactly the same team, it's easy to see Devine was a big fail

I'm not sure about 3rd worst. Tommy Hafey was very good.

 

[Asty]

Not happy with filling up our list with spuds, he waited until Geelong was on their knees financially, then decided to show his true character and **** off to Adelaide.

He didn't do better at Adelaide either.

 

[Partridge]

Maybe stupidly, but in my now closed '30 years of Hawk torment' thread i believe still that our string of losses to the Hawks in that era perpetuated the belief that Hawthorn have that they can take us any time, any where. We could have buried the hoodoo under Ayers, instead it grew wings.

Shane Crawford always possessed that belief. He always dominated for the Hawks against us then, grabbing three Brownlow votes regularly. Just read his piece in the Hun yesterday, he still believes that in his own way by saying we will fall.

Sorry, totally disagree. Cycles happen in sport, it's nothing but pure statistics. If Hawthorn are so evidently superior that we should bow to them, how come we beat them twice last year? I'm pretty sure they didn't want to lose either game, and losing the second one just about ensured they'd miss the finals (as they did).

We lost the Grand Final in 2008 for very simple reasons - they took their chances and kicked straight where we didn't, and we found out the hard way that a few players weren't up to it when it mattered. The previous generation's history had ZERO bearing on the result.

And why would you give that smug prick Crawford any credit anyway? He's retired now, finished. So feck him. If we're doomed to eternal failure how does the assclown explain 2007 and 2009? Must be the infallible Pop Shane the First.

I'm not sure how much blame rests on just Ayres either. For sure he was the worst coach I've ever seen us lumbered with, but the players have to take their share of the heat. Our biggest problem for a long time was we celebrated and praised nice guys who came second when it counted. Thankfully that seems to have passed now.

 

[hamG]

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[jaykay72]

WOW! Never seen a thread with such total undivided agreement.

May I simply add my name to the list of adherents that Ayres was a mistake.

What amazes me that not just one, but two, clubs chose to take Malcolm Blight's advice & appoint the guy.

One of the few times that he was definitely NOT on the money!

PS Let's not talk about St Kild, except for the fact that he gave Ken Hinkley a job.

 

[Bobby Giovanni]

At the end of the day, Ayres will always be Geelong's worst ever coach because at the end of the day he wasn't very good which means that at the end of the day he was rubbish.


At the end of the day.

 

[Ninty]

At the end of the day, we'll probably agree it's the end of the day.