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

[The Donners]

I actually found his after game press conference intriguing. He was in obvious shock. Really deflated effort. Looked embarrassed.
But he obviously cares alot reflected by how devastated he came across.

If he could come across more angrier, it might be enough to start changing peoples minds. Drop a few 'f' bombs, publicly demand higher standards something, anything. But Im thinking he got on the aeroplane and cried all the way home.

But the club cannot sack him even if they don't win a game - which is an unlikely possibility but still possible. They are obliged to back him in another two years and that will make three (including last year).

But if the team loses more important payers, namely Zerret and Parish at the end of the year on top of Danihar, Fantasia and Saad last year, he better look out.

Remember when Griffin left the Bulldogs? Remember when there was a mass exodus at Brisbane? Change the culture, let those that don’t want to be there go.

We handled Fantasia and Daniher poorly and it put our rebuild back a year with added drama.

Merrett has become a front runner. If he wants to go, let him, just make sure we replace him with someone who runs both ways.

 

[fairbump_playon]

This will be worse than the Knights short era.
Get used to old mate sweaty palms doing jack sh*t coaching in the last 5 mins whilst we try to hang on to a 2 goal lead only to get done in the last 40 secs

We had a 2 goal lead?

...I am really pleased we were fairly competitive in this hypothetical game

 

[Blood Bomber]

We had a 2 goal lead?

...I am really pleased we were fairly competitive in this hypothetical game

Ok so you got me cheaply. Well we had a 6 and a half goal lead. Hows that a better reality for ya?

 

[owen87]

That probability of any coach being a success is low.

Whether they're a first-timer, subsequent-timer, caretaker or fill-in, your average coach manages about a 40% win-rate (an entirely-forgettable Harvey or Voss coaching career, if you like), with the winning records skewing to a small handful of successful coaches - and that's before we get into fan measures of success that exclude >50% winners like Ross Lyon and Brad Scott.

(Incidentally, the median coach over the past ten years is your pick of David Teague and Essendon John Worsfold)

I don't think Australian sport has really come around to the concept of winning seasons yet. In any given year there's a small portion of teams with a likely chance of winning the premiership (I'd say Top-4) and from that group, a combination of luck and good management results in a premiership.

The US is much more developed in this sense, where teams can have winning seasons and are regarded as being a successful 'enough' measure to continue on. So we see coaches like Popovich or Belichick in the US who have been coaching for decades, with a solid W/L ratio of (coincidentally) around 67% for both in the H&A seasons.

Chris Scott gets flak for not having won enough premierships, but in reality he's got the best W:L record of any coach in the AFL long term at 68.5% and has had Geelong finish inside the Top-4 a number of times, which is where you'd consider them not just having had a winning season, but as a genuine premiership chance.

 

[Lore]

I don't think Australian sport has really come around to the concept of winning seasons yet. In any given year there's a small portion of teams with a likely chance of winning the premiership (I'd say Top-4) and from that group, a combination of luck and good management results in a premiership.

The US is much more developed in this sense, where teams can have winning seasons and are regarded as being a successful 'enough' measure to continue on. So we see coaches like Popovich or Belichick in the US who have been coaching for decades, with a solid W/L ratio of (coincidentally) around 67% for both in the H&A seasons.

Chris Scott gets flak for not having won enough premierships, but in reality he's got the best W:L record of any coach in the AFL long term at 68.5% and has had Geelong finish inside the Top-4 a number of times, which is where you'd consider them not just having had a winning season, but as a genuine premiership chance.

Not being a huge US sports fan so a dumb question - but is this potentially related to the size of the league and therefore relative chance of winning a premiership?

Not that long ago the V/AFL only had 12 teams so your chance of winning if all else was equal would therefore be about 8%. I suspect people who were sentient in that era would still make up the majority of footy fans, and have brought their kids up in the same mentality of flag or bust. Not to mention that 'all else being equal' has not even really been a thing that often through the history of the V/AFL... so expectations have been set accordingly.

If your chances are closer to 3% (~30 teams), perhaps winning the championship isn't a realistic indicator of a successful 'enough' season, especially if you've had a significant number of teams for long enough that a significant portion of fans have never known anything different. Many might've seen their club win one championship in their lifetime...

 

[Zach Package]

Put a part of that down to private ownership and the difference in market size, similar to EPL, some realise they don’t have the resources or the name to compete so they’re happy to go along in perpetual mediocrity to stay afloat

 

[owen87]

Not being a huge US sports fan so a dumb question - but is this potentially related to the size of the league and therefore relative chance of winning a premiership?

Not that long ago the V/AFL only had 12 teams so your chance of winning if all else was equal would therefore be about 8%. I suspect people who were sentient in that era would still make up the majority of footy fans, and have brought their kids up in the same mentality of flag or bust. Not to mention that 'all else being equal' has not even really been a thing that often through the history of the V/AFL... so expectations have been set accordingly.

If your chances are closer to 3% (~30 teams), perhaps winning the championship isn't a realistic indicator of a successful 'enough' season, especially if you've had a significant number of teams for long enough that a significant portion of fans have never known anything different. Many might've seen their club win one championship in their lifetime...

Would certainly be somewhat related to that, the US sports also do a conference type system so in the NBA you can be say the winner of the Western conference then lose the playoff finals but still have 'won' in a sense. Size of the league would definitely contribute, conference system is a function of league size but also makes a 'winning' season somewhat linked back to a smaller conference size, plus actually making the playoff series at all.

Historically you also had the VFL / AFL being a little like the EPL where clubs with money and/or lucky zoning were miles ahead of the rest, so premierships were really only available to half the league so your chances therefore were much higher. Now being a big club doesn't mean much given equalised TPP's and soft caps on football departments, so it's more a draw-card of big games having some appeal to players than it is the ability to simply out spend the opposition.

The AFL is still coming to grips with being a fully professional sport imo, so along with the changes in gamestyle that people don't really understand, we're also seeing greater equalisation whereby on any given day a team only needs to be 5% off their game to be beaten by a lesser side. A winning season concept is one fans probably need to get their heads around, where if your team makes finals that's a check for the year, and top-4 is where you start really acknowledging that the team is putting themselves in a premiership frame. Geelong & Scott is the best example of this, he's got a fantastic coaching record and Geelong have been relevant in almost every season he's had as a coach, so you can't regard him as a failure simply because he hasn't won multiple premierships.

 

[Nifft]

What's the model for comparison and who are some others? The success rate of relatively inexperienced assistant coaches being promoted internally to senior coach without any external recruitment search or process? It would be pretty low i would guess (we do it with CEO's as well). Headhunting known quantities (experienced coaches) without a process would be a different story of course.

In a different model, a first time senior coach like Clarkson had to beat out a big field to win the job at Hawthorne - who went to the market (that said he was more experienced than Rutten at that stage as well).

If you are comparing it to business- in my experience most organisations have a good look at the market for anything over the $120k mark - definetly for $200k plus. Not many easy internal promotions for innexperienced internal candidates at this high salary range from what i see (same with our CEO's promotion). Most companies would need to do the due diligence of a thorough recruitment drive to justify the promotion (as a minimum) - or just shake the tree to ensure they are getting the best available.

I don't think it's that unusual to promote from within in large companies, I've seen it often enough. Sure a company could do exhaustive interviews for everything over a certain salary, but there are certainly instances where a company wants to either reward an employee for doing well, or not run the risk of losing an employee if they've shown they're outstanding in their field. In circumstances like that I've even seen companies even create new positions so they can promote employees and keep them happy, so I don't think there's one hard and fast rule.

Regarding Rutten, he was obviously held in high regard at Essendon and they didn't want to lose him. I believe I'm correct in saying he'd done all the necessary training courses, and also had come from successful environment where he was held in high regard. I can't remember off the top of my head, but were there any other standouts available when Rutten was offered the contract with us? I guess we could've looked for another more experienced coach like Roos or Lyon, but that wouldn't necessarily translate to being more successful as we'd already found out with Worsfold.

 

[ant555]

Well he is not backward in playing the new blokes.

 

[staaation]

happy to give him time to work considering how utterly ****ed the club is, culture needs fixing and we need to invest in the youth, even if it ends up not great, if he can implement some semblance of structure and visible buy-in from the players that's a win.
i just hope the board doesn't s**t itself and sack him after 2 years without finals, then throw all our money and picks at a "marquee recruit"

 

[bombreys]

Hope he gets sacked. Not playing Bryan is moronic

 

[CBombers17]

I don't think it's that unusual to promote from within in large companies, I've seen it often enough. Sure a company could do exhaustive interviews for everything over a certain salary, but there are certainly instances where a company wants to either reward an employee for doing well, or not run the risk of losing an employee if they've shown they're outstanding in their field. In circumstances like that I've even seen companies even create new positions so they can promote employees and keep them happy, so I don't think there's one hard and fast rule.

Regarding Rutten, he was obviously held in high regard at Essendon and they didn't want to lose him. I believe I'm correct in saying he'd done all the necessary training courses, and also had come from successful environment where he was held in high regard. I can't remember off the top of my head, but were there any other standouts available when Rutten was offered the contract with us? I guess we could've looked for another more experienced coach like Roos or Lyon, but that wouldn't necessarily translate to being more successful as we'd already found out with Worsfold.

Where do i say it's unusual for large companies to promote within? Internal promotion should to be a core focus of good companies to look at both internal - and external - candidates.

It would be unusual for 2 of the most pivotal senior positons of a large company to be granted to inexperience internal candidates without going to market in any way. CEO and Senior Coach are these at a football club. This is what Essendon does. FWIW the club is more of a plaything for rich aging white men than a standard corporation. That's how they can do this. There's zero accountability.

 

[Lore]

i just hope the board doesn't sh*t itself and sack him after 2 years without finals, then throw all our money and picks at a "marquee recruit"

 

[Big Slam]

The US is much more developed in this sense, where teams can have winning seasons and are regarded as being a successful 'enough' measure to continue on. So we see coaches like Popovich or Belichick in the US who have been coaching for decades, with a solid W/L ratio of (coincidentally) around 67% for both in the H&A seasons.

You picked two outliers.

Popovich and Belichick are the exceptions to the rule (along with Sloan), not the norm in North American sports. And both had dynasty teams during their tenure that has helped keep them in place.

A head coach of a mainstream North American sport like NBA, NFL or NHL have an average shelf life of just over 5 years (5.3 to be exact).

 

[windyhill]

Well he is not backward in playing the new blokes.

No offence ant, he’s got no choice.

 

[ant555]

No offence ant, he’s got no choice.

He did not have to pick Cox in round 1 or Cahill and he has given them decent roles and not just bit part ones. He could easily have left Jones to play a couple of VFL games as well.

 

[windyhill]

He did not have to pick Cox in round 1 or Cahill and he has given them decent roles and not just bit part ones. He could easily have left Jones to play a couple of VFL games as well.

Considering who walked out on us and our injuries I would’ve been suprised if some of these kids hadn’t been played.

 

[ant555]

Considering who walked out on us and our injuries I would’ve been suprised if some of these kids hadn’t been played.

Has not always happened.

 

[ghostdog]

I don't think Australian sport has really come around to the concept of winning seasons yet. In any given year there's a small portion of teams with a likely chance of winning the premiership (I'd say Top-4) and from that group, a combination of luck and good management results in a premiership.

The US is much more developed in this sense, where teams can have winning seasons and are regarded as being a successful 'enough' measure to continue on. So we see coaches like Popovich or Belichick in the US who have been coaching for decades, with a solid W/L ratio of (coincidentally) around 67% for both in the H&A seasons.

Chris Scott gets flak for not having won enough premierships, but in reality he's got the best W:L record of any coach in the AFL long term at 68.5% and has had Geelong finish inside the Top-4 a number of times, which is where you'd consider them not just having had a winning season, but as a genuine premiership chance.

I get what you're saying about Scott's strength as a coach. I remember he used to cop it from many here but he has really grown into the role and seems to develop players well now, where he inherited a well-coached group to begin with.

If he isn't getting them to Premierships though, I'm not sure people will necessarily care about his WL record. Reminds me of Rodney Eade's situation, and his WL record is shite alongside Scott's; Eade got close so many times, with North I think (?), and with WB, and as a coach will probably be remembered for that more than his WL record. That and the fake Will Minson roast, which was a ripper!

 

[Mootsy]

You can't really blame Rutten, Caracella, Roberts, Gian etc on past culture, player and club development that's occurred over the past 5-10 years, they are all fresh faces and can't play for the players.
It's exciting having great club facilities, people passionate about the game trying to create something fresh out of what they have to work with.

Some of this comes down to the list/players they have to work with.

I think as a fan my observations are that the team looks weak around the contest and lacks a consistency of flow of teamwork to move the ball forward. Flow is an important aspect of sports like Basketball, Soccer and obviously AFL, but i'd guess that AFL is a more complex sport defensively speaking as flow of ball movement is dictated by tackling and always changing two way running speed etc.

Marking is also very important and our tall players are adequate enough, there is an improvement here, so players like Cox, Wright, Draper, Jones will hopefully get better at this over time.

I think flow, teamwork, marking and seeing players willing to take the game on in terms of kicking for goal would be great to see. An example. Great passing out of the back half, Parish marks it at half forward, fends off and runs forward for a confident goal. Instead of players hesitating, fumbling, you want to see team flow and confident football players. Confident footballers want the football and want to be efficient, effective. A joy of playing etc.

Whether we like it or not there is clearly a lot of moving parts in a football club and a fair bit of luck is involved. What is interesting are what do clubs like Geelong, Hawthorn, Richmond, Eagles etc do so well that they are so very consistent for so many years.

Another reality check is that great teams of the past had A grade players who were also confident game day footballers. Essendon of the 90s, Geelong of the 00s, Hawks etc. Tigers. Blues, Eagles etc..

On paper EFC has A grade players, but they don't play confidently on game day enough.

So from my observations, Self belief is down on game day and an ability for teamwork to channel flow of passing the ball around, also looking for the quick and effective percentages as players tap into team "Flow".

 

[fairbump_playon]

He did not have to pick Cox in round 1 or Cahill and he has given them decent roles and not just bit part ones. He could easily have left Jones to play a couple of VFL games as well.

Agreed - as Worsfold showed many times

 

[Nifft]

Where do i say it's unusual for large companies to promote within? Internal promotion should to be a core focus of good companies to look at both internal - and external - candidates.

It would be unusual for 2 of the most pivotal senior positons of a large company to be granted to inexperience internal candidates without going to market in any way. CEO and Senior Coach are these at a football club. This is what Essendon does. FWIW the club is more of a plaything for rich aging white men than a standard corporation. That's how they can do this. There's zero accountability.

Not a bad effort today from the coach.

 

[CBombers17]

Not a bad effort today from the coach.

Does todays win have anything to do with what i've posted? Are you going to quote me when we have a bad loss and say he's had a bad day? Because that would be equally as irrelevant.

 

[Nifft]

Does todays win have anything to do with what i've posted? Are you going to quote me when we have a bad loss and say he's had a bad day? Because that would be equally as irrelevant.

Maybe he just needs some time. Lots of negativity here and it's good to see it all come together for him for once. I'm sure he'll have more bad days, but hopefully that'll lead to a lot more good days.

 

[CBombers17]

Maybe he just needs some time. Lots of negativity here and it's good to see it all come together for him for once. I'm sure he'll have more bad days, but hopefully that'll lead to a lot more good days.

Again - this has zero to do with my posts in this discussion. I guess if you can't respond then do this instead? Why not just enjoy the win?