Worst Coach

[LingaDingDing]

This thread on the Geelong board shows how positive we are towards the memory of Gary Ayres as coach. What do you guys think of him? Reply to this post or respond on our board.
http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/showthread.php?t=671956

 

[Riggy1]

This thread on the Geelong board shows how positive we are towards the memory of Gary Ayres as coach. What do you guys think of him? Reply to this post or respond on our board.
http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/showthread.php?t=671956

I love Gary Ayres
he led to us getting Neil Craig
which led to us getting Matt Rendell
which led us to getting Patrick Dangerfield

set the wheels in motion for our rise to the top

 

[Symesy15]

Hated him. I had a party the day he was told he wasn't getting an extension on his contract.

Wayne Carey...seriously? SERIOUSLY GARY?!

 

[ralph1970]

haven't had a lot to compare him to. not sure he was a complete failure, but he certainly didn't do any list improvement in his time. how much of that can be attributed to him i am unsure. i was happy to see the back of him though, but not as much as the victorian for the sake of being victorian robert shaw.

 

[James23]

List Management 0/10 - Only now thanks to Neil Craigs genuis, we have pulled through.. imo we could have easily gone the way of Carlton

Match Day Coaching 2/10 - Crap strategies, i remember his man-on-man set up for an opposition kick out after a behind use to kill us. Inability to make the most of a 10/10 A-Grade midfield/

Overall - Stubborn, arrogant, unprofessional (flipping opposition fans), and seemingly not very well liked by many at the club.

Thanks for (quite literally) nothing.

 

[Macjoe]

I love Gary Ayres
he led to us getting Neil Craig
which led to us getting Matt Rendell
which led us to getting Patrick Dangerfield

set the wheels in motion for our rise to the top

I hated Gary (no plan B) Ayres, but good point.

 

[Dalphonso]

Robert Shaw wasn't Mr Popular in Crowsville was he?

 

[WALL-e]

We have a glaring hole in our 24-30 year olds thanks to Gazza.

 

[brucetiki]

We've had worse - Robert Shaw

 

[Southerntakeover]

Ayres achieved entirely as much as craig has for us.



Over-hated by people who want a scapegoat.

 

[Elder van Berlo]

He left a gaping a hole in our list, and it's absolutely fair enough people should criticise him for that. BUT I think he really turned the culture of our footy club around - a job that Neil Craig has continued admirably - but one started by Gary Ayres. Before Ayres we were, in my mind, a bit flighty (no pun intended). We were often capable of playing well but always had a tendency to turn in some shockers, even in 97-98, and particularly in 99.

That trend continued into 2000, but that Carlton game in the wet at Optus in round 4 2001 turned our club around. Since that day, we have always been a team that showed up for the game. I can only remember a couple of memorable beltings since then (Gabbatoir, Subi in 07 and the Roos in round 1 of Ayres' last year) and we are now a team that is respected around the league. That's not all Ayres' work, but my opinion is he certainly got the ball rolling with a (albeit stubborn) hard nosed, 1-on-1, accountable game plan.

He wasn't a great coach - probably only ahead of Shaw in our all time list, and he had some major flaws. But credit where it's due, you can still see his legacy in the club and the team's attitude, and I hope it's one that never dies.

 

[Alex99]

He did what he felt was right and at that time had full support of the board to do so. He went for a premiership and came within a whisker of achieving that. if it wasn’t for a Jason Cloke roundhouse on Tyson Edwards, our chances of making the 2002 Grand Finals would have been a lot higher and then anything could have happened.

He gambled and it didn’t pay off – no one can blame him for that. One Elimination finals, one semi finals and one preliminary final in 4 years plus a wizard cup premiership isn’t too bad.

What he should have done was recognize earlier he was losing the players early in 2004 and played some of the kids. But his primary objective was to win a premiership.

hindsight is a wonderful thing.

 

[cmndstab]

In terms of his overall performance, he did quite a good job. We made the finals several times under his tenure, were generally quite competitive, and he took over at a time when our side was burnt out and broken down.

The one area that we underperformed terribly during his tenure was recruiting and developing youth. Whether that was a result of the recruiting and development staff, or if some way Ayres' fault, is up for debate. Either way, when Ayres departed, he left behind a team with extremely little worthwhile youth (Bock, Johncock, Rutten, Porplyzia, Mattner, Reilly, am I missing anyone? Maric perhaps?), and to some extent we're still feeling the effects of that today.


I don't think he was the disaster that some others do, but our list was certainly not in the best shape when he was given the boot, and I guess as the man up top he has to be held to account for that.

 

[Punchy Bassett]

Getting a bit of rough treatment here me thinks. Right man at the time, Blight had left us in a complete and utter mess and Ayers brought a level of stability back into the club. Was the first coach that ever got us into three finals series in a row and as C98 mentioned if for an act of thuggery in 02 could well have got us to a GF.

Freely admit he made some bad decisions, but were his list decisions really any worse than Blight? Pretty sure guys like Bock and Rutten were drafted in his era. In the end the game passed him by a bit.

 

[Kane McGoodwin]

He left a gaping a hole in our list, and it's absolutely fair enough people should criticise him for that. BUT I think he really turned the culture of our footy club around - a job that Neil Craig has continued admirably - but one started by Gary Ayres. Before Ayres we were, in my mind, a bit flighty (no pun intended). We were often capable of playing well but always had a tendency to turn in some shockers, even in 97-98, and particularly in 99.

That trend continued into 2000, but that Carlton game in the wet at Optus in round 4 2001 turned our club around. Since that day, we have always been a team that showed up for the game. I can only remember a couple of memorable beltings since then (Gabbatoir, Subi in 07 and the Roos in round 1 of Ayres' last year) and we are now a team that is respected around the league. That's not all Ayres' work, but my opinion is he certainly got the ball rolling with a (albeit stubborn) hard nosed, 1-on-1, accountable game plan.

He wasn't a great coach - probably only ahead of Shaw in our all time list, and he had some major flaws. But credit where it's due, you can still see his legacy in the club and the team's attitude, and I hope it's one that never dies.

Sums it up for me.

Ayres installed a competiveness in AFC that has continued under Craig (which cannot be said for our cross town rivals).

The major criticism would be his poor list management, which fortunately we have close to rectified now.

 

[Danny MacGill]

Ayres was better at coaching than he was at getting any loving.
The reason he recruited Wayne Carey was to help him with the latter, he asked Wayne how he gets so many roots, Carey told him the secret to turning on ladies he has found, is to go into the ensuite while they are in bed, and bang your dong on the sink 3 times, it'll have them raring to go.
So Aryes went home that night to try it on his wife, as soon as she went to bed, he snuck into the ensuite, went bang..bang..bang on the sink, she yelled out "Is That You Wayne?!"

 

[macca23]

Sums it up for me.

Ayres installed a competiveness in AFC that has continued under Craig (which cannot be said for our cross town rivals).

The major criticism would be his poor list management, which fortunately we have close to rectified now.

Almost there with your thoughts Kane.

Added to your list are his ridiculous stubborness to make a move which cost games, and of course the infamous non follow up of a trade for Pavlich at the end of 2002 when Pavlich approached Adelaide asking them to trade for him.

They went Carey instead, thanks to Ayres, which has probably cost the club a premiership or two due to that poor choice.

Finally, he was an absolute unbearable w***er when he used to talk about Gary Ayres in the 3rd person.

Come to think of it, there wasn't too much to like about him at all.

 

[aneale]

Certainly not the worst with Robert Shaw sitting in the shed, and yes he left the list in not great shape, but he wasn't alone there. The only difference is he never won the silverware beforehand so will be judged harsher. He could have though, as C98 said, that hit on Edwards in 02 that stopped all momentum and left us short a critical player was profound, I always thought we were a show against Brisbane on a neutral ground, we had that cracking win against them at AAMI during the year. But ...

 

[Crow-mo]

The cats fans are weird. They can't make up their minds:
- was ayres the worst coach ever
or
- were they robbed in 1997?

Can't have it both ways

 

[KUNG FU]

Fortunately the Ayres saga is a relic of a recent era where coaches had a inordinate bearing on list management and recruitment.

 

[Southerntakeover]

How bad could our list possibly have been given that we should have won the premiership the next year?

 

[Crow-mo]

How bad could our list possibly have been given that we should have won the premiership the next year?

you mean the year where we had possibly our worst ever injury run, wasn't representative in an otherwise almost unbroken run of finals appearances?

 

[WALL-e]

He recruited to win a GF amd stuffed it.

Carey arguabley cost us Pavlich and his connections with Angwin cost us KCornes/SBurgs.

To have Edwards, McLeod, Roo, Goody, Hart, Smart, Clarke in their prime...

 

[Vader]

He did what he felt was right and at that time had full support of the board to do so. He went for a premiership and came within a whisker of achieving that. if it wasn’t for a Jason Cloke roundhouse on Tyson Edwards, our chances of making the 2002 Grand Finals would have been a lot higher and then anything could have happened.

He gambled and it didn’t pay off – no one can blame him for that. One Elimination finals, one semi finals and one preliminary final in 4 years plus a wizard cup premiership isn’t too bad.

Agree with all of this.

What he should have done was recognize earlier he was losing the players early in 2004 and played some of the kids. But his primary objective was to win a premiership.

What kids? At the point where he left, we had just one solitary teenager on our entire list - Fungus Watts. How was he supposed to play some of the kids if he'd steadfastly refused to draft any for almost his entire tenure as head coach?

 

[Crow-mo]

He recruited to win a GF amd stuffed it.

actually at the time he was charged with stopping the up and down rot from year to year; it was all about being regular, consistent finals participants.