Why Why Why Denis?

I almost choked on my Weetbix this morning when I was scouring my RSS Feeds and the headline “Refreshed and ready to coach an AFL side again at 60″ appeared and Denis Pagan’s picture inserted. Why does he want to go through it all over again? Well once a coach always a coach I guess and Denis sees himself as a career coach. You would have thought his experiences and Carlton, who sacked him with 6 rounds to go in the season, and he admitted that he was probably a “dead man walking” for the last 2 years, were enough to turn him off, apparently not. He described his time at Carlton as “a nightmare a minute”. There is some inspiration right there on why you would want to do it again!

He seems to have begun his campaign to return to the coaching gig and is warning the AFL that the Y Generation of coaches that have bee touted as candidates for the new teams, mainly Michael Voss, would be a huge risk “Gee, I’ll tell you what, you’d want to make sure you put an experienced coach in those two positions,”, just trying to throw himself up there in the eyes of the AFL I think and make sure they know he is still around.

I reckon a Y Generation (as he put it) would be great, new face, new ideas, different game styles. Provided they had some experienced support around them. It would be great to see a Michael Voss or a Nathan Buckley take on the challenge, just not Jason Akermanis. Get some fresh faces in there I say. Denis my advise to you stick to your new business venture at Teams at Their Best.

What do you think, Is Denis past it and do we need to see some fresh faces in the coaches box?

The Makings of a Successful Team - Mark Thompson

For those of you that don’t know the annual AFL Coaching Conference is on at the Gold Coast this weekend and the Key Note speaker was premiership coach Mark Thompson. In his speech Thompson expressed is philosophy on what he believes makes a successful side. He drew on experiences he had a Essendon in the mid 80’s and he reflected on how confident they were as a team saying he can remember games where we (Essendon) went out there and just thought we were going to win. Some say that is arrogance and yes it is but that is what successful teams have, opposition clubs and supporters hate them for it and their own fans love them fore it.

Here is what Thompson believes all successful teams have in common.

“What they all had in common and what stands out is that they were all very skillful and were able to move the ball from one end of the ground to the other.

“It doesn’t matter what era you are talking about, the most successful teams are harder, more confident and look smarter.

Thompson also mentioned that there were times in 2007 where he was able to relax in the coach’s box and watch his players go about their business. “It’s not that the coach isn’t relevant – but the players know what to do,” he said.

It’s great hearing successful players and coaches talk about their personal experiences and what they think about the game.

See how I think the Cats will go in 2008 by reading their 2008 Preview.

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