Coaching smarts

by NEIL BELFORD

SOME of the fat cat senior coaches in the AFL have been having a pretty big sook recently. You would think being on more than double the income of the prime minister would buy some robustness of character and a bit of decency towards the game's administrators.

Well apparently AFL coaching is one of the very few high pressure occupations in existence, no one who does anything else for a living can possibly imagine the sort of stress they work under. Some coaches have a right, apparently, to tee off at whoever they like and a rebuttal of such comments shows a clear ignorance of the incredibly difficult life of a person paid a fortune to instruct young men engaged in a sporting contest.

Fremantle's Chris Connolly seems to have a slightly better sense of perspective. Sometimes though he is a bit too clever for his own players who can't quite keep up. But the team is getting smarter.

Last Saturday against Carlton the players managed to respond to the coach's third quarter reorganization and completely outwit and demolish a team threatening to steal a gritty win. It was a very timely assertion by the Dockers brilliantly lead by Matthew Pavlich, who did morale lifting match winning things when he wasn't busy in the engine room.

Robbie Haddrill, meanwhile, was reducing Brendan Fevola to a sulky hissy fit which Fevola duly continued post match. When asked about Freo's finals prospects Fevola asserted Freo players run forward with the ball and therefore will not win finals matches. Still at least he was taking the loss personally, if not generously, which is refreshing in these media managed times.

And the clever Connolly will, no doubt, take Fevola's observations on board. Not to gloss over matters too lightly - the win over Carlton was very good for Fremantle - the game was looking truly losable until the team turned up the wick and played somewhere near its potential rather than submitting to the standard and game plan of the opposition.

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