Coach without a clipboard

PAUL DAFFEY

STEPHEN EASTON is renowned in suburban footy circles as a larger-than-life character. That's not hard when you're 194 centimetres and built like a barn.

But it's not just his frame that has earned him his reputation while coaching half a dozen clubs in the northern-eastern suburbs. It's his big personality, full of wild glares and volcanic outbursts, as well as a dry wit and an approach to life and coaching you don't often see.

"Easto", as he's known, says coaching suits him because he doesn't have to try. A lot of coaches put a clipboard in their hands and play a role. Easto's never carried a clipboard in his life. He makes no notes and thinks complex tactical plans are overrated. Players learn to trust his game plan through repetition and success.

Easto likes the social side of footy. Every Thursday night after match committee meetings, he tells himself he'll have a couple of beers and head home. But seven hours later, at say 3am, it's nothing for him to be standing at the bar talking about footy and the universe. He figures that footballers who play at the club where they've grown up, with little experience beyond that world, have a need for entertainment as much as they need discipline.

Easto talks like a hick and has a penchant for flannelette shirts. Few would know that he began an arts degree at La Trobe University, studying subjects such as the history of the French revolution, only to give it away in part because exam time coincided with footy trips.

His approach to footy can be gleaned from the fact that he had the cartilages in his left knee removed when he was 11. When he joined North Melbourne after leaving school, it was a bonus. He played 31 senior games, black mane flowing as he led out from the goalsquare, before joining Carlton. On his first night at training with the Blues, his knee had a meltdown. Easto played one game with the Blues and never expected to play much footy again.

He was lured into coaching at Diamond Creek when he was 26. The next year he started playing again. He ended up playing for another decade, on one leg at centre half-forward, but it was as a coach that he made his mark.

At another Diamond Valley club, Lalor, Easto coached three premierships, from 1991-93. In an era when clubs had a mania for club-issue shirts and bomber jackets, Easto turned up at the ground every Saturday wearing greased-up overalls, following a morning of changing truck tyres, with his footy gear wrapped in a towel.

The water boy for Easto's Lalor teams was Lance Whitnall. Last Saturday Lance returned to the Bloods to play his first game in the old jumper. Easto, who is 48, has also returned to Lalor to coach the club after a decade at Northcote Park and Bulleen-Templestowe.

Easto will coach the club as he first coached it, with no particular outside influences. He'll coach as himself.

This article first appeared in The Age on Wednesday 9 April 2008.

14 April 2008

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