With the news of Alan Richardson ‘stepping down’ as St. Kilda’s head coach on Tuesday, this makes it the third coach in the league this year to have lost his job. Following Brad Scott’s departure from North and Brendan Bolton’s sacking at Carlton. Funnily enough, all three of these coaches losing their job have another thing in common, the Western Bulldogs will have faced these three sides directly after losing their coach by the end of this coming weekend.
The game against North Melbourne was Brad Scott’s last game after he was given his marching orders the day before – they lost that game by 25 points. The game against Carlton in round 13 was caretaker coach David Teague’s second match in charge. The week before they sprung a huge come from behind win against Brisbane and were three points shy of doing it again against the Dogs, having come from five goals down midway through the last quarter.
Whatever is going to happen on Sunday evening at Marvel Stadium when St. Kilda host the Bulldogs is going to be anyone’s guess. Brett Ratten is stepping in as the Saints’ caretaker coach for the remainder of the season and will coach his first game since he was unceremoniously sacked from Carlton in 2012. Since then, he’s been an assistant coach for Hawthorn’s three-peat of premierships in 2013, 14 and 15.
Western Bulldogs’ supporters have every right to be worried and skeptical this weekend. What was looking like a good chance of another four premiership points has been thrown into a whirlwind of uncertainty. Caretaker coaches have been two from two this season – Rhyce Shaw won his first game as the caretaker coach of North Melbourne – thumping Richmond by 37 points and David Teague’s first game as coach of Carlton saw them overcome a 37 point deficit in the second term to win by 15 points over Brisbane.
The history of caretaker coaches has been well documented this year. Quite a few of them in years gone by have rallied their respective sides to wins in their first game at the helm. However, you’d be quite shocked to know that it hasn’t always been the case. Actually, before this year, five of the last six interim coaches lost their first games for their respective clubs – the only one that pulled through for the W was Mark Harvey when he took over from a sacked Michael Voss as coach of Brisbane – they defeated the Giants by 10 goals late in the 2013 season.
The other five? Let’s quickly rattle through them:
Round 21 in the 2017 season saw Rodney Eade sacked as head coach of the Gold Coast Suns in the lead up to their QClash with Brisbane. Dean Solomon took over as the caretaker coach, but the Suns lost to the Lions by 58 points.
Two years before that, James Hird was sacked as coach of Essendon before their round 21 clash with the Gold Coast Suns. Matthew Egan, who was an All-Australian with Geelong in 2007, was caretaker coach for the remainder of the season – his first game as coach saw the Bombers lose to the Gold Coast by two points.
Earlier in the year, Carlton sacked coach Mick Malthouse just eight games into the 2015 season after what has been a disastrous tenure at the Blues. John Barker took over from round nine until the end of the year, but his first game was a bit more of the same – with the Blues going down to Sydney by 10 goals.
Let’s also not forget the unfortunate circumstance that the Adelaide Crows were in during the 2015 AFL season, having lost coach Phil Walsh, who was killed. Their stand-in Scott Camporeale lost his first game as the Crows travelled to Perth to take on the Eagles – given the circumstances, it was always going to be a tough ask. But in credit to Camporeale and the Crows, they reached the finals and won in the first week.
The last one was in 2013, where Mark Neeld was let go as Melbourne’s head coach after their Queen’s Birthday loss to Collingwood, which was to the tune of 83 points. At that stage in the season, Melbourne had only won one game and had an extremely poor percentage of 49.8 – Neil Craig took over as the caretaker coach for the following game against the Saints but they went down by 35 points.
If we exclude Camporeale here, the common denominator with the four coaches who have been sacked in their respective seasons is simple: All four of them coached genuinely rubbish football sides – and that is putting lightly. Carlton were the wooden spooners the year Malthouse got sacked, Neeld’s Demons finished 17th – very lucky they were above a very experienced GWS team. Hird’s Bombers in 2015 endured a horrible second half to the year and finished 15th and Rocket’s Suns finished 17th in 2017.
Does that common denominator correlate to the Saints? It’s one you can argue both ways. Last year the Saints played some miserable football under Richardson and they finished 16th at the end of it all. But the following two years saw them finish 11th and 9th in 2017 and 2016 respectively. This year, they’ve been dealt a rough hand with plenty of injuries to key players, but the improvement has been there this season in comparison to last year.
For all that, I personally think he still got the best out of his players – particularly across the past few weeks and perhaps was a bit stiff to be forced to stand down. But for those that wanted him out, I can see why. The Saints haven’t played Finals since 2011 and were very close to it a few years ago. For one reason or another they have gone backwards, and I have no doubt that would frustrate the St. Kilda fans to no end.
If you want to further the history of interim coaches another five games, three of those resulted in losses. Garry Hocking lost his first game as coach of Port Adelaide in 2012, Todd Viney lost his first game in charge of Melbourne in 2011 and Matthew Primus took over as interim coach of Port Adelaide in 2010 in a loss. They takes the tally to 8 losses in 11 games.
The Western Bulldogs have just about overcome every obstacle in their path over the last month, from a rejuvenated Carlton to a Geelong side sitting on top of the ladder. St. Kilda will prove to be another challenging stepping stone on the road to September. For the first time in a good while, I have faith in the Bulldogs.