Why the Melbourne Victory looked overseas

When Mehmet Durakovic was fired last week as boss of the A-League’s Melbourne Victory, their coaching search immediately led them overseas to names like Roy Keane, Graeme Taylor and Iain Dowie. 

The Victory eventually ended up with Jim Magilton, the Northern Irish manager recently involved in Shamrock Rovers’ run to the Europa League and also a finalist for the Northern Ireland job vacated by Nigel Worthington. 

That the negotiations were swift only bided well for those who hoped Magilton would end up in blue and silver.  By acting swiftly, the Victory ensured a repeat of last offseason’s stuttering interview process wouldn’t occur.  It could be said that Durakovic got the job – as good as his lesser-league management had been – because he already occupied the caretaker’s seat.

Magilton is an appealing candidate, with his teams known for playing good football.  What makes him more appealing is that he’s not Australian, or wasn’t previously based in Australia.

With every A-League vacancy, the same names are put forward by media types as potential successors.  That list includes Jason’s Dad, Branko Cŭlina and former Socceroos and Brisbane Roar boss Frank Farina.  Had John Kosmina not gone back to old club Adelaide the week before, rest assured he too would have been included in the Victory’s coaching search.  This is in part due to a relatively uninformed public, where many passing sports fans recognise only the larger names in the sport.  It’s also due to a natural lack of talented, credentialed local managers.

Of the 31 coaching appointments in the A-League’s seven years, twenty-five coaches have been employed.  Of those coaches, seven have been re-treads – Cŭlina (twice), Kosmina (twice), Gary Van Egmond, Ian Ferguson, Miron Bleiberg.  18 had already been “in the system”, involved in the A-League or FFA.  Paying release fees for coaches in this league is nearly unheard of, so current A-League managers can be ruled out.

There is a dearth of available high-level coaches available to succeed the current middle-aged monopoly.

Damningly, the average number of A-League games for each manager has been in charge is quite low – a little under two seasons, at 59 games.   When the pool of available coaching talent is observably low, the Australian football hierarchy must be concerned that managers now must be brought in from overseas as local boys haven’t been able to make good (or at least, not good enough for their bosses).

For the Victory, a foreign hire had to be made, because the available high-level coaches haven’t cut the mustard at A-League level.  That 59-game figure above is made more understandable by the following table, which shows the records of “local” coaches with A-League coaching experience but not currently coaching upper echelon football.

Coach	Games	Win	Loss	Draw	Win %
Branko Cŭlina	66	21	30	15	31.81
Ron Smith	33	5	16	12	15.15
Lawrie McKinna	138	50	49	39	36.23
David Mitchell	67	24	29	14	35.82
Mehmet Durakovic	14	3	6	5	21.43
John Adshead	21	1	17	3	4.76
Rini Coolen	42	16	15	11	38.10

A cringeworthy bunch, no?  It’s hardly like Adshead would be considered given his retirement from coaching the New Zealand Knights after a spectacularly unsuccessful inaugural A-League season.  Of the bunch, only Mitchell and McKinna boast finals appearances; while McKinna is the only man to lead his team into the Asian Champions League. 

With international management often being the reward for a prosperous club career, could we look at an A-League manager who’s taken up a position for a national setup?  Ernie Merrick recently took up a position to coach Hong Kong’s national side, while Frank Farina is involved at a high level in football in Papua New Guinea.  Although it is undoubtedly too early for Merrick to return to the Victory, both he and Farina boast considerably better records than those above.  Aurelio Vidmar, now of the Olyroos and assistant to Holger Osieck at the Socceroos is another name worth considering.

Coach	Games	Win	Loss	Draw	Win %
Ernie Merrick	141	64	34	43	45.39
Aurelio Vidmar	107	42	42	23	39.25
Frank Farina	72	29	23	20	40.28

This list includes the A-League’s most successful coach and the Australian coach who took his Reds to the Asian Champions’ League Final against much more well-financed competition.  Each win/loss record is impressive, given their competition above, but hardly awe-inspiring.

There simply isn’t enough top-level coaching and managing talent in Australia to warrant promoting an up-and-comer.  By going initially with an almost-impeccably credentialed top-flight rookie in Durakovic, the Victory flamed out.  Their only choice was to look to the British Isles and those names on their shortlist before the season.  Even then, looking abroad has it’s own concerns.

The A-League needs to look abroad for coaches, because we certainly don’t have the amount of quality coaches needed to ensure a growth of the home-front top tier.

Victory sack Durakovic - let the merry-go-round commence!

Mehmet Durakovic has been fired as manager of A-League side Melbourne Victory, with the club enduring its worst ever start to a season. The team, who splashed out - big time - for Harry Kewell during the offseason, languish in eighth position in the ten-team competition, with only perpetual strugglers Perth and Gold Coast sitting below them.

Durakovic was never likely to have a lengthy career at one of the league's most successful and high-profile clubs. Although his resume boasts numerous Socceroo appearances and stints in charge of the Victorian Institute of Sport and the Victory's youth setup, he simply didn't have the profile - or personality - to be successful at a club like the Victory. While technically adept, he couldn't command the team's attention or respect like former coach Ernie Merrick.

Image courtesy: heraldsun.com.au

The usual suspects are likely to be trotted out as candidates for the job. Branko Culina, recently fired from Newcastle, and former Brisbane Roar boss Frank Farina are the chief names associated with the position now, but that's because they're suspects for every single available A-League job. "Bigger" names like Roy Keane, Iain Dowie and Graham Taylor have also been rumoured to be in the running again, but the Victory's tailing finances probably make the first two long-shots at best.

Graeme "My coach is my friend" Arnold and Ange Postecoglu are probably the best coaches in Australia, but are unlikely to be available for - or want - the position. There will be a groundswell behind local boy and former captain Kevin Muscat - who, although put in temporary charge of the club, is said not to be a candidate. In many ways it's a pity that John Kosmina was recently re-employed by Adelaide: although his arrival would have infuriated Melbourne supporters - and later, the Victory board, given his propensity for rubbing owners the wrong way - he is a talented coach who gets results from unbalanced squads.

The best man for the job could well be Aurelio Vidmar, the former Adelaide coach now assisting Holger Osieck at the Socceroos. Whether he would be interested in taking over former rivals Victory would be questionable, but given Melbourne are likely to appoint a caretaker manager he could be swayed by the end of the season.

Don't bet on the AFL coaching carousel

When it comes to AFL coaching appointments, can we all just agree that the heavyset soprano doesn't let loose until the coach is actually appointed? All the mail we had over the past month concerning potential job opportunities at the highest level has been, in effect, bunk.

With Adelaide, all the mail centred on two high-profile croweaters, Scott Burns and incumbent interim, Mark Bickley. The new coach is a lower-profile (but probably better-qualified) South Australian, Brenton Sanderson.

It was logical that Leon Cameron's name was closely associated with the Western Bulldogs' job - as Doctor Who once said, "Logic merely allows one to be wrong with authority". AFL yeoman Brendan McCartney now unanimously defies logic at Whitten Oval.

All the talk at Melbourne centred around experience, especially that of Rodney Eade, Ross Lyon and Alastair Clarkson. Now, the unheralded Mark Neeld - late of Ocean Grove, the Western Jets and Collingwood - has taken the reins. It seems, like Hafey, Sheedy and Jeans before him, Mark Thompson has beget a legacy of AFL coaches - a connection to the Cattery is now apparently essential in winning a senior job.

Over the past five years, pundits have shown an increasing tendency to get these sort of predictions wrong. The AFL now makes a mockery of any predictive process because the structures each club has instituted provide so much room for the bolter from the field. Both Dean Bailey and Matthew Knights - flawed appointments or not - impressed so much during the interview process against heavily-backed opposition that they were rewarded.

Of course this isn't always true, but the body of evidence supporting it is strengthening. The occasional fait d'accompli like Michael Voss or James Hird ascending to their seemingly-rightful places. Nor was Kevin Sheedy's appointment to his spruiker's role at GWS. But, both his Essendon replacement, Knights, and Gold Coast opposite Guy McKenna, surprised.

Going back to 2007 and including Collingwood's proposed handover of power, there have been nineteen coaching appointments in the AFL. Succession plans had effectively been implemented in three of these (Sydney, Brisbane & Collingwood). The Interim coach has won out in a further three: with Carlton, Port Adelaide and Fremantle in 2007. From the remaining thirteen coaching changes, only Sheedy, Hird and Damien Hardwick won the job they were tipped for.

The favourite rarely gets the biscuits.

Leon Cameron & Rodney Eade, courtesy: realfooty.com.au

But this seems to be a phenomenon which primarily involves younger assistants. It's seemingly much easier to predict the movement of veteran assistants the likes of Dean Laidley, McCartney or Mark Williams (who now effectively occupies the same role he did when he entered the coaching ranks at Port Adelaide).

Perhaps this is because the appointment of assistants tends to be dependent on the coach rather than being essentially a board decision. Because of this, the dots are easier to connect: by virtue of thier preparation for such an exhaustive interview processes, new coaches know their weaknesses and seek to redress such flaws with experience.

McGinnity and Petterd ask how far is too far

After young Eagle Patrick McGinnity's suspension and fine for allegedly threatening to "rape" Ricky Petterd's mother, it's perhaps time to examine how much we value winning and the extent to which we're prepared to go for victory.

To threaten sexual relations - especially rape - to someone's relatives is off limits and the AFL has made a statement by penalising the player alleged to have made the offending remark. That McGinnity's manager David Sierakowski effectively accused Petterd of having a "thin skin" is akin to a guilty plea. It also reflects poorly on Sierakowski as it legitimises McGinnity's choice of words. Agent or no, to attack the Melbourne player for not obeying the "code of silence" is undignified and of Sierakowski we can say, to paraphrase his own words "if he had his time over again, I think he'd do it differently."

The AFL has led the sporting world in racial vilification laws and now respect for women. Unfortunately it will take incidents where players are rightly made an example of to raise public awareness about those lines not to be crossed. 

courtesy: foxsports.com.au

In Australian sport, we have a proud history of letting what happens on the field stay on the field. The same phrase could be used to hang Ricky Petterd, saying these things happen in the name of healthy competition. But surely competition which some people believe so important that they threaten to rape an opposing player's Mum cannot be healthy? By saying such things as McGinnity has been suspended for - and Adam Selwood was accused of in 2007 - competition has ceased to be healthy and become pathological.

(Even though Selwood was proven not guilty, is it coincidence that both these incidents have come from the West Coast Eagles? He certainly said something to which Des Headland could take offence. Am I theorising too much on this? Perhaps.)

As the late Terry Jenner described "Cricket in the '70s", when he began playing sledging was something as simple as an finely-placed comment about a player's technique. Even defenders of the art suggest sport has always been full of sledging, they do so in ways highlighting the differences between eras: while W.G. Grace was renowned for gamesmanship and sledging, his most famous such utterance "They're here to watch me bat, not you bowl" still refers to on-field, rather than off-field habits. Over time, cricket sledging degenerated into the celebrated insults such as possibly-apocryphal-but-probably-not "What does Brian Lara's c**k taste like?" and it's inflammatory response "Ask your wife".

Feel free to blame Patrick McGinnity. But also look for reasons behind why he chose to use such a slur: it was to gain a competitive advantage. Rather than being a player willing to do "whatever it takes" to win, this player was prepared to - accidentally or deliberately - compromise his integrity to gain a small victory over an opponent.

So what leads such a player to this position?

Since being a second-rate sporting nation during the 1970s - a funk which came to a head with a haul of one bronze medal at the 1976 Montreal Olympics - Australia has funded successful sportsmen through social, business and government means. This has produced a number of world-class athletes and some dominant sporting teams. Moreover, it's created the expectation for results. It's a simple matter of cause and effect: you stop performing, you don't get funded/sponsored.

That expectation of results is reflected in the basest terms in professional leagues across the country. Professionalism and athleticism are perhaps the most sought-after qualities in all the major football codes. It takes incredible discipline from a young age to "make it" in any sport and successful athletes generally put more pressure on themselves than any other outside force. They do so to get the best out of themselves and to help a team win.

This is not to say that Patrick McGinnity personally felt pressure to perform or to win (though it may be the case). It simply reflects that as the dollars and time invested in sport increase, those doing the spending expect some Return On Investment. The fans and coach expect their players to do their absolute best to win - and often, if that includes "mentally disintegrating" their opponents, that's OK. McGinnity undoubtedly understands that fans and a multitude of support staff have given of themselves to a cause he values (himself or his team), so wants to do his bit to repay that favour. He just miscalculated how to effect this repayment.

courtesy: in.com

It can, however, be a slippery road. As Stephanie Rice discovered last year, sport is a business: certain brands refuse to be associated with other corporate or social identities seen as damaged goods, no matter how much short term gain there may be. In time, a "just win, baby" philosophy can backfire. Perhaps the greatest Australian example of this occurred when the TAC pulled sponsorship from AFL clubs Richmond and Collingwood as a result of several traffic offences levied against players.

The league could take a lesson from the NBA, who suffered a partly self-inflicted black eye as a result of a late-80s "Bad Boys" publicity campaign built around then-champs the Detroit Pistons and their unsociable basketball. The AFL wants none of this. To ensure their brand integrity, prevent any recourse and hopefully, in the name of good common sense, they have censured Patrick McGinnity.

Competition has created great leagues for all of Australia's football codes. But as a sporting community, let's ban hackneyed journalistic phrases like "win at all costs" until we work out if that's actually what we want. Winning is great, but it isn't everything.