FOX FOOTY PodcastsAFL 360 - 'Little surprised the extension's come': Reaction to Brad Scott decision | 11/03/2 5
Catch up on all the footy news from AFL 360, Tuesday the 11th of March with Gerard Whateley and Garry Lyon.
AFL 360 hosts Gerard Whateley and Garry Lyon break down all the big AFL news after Essendon decide to extend Brad's Scott contract to 2027, the devastating news of Lincoln McCarthy's tearing his ACL again, and the heat mounting on new Swans coach Dean Cox.
For more of the show tune in on Fox Footy & KAYO
Time extension.
On the eve of the season, Essendon shows up the future of coach Brad Scott, adding a year to his contract as the Bombers continue to play the long game.
The uncertain future of Marcus Bonton Pali. How long will the skipper be missing? As the Bulldogs embark on a crucial season.
He joins us at the desk and the best and worst of Toby Green, a driving force in the Giants, compelling first up victory, but find again for straying the wrong side of the line.
He will join us from Sydney.
We talked about his step into it, embrace.
All of it in the room and Renton it's unedifying for a senior coach to do that.
They're on the side of Courtia with the brain tape.
The man on they played the best footy I've ever seen at the start of the season, and in president left the cup, I order said, of.
Course they do.
Is the stuff that legends are made of.
What is holding the ball?
I don't think I could answer it clearly right now that I could do.
Something wrong, you know, and I need to get and the board sexually.
The fans lover and with no fans No.
Six to your hope.
On players night, it's footy from all angles and gas a couple of your absolutely favorites to join us.
Be fan boys tonight.
The capacity of this show to keep bringing guests at the tables.
Unreally, I enjoyed the coaches so much last night.
And to see Bonta Pelli here and Toby, that's that's the top of the.
Pops for me. What's your little connection to Bond? When the state game was on, danien.
Hard, we've got a well players to write letters that have played state footy to the current mob. And my man was Marcus Bontepelli. So pen pals, we've remained, No, we haven't, Hey, we remained pen pals. I pretend we have it. We haven't. But I got a special place. He's got a special place in my heart. And Toby had a look at that one again and good fortunate.
Yes it's only on Reef mcinnison's reaction it, I think.
So he's ended up paying So Marcus Bond de Pelli, Toby Grand raises edge. We holding the ball discussing right from the start of things on Friday night there will be the biggest portfolio, I'm sure. And then the Midweek Tackle returns for season twenty twenty five. Tomorrow night's John Longmira and Adam Simpson, So Simo and Horse and Simon Goodwin's going to take up with us.
We'll tell you a bit more about that as that of.
A long journey us is.
Yeah, she'll be great for the journey with the coach.
Each Tuesday, we're going to start with something uplifting at Tuesday favorites.
Excuse me for being a touch parochial, but it's Jim Stein's match on Sunday, so.
He's never far from my mind.
But inducted him into the Hall of Famers a legend only a week or two ago, one of only six of the great history of the Melbourn Footy Club. And then Sunday's Jim Stein's Match, and it was launched at the mcg in typical Irish fashion. Slightly bermused. Look on a few of the players. There is Jack Gryne who's a member of the Jim Steins Foundation. He sits on the board. Not sure Clayton was exactly certain of what was going on, but it is a huge day. It's Saint Patrick's day, Jared, so Patty's on Sunday, Demons play the Giants is a season open, fantastic initiative and get down and support it would.
Be great, perfect perfect.
I love the little chamrock I those jumpers will be auctioned off.
What I'm memento.
It's a great time of year for debutantes. Is the critical massive players we saw chosen on draft day are progressively getting told that their dream is about to come true. And this is happening right across the league.
The senior journey for one of you is starting this week and FoST you're playing your first game for the Kingdom.
So structurally we know what we're setting up. So then you can just go and fight. Samue Lawler, Can you do that this week?
Good?
Because your bloody playing? Harry armshean, what's your job? Can you do that this week? Good because you're playing too, mate, train responsibility, energy, bring it mate, because you're playing as well.
It's been a big part of his life. He's now a big part of our life. How's our CaCO.
So the progression that spicks one two thirteen, twenty one, twenty three, we're on alert for Sid Draper and Levi Ashcroft.
We know that there's a camp reality. Who's going to be back in action?
Y'h so good?
And that whatever the enjoyment is throughout the team. You imagine the families when they get the ring and clubs are doing so well. We get to see those phone calls these days, don't we. So they've been with the journey. They've been along with the journey every step of the way, and those boys is something special coming.
John Northy would have been really touchy feely, wouldn't he a nineteen eighty six times?
Well, I remember, Jared, it's a true story.
Was the Easter weekend and I spent the whole good Friday trying to ring out doctor to pull out to cook back.
And there's no mobile phones. I couldn't get old of him. So I had the play and who got up in one? It was?
It was one of the greatest sporting days of your life and it'll be a memory they'll never forget.
All right, let's get into the agenda, and at the top of it is dev stating news out of the Brisbane Lines. Their veteran, one of their club favorites, Lincoln McCarthy, has ruptured his acl for a second time. He had made it all the way back he'd played in the community series, and it feels like, in this awful sliding doors moment.
Had he played on Thursday, had they played on Thursday night, he may very well have been there.
Instead, they have the session on Wednesday and he gets swilling in his knee and when he goes for the scans it's described as heartbreaking out of the club and you can imagine it.
So it sounds like there's an inevitability about it, doesn't it. Everything you hear about Lincoln McCarthy's a heart and soul man and these comments reflect that the fact that they are able to get through and win the premiership. He would have been watching on probably training the back half of last year or certainly the last few weeks, and would have been enormous around the group because he's that sort of infectious character and all the while looking at the summer saying no, I need to be a part of that, keeping everyone else on us. Yeah, because the premiership players need someone pushing out from behind, and he would have been the perfect play to breathe down cam Ra and his nekelm I saying you think you've got your spot and all of a sudden that's taken away, so we feel for him. This is footy, this is a heartbreak, the tragedies, and we just wish him all the best.
He's a long road back.
They've got this critical massive players who had done their knees. Now the first will Ashcroft gets back windsor Normsmith medal and then they all embark on it together and they're at different rates. Kitty Coleman is going to be the last of them to play Tom Doudey, who's done it a couple of times, Darcy Gardner. You can imagine that this has an impact on everybody.
Just when it does those players, particularly those guys, would be the feeling that they would have tonight would be a little bit of doubt in the back of Kitty Coleman's mind as he prepares, and just how dynamic a player he he is, so he would have had this great confidence that together they can get back, and all of a sudden one of the brethren go down then just put a little bit of doubt in their mind as well, and then the club too, so they'll go back over everything that darned in terms of their rehab. They'll be looking at Kitty Coleman saying, look, we give him another month, which is not the worst thing in the world would be for Kitty long season and you've got to get him right at the right end.
So LC McCarthy missed last year's ground final. Taylor Adams, we know, mister Premiership and then mister ground final. So he's got the hamstring so not nearly as serious, but it's still going to cost him a month at the start. And when you're a veteran who'd lost their place at the end of last year and everything matters across the summer, you don't make it through the first game and now you're on the sidelines.
I'll take you back.
I know if you remember Community Series Cup, the very first contest and this is the incident from Friday night, but the very first contest, and that was the one that injured hawthor of playing injured mac andrew That was that was Taylor Adams running with the flight off footy from the center square right. So the message that sent to his team, I missed the finals. I've worked hard on that. Desperate so he runs from the center of the flight of the foot he crashes into mac Andrews, takes the mark, spoke everything I need to know about Taylor Adams and so this is not a knee so it's not as severe, but heartbreak for him and he Every time you get an injury at this stagey career, it gets shorter and shorter. The end comes closer and closer. So we hope he rehabs out and he's right from here on in. We can only wish the best for him.
Nick Dacos is not on. Colin was the injury list very distinctly. They listed just about everything, including Josh with an ankle sprain. But despite widespread rumors during the day that we were on alert for a proper injury, there is no such proper injury. Colin would have a shorter so we'll see him on the weekend.
I wonder I'd love to have Nick Dakos in here and just see if there's an amusement about the fact that he played a he was beaten, which staggers us all. A lot of us can't get ahead around that. And he succumbed to a cramp in the first game of the year. Now if we line them up on a whiteboard of players that come to cramp the first game of the year, I keep thinking about Will Day, Well, Day's the best player on the ground on Friday night. It takes a mark in the third quarter and comes off the ground with cramp.
I mean, it happens.
And as I said yesterday our last night, this I wish I was a certain of this bloke bouncing back and no manner that he's going to as I was of winning that slider.
So I don't know. I think that's a product.
To me, that's a product of a two game opening round where we are searching and searching for something that just might not be there.
And two nights away from Carlton's start. Elijah Hollins is on personal leave now, so the Blues put out their statement that he's taken leave from the club for personal reason.
It's a good idea for.
VOSSI because he shaped it's a pretty important player I reckon.
So he gets back quickly too.
All right.
Essendon season begins on Friday night against Hawthorne. They are playing the long game at Tullerram Marine. They've been unashamedly so since bringing Brad Scott into the club. They have curiously added a year to his contract, so twenty twenty seven is now guaranteed in this search for unity.
To be perfectly honest, I mean the club has has approached me about extending for another year to show stability that the club has been yearning for for a long time. So this hasn't been something that, to be honest, has been anywhere near my thinking, like I haven't. I've been focused on what we need to do right now and what we've done over the last two years. And if the club think that for stability and unity, in a show of action instability and unity, they want to put an extra year in my contract, then I'm open to that because I'm committed to what we're.
Doing here as well.
I think it shows commitment to the cause right from board and CEO right down a football department, and shows the players that we've got great confidence in what we're building here.
Stability is the modern religion of football clubs.
Ye it is?
Can you add to this because I'm trying to get my head around it, and I think I see Brad has run of footy's great pragmatist. I reckon he ses it pretty much black and white. I'm not surprised that he didn't go searching for it. I'm a little surprised that the extensions come.
So in October last year, once Matt Rosa had full control over the list management and the post Adriaan Dedorro years, he penned.
The strategy piece.
It was a three year piece that he and Craig Ballerso the chief execus we've agreed on, presented to the board and reset their plans.
Now the centerpiece of it is.
Gathering a grade talent, primarily through the draft, and thus they stepped out of the free agency space and didn't pursue any of those who came on to market between seasons. The first of a three year step, so that takes in season twenty twenty seven.
So this feels like an alignment.
As Brad's contract was to the end of twenty twenty six, he is not the centerpiece of the change of strategy.
So it feels very.
Natural that if that's the course of things. The problem is is because the Essendon constituency is impatient because they've waited forever through plan after plan that hasn't come to fruition. It does push the urgency down the track. So I can't benignly accept that Essendon aren't a chance to make the eight.
Like a lot of people are.
They're coming off two eleven win seasons and finishing eleventh. I would expect them to improve on what they've done now that eight can't be out of reach. We can't just accept that eighth is out of reach. But it's not about twenty twenty five and it's not about twenty twenty six. Is the plan is through to twenty twenty seven and now the coach is there? That will I imagine that will anger some of this in the community who probably want things at the end of the pitchfork now having waited, yeah, for so long.
First off, the disappointment for Brad is that Matt Rosa didn't put a five year plan in place, if that's the case, because then they would have to extend him out to were aligned with that.
I don't really buy the alignment argiven.
I think two years is enough to make sure your footy club's aligned and recruiting. List management is a huge important part of it. Yeah, identifying what you go to do. They've been down one path, I've now struck on this new plan.
That's fine.
I think two years is a pretty lengthy and chunky spell. And if Brad is as good as Brad can be, then he'll get that extension somewhere along the way.
It's a funny dared over the journey.
You know, these contracts and then employment contracts and the need to extend before they come out of contract. I don't think it's the end of the world to be coaching in the last year of your contract.
Now.
I know that that's a odds with others and maybe you know Brad hasn't been there as long as say a Luke Beveridge at the Western Bulldogs. But what's happening at the Western Bulldogs to me is a sign a huge maturity for that foota club because they've arrived at the point they haven't. They've arrived at the point where Bevo is a lauded hero of that football club forever a day as a Premiership coach. They are in a state of uncertainty at the moment in terms of how far they're able to go. So to me and you spoke to a meat Bains today, they are comfortable in the fact that this says he's last year in a contract. And I think it was put to him the security He said, yeah, he's got the security of a twelve month contract remaining, and in that time, one or two things will happen. It will be determined that he's coached to the maximum visibility, will decide whether the extension needs to come and will do it, or I think it'll be a mutual decision to.
Say, hey, you've squeezed a lem and dry here. It's been outstanding.
Now you run the risk of West Coast, not West Coast, someone coming in over the top and putting a godfather off of it.
That could happen anyway, and then that happened. When coaches in contract.
Do you run the risk as if you step off on the wrong foot and fall behind the ledger say it's two and five that it actually it self combusts because it's a legitimate discussion is he going to get sacked or not? And so that dynamic gets inside the walls and almost cripples the footy club. Becomes a constant conversation with the players themselves. Everywhere your turn you're being asked about it, and you never quite get the answer whether you're going to be any good this year and see it all the way through to win your job.
Then anything coming upon the club to understand where they're out as a football club and I'll give you the Brisbooe lines as a prime example. Last year, I think they were two and five, so they were not far off to and five. They held with a coach. It was said to be too old, it wasn't statistically a lot up to speed. They held their nerve, they supported their man, and what seventeen weeks later their premiers. So know your club, know your coach, know your players, and be prepared to have a year where all right, we'll see how you go, We'll see how we go, and be mature enough about it.
And I love what the Western Bulldogs are doing.
I think it's a sign of great maturity and probably what I would have preferred that. Not that's got anything to do with me that Port Adelaide had it done the ken Let's just coach the year. You know, if you coaches to a flag, well guess what we want.
To keep you.
But it is at the stage there where we need a great result from you. I don't naming a successor, as I've said to you previously, didn't really work for me. But that doesn't matter. But I love what they're doing at the Western Bulldogs. At the kennel, everyone knows where they're at that's what it appears to me anyway.
All right, we'll live that case study and see if it works or if it's counterproductive to the overall cause is Brad Scott also gave the answer which was probably the one that we didn't get the satisfactory discussion on is why is the Essendon Gold Coast game moved to the end of round twenty.
Four If we ended up losing out a Round sixteen by we would have had a sequence of games of playing on the Gold Coasting round fourteen with a five day break, travel to Perth to play Freemantle, then travel back to Melbourne playede Along without a buy in the midst of twenty games in a row while the rest of the competition are enjoying a buy.
So that was just not acceptable.
We got the outcome, We went to work on all the scenarios. We were strong in what we what we wouldn't we wouldn't accept and now.
We move on to round one.
So the drive of self interest to have that at the end, which I can totally understand you accepting it. Yeah, I think there was a different way to do it with the games that aren't yet the scheduled. I think there was a way to do it post the buy so that you couldn't not let them rest.
Should the AFL be firm in that, then.
Yeah, I think we should have got this played in the round seventeen, round eighteen, round nine.
That would No, it wouldn't have.
They would have fought tooth and nail against it. But it's rare that a club wins that argument with it.
He's got to win there. They won't.
Now on a Tuesday night, we tend to just heap everything else together and drop it in the furnace. There's usually a lot more to play with than two games.
Have given it. Again, we're nice.
It has felt a little bit like Dean Cox.
Well, he got the baptism of fire and he finds himself in the furnace.
If you want to know what it feels like, you're going to have a look at Dean Cox's face when Ali fire and tries to switch the ball and kicks it straight to Conde McDonald.
Did he not see him?
See?
I think they've had a really poor week.
This one's in the planning for this game so that this sits with the match committee and the senior coach. First game up, I think they've had a stinker.
If you all summer, yeah, lay your cards in this manner. You're not throwing it out after one week.
It doesn't really matter what you think, you know, it's not until you've been in the chair until you actually start to understand. And this week becomes Dean Cox's greatest challenge.
Obviously we're in an industry where were when games are footy. I'm no different.
And you know we get another chance this weekend and gets a really good opposition, So yeah, we had to learn from what happening again Hawthorne and try and implement and make some changes this way. People are always sort of as soon as I took over, gave me advice of how to handle things they did leading into last week. But it's more about, you know, the job that I have at hand, and you know, I think I dealt with it when I was a player. The opportunity to represent his footy club as the head coach is something I don't hold lightly. I know the magnitude and the role that it entails.
So you know, it's about me trying.
To get our players to play the best they can and worry about myself after that.
It's a fascinating case study, but you know the challenge is still before Sydney and he's got to coach as positively as he possibly can.
So take a real overreaction out of the back of the furnace. It's been a baptism of fire for Dean Cox.
Well it has been. That's real.
But does it matter because who determines whether there's a baptism or fires that snucklelets on the back of what you just played there. So there was some strong language in that King he called it a stinker. I don't think it was a stinker. But when you've got someone who's respected like David that comes out calls it a stinker. But I don't think it's going to worry Dan Cox. You know, he's got decisions to make. He made decisions. I think what King he was saying that was around the blaky McCart and mccarton kicks four goals in your last Community Series game. He's wedded to it and plays it and doesn't quite come off, and you know then the perception is that blake, he's been tethered to the defensive goal scare.
I don't think it's a stinker.
I mean the five points six points away from Hawthorne halfway through the third quarter, and we all think Hawthorn now are a flag favorite. But that's all right, a different Cox. He could go home as an assistant coach and let Horse worry about it last year and this year he wears it right on the shoulders and guess what, he wouldn't be complaining one bit.
I don't think so.
The in game coaching was the move to Quel Sicily and the move to Quel Day and why that wasn't done at the start. But the in game coaching was excellent. It's just whether that should have been rolled.
Out and talked to the two coaches last night about when do you tag and when don't you tag? I thought their insights were illuminating. You know, of course we're weary and conscious. I mean, tick Sam Wicks. I didn't think Sam Wicks could play small as a small defender, but he plays small defender and stitches up Nick Watson, who was set to be one of the so didn't quite work for him, but stink att and not buying it. Furnace he doesn't feel. I don't reckon he'll be feeling well. He probably feel a furnace every time he loses.
Yes, so drop one at the start of the season at the SCG and you've got the Brisbane lines next, knowing that you've got the two against the Giants in Sydney as well, So twelve in Sydney two against the Giants have lost one or ease, so you know you don't want to go down to brisbe all.
Of a sudden. But you've played Hawthorne and Brisbane and.
Think they're going to be knocking right on the door at some stage, so it doesn't help the narrative.
But she's a long year here, yes, the long long really is. So you'll be I think you'll be okay, big deal.
All right, Dean Cox, we're going to bring our players in. Marcus Bontepelli joins us at the there he's going to miss the start of the season, which is unheard of for him.
And we'll head to Sydney.
The Giants compelling first up Toby Green, ever a centerpiece of bas
