Dear Members and Supporters,

You would have no doubt heard by now that Phil Walsh has been appointed to the position of Senior Coach of the Adelaide Football Club.

Phil has contributed greatly to the Port Adelaide Football Club, most particularly as a member of the victorious 2004 Premiership coaching panel. As with Alan Richardson last year, there can be no doubting that Phil deserves the opportunity to coach an AFL side in his own right. Having spent 20 years honing his considerable skills, we wish him and his family well as they continue their football journey at West lakes.

Phil’s decision begs the question, where does that leave us, which I believe needs to be answered on two fronts.

In the immediate short term, we need to find a replacement, and this process is well underway. Our approach will be to take this opportunity to review every role and critically assess the coaching structure as a whole. Whilst we were very happy with the way the coaching team performed this year, there are always opportunities to improve. Change often encourages you to think outside of the square, and Ken is certainly in this space right now. I am very confident that we will restructure our coaching team to provide our players even greater support, guidance and education than they have enjoyed over the past two years.

The broader issue is, how do we prevent this from happening again? Surely the disruption caused by losing good, senior people from your program is destabilising?

I have a slightly different view.

There is no doubt that stability is important, to ensure that we continue to build on the progress of the program, year after year. But in the best systems, it is strength of the group that is critical, not the individual. Modern AFL coaching teams consist of between 8-10 coaches plus other support staff. Their roles are intertwined to embrace the concepts of full team offence and defence and the level of interaction and knowledge sharing between each coach is immense. The effect of this type of collaborative management is that no one individual dominates the landscape, as may have been the case in previous generations. This is certainly the case at Port Adelaide.

The potential loss of intellectual property (ideas/methods) is always a concern, but again, so much of a modern coaching program is tailored to the specific attributes and characteristics of your playing group. Generic tactical concepts are just that, and have been copied and evolved by coaches for years, but it’s the tailored development content that is most valuable to players. By its very nature this content is often of limited value to anyone else other than the specific player or group that they have been designed for.

And then of course there are the spin off benefits that these high profile coaching changes can bring to your football club.

The reputation of having a successful program, driven by highly qualified coaches, enhances your ability to attract ambitious new talent to your Club. It also provides inspiration to the young, developing coaches inside the system that their own preparation and development is being enhanced through their involvement with the program. This creates a dynamic, positive environment for both players and coaches where everyone concerned is driven by the desire to learn, improve and grow.

When we talk about establishing Port Adelaide as an employer of choice…we believe this is the sort of environment that is attractive to successful people. In a funny way, positive, high profile appointments such as these help to reinforce the quality of your Club’s program. It is not lost on us, that our 2004 Premiership side contained no fewer than seventeen team members (players and coaches) who are still actively contributing to the game at the highest level… an incredible stat that we as a Club are very proud of.

Success breeds success.

So today, we wish Phil well and get on with re-shaping our structure to ensure that it is even better next year. With the full knowledge that if we continue to do our job well, the emergence of the next AFL ready Senior Coach won’t be too far away.

And far from being distracted by them, we will embrace such appointments and draw strength from them.

Bring on 2015!

KT