Nathan Burke - The Saint with the helmet

What would have happened if they had done that to Ken Sheldon or even a Stan Elks later on down the line at Grand Thomas. All of those three in particular had the makings of a great coach. Given the right support, given the right background. What could we have done? But Saint Kilda's history has always been no, we need someone else to put the icing on a cake. And I'm a little bit concerned about the sort the Ratten and lion that is, this history of repeating itself.

I'm John Ralph and I'm Glenn MacFarlane.

Welcome to Sacked, a podcast that explores what really happens when the ax falls in the AFL world. Will take you behind the scenes with some of the biggest names in football and find out how they found out, how time was up and.

Who pulled the trigger.

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The Saint with a Helmet Part one of our chat with Nathan Burke. Nathan Burke was still a young Frankston school kid when he's picked to make his taboo for the Saints, but he became a legend of the Red, White and Black with involvement in Arabin Across four decades. He played with some of the greatest names of the modern era Lockett, Frawley, Harvey Windmar across three hundred and twenty three games as the bedrock of a Saints team

So Nathan Burke, three outed in twenty three games, seventeen seasons, thirty three possessions in the nineteen ninety seven Grand Final, a hugely decorated career. But you've never been sacked until last November, so you were never eligible for this podcast.

So Burkie, welcome to Sacked. Yeah, thank you very much. I'm glad to meet the criteria.

We always talk about it.

You know, when your head hits the pillow at night, do you think about being a great father and a great husband to your wife, or a great footballer and a Football Hall of Fame member, or are you talking do you think about the low points of being sacked and not quite getting close? What's your overall feelings of an extraordinary career in life?

It comes and goes to be totally. There are times when when you're laying there and sort of the injustice sort of filters through the brain and I could add this conversation and I should have said this and should have done that. But then you sort of move on very very quickly from there and you look back on all the good times.

Was it right?

One of your coaches, one of your early coaches said, don't have any regrets?

Was that I was, yeah, Daryl Bulldock right at the very very start, and I remember getting called up into his little office up there in the old grandstand at Rabin and he just said you could make me a promise, and I said, yeah, I'm fine, I'll do anything that you want, Doc, And he just said that when you're get kicked out of here, whether it be one game, hundred games, throw under games, whatever it is, look back

And that's what always stuck with it.

And did you think about that conversation over the journey that you went through, even with the Bulldogs, did you think about that?

Ye, that conversation with a great doc.

Yeah, absolutely absolutely, And everything I do at the moment I still sort of put through that lens. Am I giving it my all. You give it, you're all. It's harder to quit when you're giving it.

You're all.

You know exactly how good you are and where you need to work when you're giving it you're all. So Yeah, it's just been a mancha that the great Man has sort of left with me.

It's a pretty good feeling about looking the mirror and feel proud of what you've done, aware of your shortcomings.

It's a rare person that can do that.

Yeah, look, I'm absolutely aware of my shortcomings.

Saints past players had a raiser a couple of weeks ago and they showed a game from I think it was my last season two thousand and three Fraser Gary Kick nine. We played North Melbourne at the Docklands. We were in front. They came back and as we highlights first three quarters, watch the last quarter, all I could think of was in that last quarter the scores or level, I got the footy and I panicked, and I handballed straight to Adam Simpson who kicked the point to put them in the fat last.

Minutes ago.

And it's funny the things that come from I cannot remember anything else in the game. It was actually the game when I equaled Stuart Lowe's the record game. All I could think of was, they're going to show this me making a handball mistake in the last quarter, making a Really that's just what sort of goes ahead. And the things that I remember, so I try and put

And the day as he has for something as well as Sint Kilda, just added the kid from the Pines. It used to get fifty cents.

It was right.

I think Ralphie wrote the story for your Hall of Fame. Fifty cents for a pine a coke from your dad to hang around. How did that kid become a some kilder player?

Probably My father's mantra was play every sport that you can, and the one that you love the best is the one that you're probably going to practice the most, and you want to go to training, you'll end up being the best at That's what we did. We played basketball, cricket, everything that we possibly could, and my junior years were

And how close we did the Hawthorne zone is, you know though the over the back fence, it's pretty close sort of.

The Hawthorne was more Frankston South right, so they got Ermie and those sort of guys Franks in South. I was Frankston North and I think Hawthorne picked up again round about Chelsea, which is where they got to Matthews those players from So I was sort of wedged right in that Hawthorne's own Probably good I didn't go to Hawthorne. They had some great midfielders.

I probably a game.

So as it was the Saints of the time, we're willing to take anyone.

So you get a letter of the schoolboys squad that s announced to someone, it's just not Nathan Burke.

Yeah.

Yeah, So I was doing year twelve at the time. I played first two games of that year in the under nineteens and then four in the reserves. And then Devil Bordock said to my father and I come for a meeting. We wanted to play in the seniors, and the old man said, oh, I'm not sure whether he's ready. He's seventy kilograms ringing wet. And I sort of turned around and said, hey, this is Devil Boardock. I think he knows that tad more than you. I'm taking this

And against Richmond. You're still a schoolboy, was it Monterey High School? Is that where you went?

Mondre High School? I used to sort of bell used to go, used to fly out. The old man was a four tiler, so yeah, he'd finished work at the time and be meeting me at the gate. Jump in the car and drive up to Morabin and yeah against the Tigers, and I had Richmond paraphernalia all around the bedroom walls, and Markley and Jeff Rains and Jim Jess.

I was about to ask you about Jim j just did he nearly clean you up? Almost your very first passenger play my very.

First I can I can still see it now. My very first headline was Nathan ghosts into the big time ghost being obviously Jimmy Simms's nickname. Apparently I ducked just at the right time as Jimmy with his big sharp elbows came flying through, and I don't know what it was instinct I ducked and their head stayed on the shoulders, but it was that close.

Apparently, take us through what you know what that was like?

So Harlie Reid comes in Schoolboy done the way it looks great sanctified game. When you were playing in a brutal environment there where you know those elbows, you know we're going to swim past and sometimes cheer every five minutes. It's so different to what Harley and all these young kids Nick Dacos would find these days.

It is, but we didn't know any different. That was just the way the game was played. It wasn't like, oh this is extra violent at the moment or extra rough and tough. It was just the way the game was played. And one two memories from that day. One was trying to tackle Mark Lee and I sort of hung around the waist but I don't think I slowed him down and he just kept running. And as I said, seventy killer games. And after the game is when the

A few of the boys would have been at the Saints Disco or something.

Like that exactly, and a good mate, Peter Freeman, ended up driving me home because I was thinking I'm going to have to jump on the train here and get the train back to Frankston. But they were the sort of things that he thought of in those days, but completely different scenario to driving underground and all the fancy stuff they.

Do decent parks and stuff like that. Just with a doc.

He obviously had an impact on you from the start in that first year. He has the stroke later in the year and doesn't coach for the and you have another coach, Alan Davis. Davis four or five four or so games in that So how tough was that as a young kid coming in You really love this legend of the club, and all of a sudden he's not no longer there, He's having his own battle.

Yeah.

No, it was certainly tough.

And look i Io Doc Alt, Robert Harvey, Jason Daniels, all of a sudden, Doc Alt, because to be totally honest, we didn't deserve a game every single week, to just roll up and get games, get games, get games. But DoD Doc's credit, he played us young bokes. He looked after us some training. So the funny thing was we sort of trained half the night and it's young bukes in you go and Joffer Burns and Trevor Barker and these older Bolks and Greg Burns, Jeoffah Cunningham. Sorry, they'd

Running run, running the reward to their point.

So you're playing in that first year and you're playing alongside Trevor Barker, Spud Frawley, Tony Lockett.

I was just yeah, well that first year eighty seven was plug Is Brown a year Yeah, kicked one hundred and seventeen. So just playing at myrabin. You're driving down Linton Street and you just park out in the field with everybody else, and you walk in and you line up at the gate with everybody else, and everyone pat me on the back and back. Then I was playing

Definitely, there was always talk about some Kilda taking short cuts at the time, did they they had a good good time off the field and that as well. Did you notice that from the start or was that something that is overblown from the outside of the club in that sense?

Do you think.

Probably didn't know what other clubs did. But I dare say, and you know, we got a lot of players from Carlton in my early years, you know, Sheldon the Marku and Cork Emilis and Ian Mauler and Luckie Nickson.

You don't know where to go to you come done with your meats, playing for all the scenes, easy kicks, good conditions, good being. Did you're tired of meat?

They could party with the best of them, But I reckon what was happening was that they had success to wallpaper over that. We didn't have success to wallpaper over that. But but it was the was the culture of the club. If you won a game at Rabin, you'd go up into the Social Club and they'd be singing O when the Saints go marching in a the top of a hat and drinks would be flowing and want to be

Kenny Sheldon Hearer, So of course he takes over.

You build towards nineteen ninety one, you know, you transition more into a midfield to take us through those years.

Yeah, so I started off as a back pocket work my way into the midfield. I think I had seven coaches, and every time a new coach came, I sort of got shoved down at the back line and they will find a better midfielder and then you sort of work your way.

Back up again.

But Kenny was great for the club in that he brought a level of professionalism from Carlton, but his strength was getting the players united as a group, wanting to be together, wanting to play together. Was he the tactical genius that some of the other coaches were probably not. Did we get hurt a little bit by that in games when we played sheets and those sort of things, Yes,

And that ninety one season like started pretty slowly, but you're really you know, to get through to player finals. I think it was the first final Sekula played in eighteen years, and there would have been some celebrating just even getting.

There to do that, wasn't there?

Yeah, there was eighteen years was a long drown, yeah, finals, and so to get there was a really big effort. It was not a great day. I think we finished sixth that year and that was the first.

First year of the six. Wouldn't it was that, right?

Yeah?

It might have been. Actually, yeah it was.

It was the last year that six didn't get a double chance, right, yeah? And so we played I think too long it a third. I didn't last very long. I got it cleaned up by Gary Ablett. David Grant the same, and both of us were sitting on the bench with blird vision sort of we'd hear that cheers go off and it was either plug a kicking nine at one end. I think Billy Brown has kicked out at the other end and.

Was that us? Was that us? Or was that there?

That's how bad you were? Yeah, both really bad.

Blur vision couldn't see what was going on.

And we had another couple of players who wanted to come off in that game but couldn't because we had no one to go on. And as it turned out, we just got pipped and that was the end. But I think out of all my sort of years of not being successful that one, if we hadn't got through that game, I think West Coast ended up going on and winning the flag.

We were a chance.

Aside well, it was one of the great matches and the Cats have won by.

Seven points when mar played his heart out. Malcolm Blint went through some tough times here today twenty forty twenty eight today reading the Saints for the first time in the finals match. Garry Ablett and that you'd rather forget. I think Tony Loved who was magnificent good nine goals. Devin Port can hardly lift himself and not the for all this face it says it all.

What's a lot to get cleaned up by Ablett Senior.

He got two weeks for that one.

What would he get today?

Yeah, it'd be eight.

Just at eight, I went into I went into Shepherd, one of my players, and he just came flying through with an elbow and went bang. And the two weeks meant that he could come back for the Grand Final and playing that one. I'm glad they actually lost, but yeah, look he was as a brutal player. I've got no hard feelings at all, but yeah, it was.

That your first concussion. Was that your first or had you had something before then?

Do you think or you I had what we now know is concuction.

Yeah, at the time, i'd get the blurred vision, Yeah, a sort of three or four minutes later, the blurred vision that come on after the game, I'd get the your headaches and nausea, And the doctors diagnosed it as a former migraine, And they said, you get a migraine that comes on for me, Yeah, knock. Now we know that's concussion. But what it allowed me to do was to whenever I had it subsequent years from that, to say, hey, I'm not concussed. I've got a migrant grain I play next week.

So you would have played the week after. You would say Sink would have had to won that game.

You would have played that absolutely, Yeah, I would have rolled out. I probably had headache every time I bent down and did my shoes up, and the probably when I ran around at training. My had to be buntering around and get a headache. But at the time we didn't know much better. So yeah, I definitely would have played the following week.

And eventually that became something where you wore a helmet and it certainly helped you.

Yeah, because what was happening was that the following year was I was getting the blurred vision more often, and Kenny Sheldon just sort of said, look, we can't we only got two on the bench. I can't keep playing you. If this is going to you're going to keep coming off with his blurred visions, You've got to try something. And they said, they've got a pill that takes about an hour to work, and that's no good, So try

Basically all I could see was you.

I'd stay on the field and not come off because I could still run around. My arms and legs worked, but my eyes just didn't.

And you've had all the brain scans now and you're in reasonable shape.

No I haven't, but I think I'm still in reasonable shape. Yeah.

Memory is still spectacular. Yeah, No, it's still okay.

I test myself so in my line of work, I get up and give speeches and talks and seminars and that sort of stuff. So if I can remember what's there without cheat notes, well then you know, I keep going.

So so far, so good.

Yeah, just with concussion, Like, is there something we can do better? We're doing as much as we can. It's a it's a combat sport in a lot of ways, but there are other things that we can do.

I think.

Do you think that the next step and what we need to bring in is that there are machines that can diagnose better than a SCAT test, better than a doctor sitting there asking you questions. We did sort of like a stick SCAT came in towards the end of my career, and I'll put my hand up blatantly say I did the test slower in the in the control area, so that if I got a whack to you the game, there were some sort of things that you had to follow with your hand eye and draw on maps, and

And there's blood tests and there's lipid tests and all those things that better Jest pushes and the NFL has done so much with their rule changes, but it's almost like they're just you know, they're resisting that.

Got to have the human element out of it wherever I can.

And then ninety two, obviously that's another year where the club's going really well.

And Ken was a bit of a hot gospel.

I think there was one famous day where he got a hold of Craig Devenport over the boundary line and grabbed him and Devo goes on and kicks an important goal as well.

Devin, look at that. Now, that tells you what discipline is all about.

The man who's played in the Premiership sides telling the youngster what self disciplines all of its.

Unusual for the coach to come down to the battery line and.

Using pavorits on his ard of the gold Squeen.

That team in ninety two. How good a side was that?

Yeah, it was a really good. Plugger was at the peak of his scary end. He was I think I was come here, I was ninety one On ninety two. He missed the first six games with a cook back and plug of rehabbing. Was basically sitting there waiting for it to get better. There wasn't a.

Lot of coustraining or anything like that.

And then he came back and he played the first three games back, he kicked like thirty one and then at the end of the year he kicked another thirty one in the last three games. And so he was at the peak of his powers at that particular time. We had Sparred and Robert Harvey Stuart Larv coming into their powers and Nicky Wimmer was probably at the peak of his powers at the time. And we've played two finals. We'll be Collingwood in the first one.

Who released Bulldogs foots Gray it's in the semi final.

Yeah, right, again, that was close, but yeah, he didn't quite get across the line.

So if someone said to you Tony Lockett. I never heard of him.

How did you encapsulate his great off the field all that stuff and give us one of the great Tony Lockers stories.

Look, he was probably the most competitive player that I came up against. If there's a training draw, he said, right, we're going to do lane work. This group here got to kick it at that lead and just go back to some formants and warm up your legs. Player would get to the front of the line. He'd go right out, Johnny, right, Mackie, you go, and he three steps backwards and let the others go, and then he'd eventually have a go. Because

And that's just what he was.

He was just a competitor. But he hated all of the other crap that went on with playing AFL football. And I didn't think he would leave and go to Sydney.

Yeah. I was going to say, did I ever enter your mind at all that he would know because.

He hated at that particular time. He's living out in cranber living out there by himself, some sort of quiet area. Coming in playing football. I didn't think he'd go and be the marquee player in a place like Sydney, but as it turned out, it was the best thing for him. It was getting star. I think sort of ninety four to ninety five weren't his greatest years. He had had a lot of injuries, and certainly going to Sydney we

Aren't they great?

And I've got anyone You don't realize how good training like it was below his knees on left foot, right foot marking the ball in the air. He actually puts the modern day full forward to shame because he could do everything.

And he never missed, did he He was one of the more accurate kicks you would ever see.

Never missed.

And you know, in terms of skill, he's probably one of the most skillful players that I played with, because, as I said, you're marking the ball with Steven Sulfony hanging on to you like a koala sitting on your back. If the ball hits the ground and then you're picking it up, you're balking around three blokes and snapping it on your left foot.

That's what he could do with the bloke of that size. Just enormous.

And yet we talked games record holder. But yeah, we talk about Gary Abbott Senior, and we talk about Wayne Carey's or and we talk about lead.

Yeah.

I'm not saying we discount what he's been able to do, but all the periphery of the crutch throwing and the fail comeback and that's the you know, to say, like we probab always discount some of his exquisite grandeur.

Yeah. Absolutely, And I think people say, who's the best player you played with? The best player I played with? The best player I saw by Mill. He did have those sort of down years, but when he was on the song thirty first first three games back, thirty one goals, Yeah, incredible. He kicked one hundred and twenty seven that year and averages seven and a half if by kick seven and a half goals of these days, he's a superstar. He averaged seven and a half goals a game. And that

What did he say to you remember anything he said there? He gives good at it.

Sure, sure, he just got inside Plugger's head and lost it.

And that would be rare for Plugger to other than to people.

Not many were game enough to be pretty sure. He absolutely got into him that game and he didn't kick a goal. So we played them in the final and the rule wise coming in was that we all had to ignore Surey sure he would have hated that to not allowed to talk to Shrey. You forget what he's going to say, because Plugging, don't fall into this trap again.

Frawling and sure, we're so busy arguing that the task went on and on row when the ends were decided, it was also to prove the end for Frawley. Listen killed the skipper limped off with an achilles.

I was going to ask you about the Plugger game in Sydney, which you would have thought he would have been a millium to one whoever played for Sydney. After he nearly decapitated poor old Kenny in the stands and you guys were forty eight points down with.

Nine minutes the hour.

It was like yeah, some ridiculous short amount of time to go and not only you win and come back and win.

Yeah, got mine. I think Plager kicked eleven eleven that that game. And that was the Peter Caven.

Peter, I was going to ask you about the Peter Caven. I got twenty eight weeks for that one. Yeah.

Yeah, standing started side love courage shown. There's your Peter Caven left mark. Read the mark before us well.

Cur the stretch.

There's another little known fact. Sydney Cheersquad sit behind the guy and before the game, you're walking around. Plugger checks out the goal square and the Sydney Cheersquad were getting into him, and Pluggers turned around to one of the old guys and he's gone, I'm going to kick one straight at your head. And he watched the vide out of game. It was probably there might be the last

All right back to David Berger's really lifted.

He's been one of the players that brought He killed her right.

Back, kicking off his head.

You don't have to get back quickly, ten quick quicker over the top.

Can go to plugger.

What would happen now if if he had hit Kenny? And then what were the Affle have done? Knowing that it was probably delivered. Just you think of this the old fashion extraordinary stories in the lot of era.

Yeah, yeah, as I said, he I think he got he got seven h Yeah. Yeah, these days he's probably bad for life.

Ninety five.

So there was talk of a merger and Carlton and probably emerged again recently with Andrew Plimpton's death. So talk about John Elliott Andrew Primpton, you know, whether it was going to be a merger not a takeover.

There's pledgures of loyalty, you know. Were you part of that discussion, not rely just on the peripheral at that particular time. I don't think we ever truly thought it was going to happen. It was just too far out of the box. Clubs have far too different, different demographics, different areas.

It would have been a good side.

It would have been they won the flag in ninety five, you've be We've beat them. Yeah, I think we were the only team to beat them that year. And it was a bit of a catalyst for the Saints because after the end of ninety five a lot of the spud retired and Fugger had gone, and it was a real sort of changing at the Guard sort of internally

And so by that stage, Ken Sheldon's been sacked and Stan Ols comes in tell us a little bit about the transition to stand.

And how that worked.

Yeah, so Stan was assistant coach, and everyone generally loves you assistant coaches, so we were quite excited for Stan. Unfortunately for Kenny, Kenny made the mistake of not managing up and did the fatal mistake of saying a board members, you're not allowed to come in the rooms before the game, and you've got to keep hands length and you don't into their workspace. Bad move never works out well for

He pretty much did everything he used to do the media back then you have to used to ring him to do all to get in touch with players.

It was all powerful and Kenny being the loyal person. When they came to Kenny and they said, mate, Hardo's got two power too much, He's probably going to have to go. Kenny thought, you know what, I've been in the finals two out of four years. I've got enough cachet here to say if he goes, I go. Unfortunately, work that way, I didn't have that much, and off Kenny went, which was, as I said, not many coaches at Saint Kilda to fifty percent finals record suddenly get

He was still a pretty tough man, stand like, oh he could give a spray about that.

He give us spray with the best of them, and he got to the stage at times when he actually banned himself from speaking to us after the game really, so we'd come in, do a cool down, and we go home. And the reason was was sometimes Stan would say stuff after the match which wasn't really relevant, and he'd spend the next couple of days finding people and

Is it fair to say he targeted a few of the senior guys like yourself and Halves.

Yeah, he's definitely more harder on his Stan was a big devotee. He was a big devotee of Lombardy, and so one of the Lombardy's things was that he would always put far more pressure on the senior.

Players did the same that he did.

Yeah, and then the rest of the players would go, hey, don't pick on them. There my mates, and I'm going to lift as well. That was the hope. Unfortunately, at times that was you.

Know, it drove a wedge between the players and the coach rather than supporting the senior players.

But yeah, no doubt. We were often the first ones that record into the room.

So ninety seven, so those kids have got a couple of years of action. You start the season slowly and all of a sudden you just come with a rash and it's just the extraordinary season.

Yeah.

Look, I to be honest in seed coming. I think we started the year quite poorly and we won.

One of the first five games. Stand trying to walk away?

Is that one out of the first five, and then I think we played Melbourne out at Waverley and they were in a similar position to us. It was like who was going to Whoever lost this game, that's its season over, gone down the bottom, and we came out and we won fairly convincingly and from that point we.

Just got on a roll.

I think we won seventeen in a row. It was just phenomenal and the season on top of the ladder. But there was that pivotal point of that game out at Waverley and they ended up going backwards and we shot off the other way. And a lot of it came from that ninety five of parking, giving players ownership and how are we going to do things and leading teams was board in Ray MacLean and his.

Particular that helped.

That was good, absolutely because it puts some put some shape and rigor around the ownership. Wasn't just handed over to the bikes. It was okay, if we have the ownership, what does that look like and what are the boundaries around that ownership? And that's what a lot of the leading team stuff did. So it certainly work with a particular group we had there.

And so you were surprised with how well it went in that period. And but you start getting injuries at the wrong time. Was how crucial was that you you lose Joel Smith and Big Laser who was really important from a structural point of view and to protect players as well.

And then Spider Yes.

The finals a pretty you haven't got a lot of big bikes.

Left, have you?

No, No, we didn't.

And so Brett Cook came in, he was probably the third or fourth string rack at the time, actually came in and played in the Grand Final and yeah, it just I think we might have even been winning at halftime. Yeah, but we came in the rooms and we got sort of barrel at halftime thinking, hang on, are we in front not in front?

What was the message there? Like you should be doing better?

Or yeah, yeah, you should be doing better. There's a lot of the things we weren't doing well and we hadn't. It was like Nicki Mimmo's father passed away a couple of days prior, and Stuart Lower had his personal sort of family issues going on at the time, and yeah, it's and then yeah, the old old bloke what's his name, I don't say his name, not Darren Charman deliberately his name. He went went mad and kicked five control. We sort

So you know, you think of killer Shark, which is obviously a pre match message, you think of a handball handball, you think of all the iconic messages there. How much can a halftime message shape for the psychology of you coming out us three quught a time?

It can because we were still a very young group overall, so I think Stuart Lowe and I were sort of twenty six or so and Robert Aby's twenty five and so we were of the leaders of the group, so we didn't have those thirty year old to the wise heads or anything like that.

So I think it just probably took an edge off.

And if you're playing in the Grand Final, you take five percent off the group, well you're going to get run over. Absolutely, that's all it takes. He's at five percent edge and whichever team gets to the point first of I think we're going to lose, you know, just we did well to get here. Then you're going to fall away and I think we got to that point before they did.

What stage do you reckon? You got to that point because the game was alive for a bit of that second half, wasn't it? And then it became a tide that just was too strong to stop. Was there a stage where is there a moment that you thought this is it, We're gone?

And the probably.

I kicked a goal at some stage in the third and I might have put a slate nine points down or something like that off the top of the head roughly, And the lack of yes, we're back in this after kicking a goal, and the lack of sort of get around him, getting around.

Him down the bird what goal?

Classic cop?

This is we're going to be sort of pushing you know what? Uphal here? Yeah, even after kicking a goal is normally when you should be up.

Oh we kicked it. Have we got another one in this? I'm not sure?

And have you felt for Jamie Shanahan over the journey that he's probably copped too much of the of the criticism of the decision to play him on Jarman, which you know from from a far now and knowing what we know, probably wasn't the greatest matchup was it, No, But.

I'm not sure who we had.

For some reason we left a guy on Matthew Young out of the team, and Young he was a really good defender. Could he have been an option? Who else was an option? I'm not too sure. But some of those goals weren't Jamie beat one on one. It was sort of There was maybe three or four Crows plays down there, and the way that the ball came down there and the openness of the forward line that they managed to craft that. That's all on the rest of us.

What a fairy time and clear the Crows if.

They needed anymore.

I've done the line of the last quarter, so there's nothing left now but to celebrate.

Absolutely, So yeah, I hold no animosity to Jamie whatsoever. Unfortunately it was his last game the Saints. I would have loved him to have hung around for another few years and finished his career.

What did Stan say after the game was obviously talk about the halftime.

Was there any message?

I suppose you're all shattered, your heart broken, you've had your dream crashed in a in a half a footy.

Was there anything that stands out in regards to that?

No, I don't remember. I remember getting up on stage at at the post game with all the fans and family and Stany said I'm hurting. I'm hurting from my boys. It was like, yeah, okay, it's not quite sure of is that really genuine or not genuine? It would have been Stands, a very sort of genuine guy, but yeah, it just didn't quite feel what we needed to hear.

And so stand empowered you and stand drove you to the Grand Final.

And as you say, you know, probably a better tactician maybe than Kenny, but he wasn't quite the man for you necessarily.

So next year we were sort of flying at the start.

You're on top after fourteen rounds, yeah, that makes sense.

We fell in a hole.

And the great lesson was that if you give players ownership, you can't then yanke it back when things don't start working well. And what happened was we lost a games after that sort of round fourteen, and then the ownership that we had started to get yanked back. And what happens then is you go, well, we don't trust me anymore. Yeah, it's a certain stamp, but and then you get some of the playing groups sitting back going okay, if you don't trust, well, what have you got for us?

And we started to clutch at straws.

We were doing meditation before before games and on the airplane flying up to Sydney and we're doing a lot of sort of weird martial arts sort of stuff and clutching at straws, not going back to Okay, this is what worked for us for a year and a half. Let's get back and do that properly. It was okay, that's not working anymore. I'll take control and here's some weird stuff. And I can just see the board we're standing around watching us lay on the floor and go

A lesson here, graphie and to keep them so with that, like you go out in straight sets. And the very next day Andrew Plmpton talks to Don Hanley to start a review that he wants finished within a week.

Do you know this? Do you know that it's over at that stage? For Stan certainly brought passion excitement to the club and I left nobody no doubt as to.

How I felt in terms of when we were going well and when we were going poorly and so no regrets.

A group of US senior players met with Gary Colling, who was like a football manager ex saying great, and we met with him down at bo'morros and restaurant and we just sort of gave that sort of observation. That was the observation that we gave. And then I got a phone call from Andrew Plimpton the next day saying, yeah, we've done it, Burkey, We've pulled the pen and I've let him know and I've gone, what are you talking about it? And I said, well, I don't know what

We need a good bike.

I was going to say, there's not a lot of good blokes so were senior coaches. That's not true, lunatics, but the balance isn't there.

We need a good bike and we're going to get you a good bike.

In that particular role, and the good blake they got was with Tim Watson, who, yes, it's the quality of a good bike, a good bike, who had the grounding of you know, I've gone on a pathway to become a senior coach and I've done the assistants job, and I've got a game plan that I reckon is going to win. That wasn't part of the good black package and within two years were blasted on the ladder.

So the frustrations for you of knowing it at various points in your security career you had very good sides. I'm not sure if they were great sides, but again, every time you felt you were close to the summit there that you know it was own goals.

Yeah, yeah, it's this. We need someone else to put the icing on the cake.

Yeah.

Never. I look at Geelong who went backwards with the Chris Scott but said, you know what, we're going to put something around him and make it work. And you know he's got enough good qualities. We can build hard work, Yeah, hardware. Should we sack him, shack him? No, let's support him. We've got build on his good qualities and put some support around him. What would have happened if they had done that to Ken Sheldon or Stan Elves later on down the line, Grand Thomas. All of those three in

They At the moment, it's probably a history of repeating itself.

And that's a challenge, isn't it that?

You know?

I think Ratten clearly in his last ten weeks was not coaching beautifully, but there was so much good in it.

And there was so much great stuff in Brett Ratton as a coach.

Yeah, yeah, had look speaking from experience now, when you've got a looming am I going to be here? It does affect a coach. It absolutely affects a coach because it's their livelihood. And to be a coach, you've got to put one hundred and ten percent into being a coach and you can't do it any other way. I can't do it half as And when you've got looming, you know, am I going to be here?

Am I going to be here?

I'm going to get the chop? And I've presidents given me a call? What does that mean that that's taking a lot of focus away from being the best coaching that you can be.

Thanks for listening to Sacked.

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