New coach … Chris O’Keefe will lead Spotswood into the 2011 season. 36167 Picture: Ray Pollanen
By Michael Esposito
CHRIS O’Keefe doesn’t want his players to forget about the pain of grand final defeat, but he doesn’t want them to dwell on it either.
The newly’appointed Spotswood coach, who has replaced the retiring Ben Kelly, is keen to make his own mark as a leader while continuing the level of professionalism that has become synonymous with Spotswood Football Club.
Spotswood president Chris Murphy said former coach Luke Theodore ‘changed the demeanour of the club’, and took it to a new level of success.
When Kelly took over three years ago, he had immediate success with two consecutive premierships. He was on track for a third this year, but Albion began to close the gap in the second half on the home-and-away season, and in the end overtook the Woodsmen at the right time of the year to claim the premiership.
Kelly hung up the boots to spend more time with his two young children and concentrate on business interests.
O’Keefe, who also played with Kelly at VFL side North Ballarat, said he would address the grand final defeat at the start of next season, but certainly would not mull over it.
‘There will be some reference to it. You just can’t walk away from it and totally forget about it,’ he said.
‘I said to the playing group on the Saturday night after the game that you have to take the good with the bad. We’ve obviously been very successful and had a lot of good times in the last three years, but you can’t expect it to be that way all the time.’
O’Keefe, 29, has had ambitions to coach for some time, and thought the timing was ideal to take the reins.
Murphy said O’Keefe has gained the respect of the playing coach in his two years at the club, and has shown tremendous leadership qualities in his role as assistant coach.
‘He has great communications skills, he leads by example, all the players have respect for him, he’s always finished in the top five of our best and fairest, and he’s just an all-round good bloke,’ Murphy said.
‘It was the right choice to put him in, knowing that he knows all the players and at the same time he’s still got his own way of going about things, but also he knows what the expectations of the club are as well.’
O’Keefe knows the club expects a top three finish in the home-and-away season, but his first goal is to keep the playing list together.
‘If we do lose some players, which I’m expecting we will, that’s just the nature of the beast, we’ll look at trying to replace those guys and look at the kids coming through,’ O’Keefe said.
‘That’s going to be extremely important to us. We played eight under 18 kids this year, and helping them develop into senior footballers and hopefully go higher than the WRFL is a big part of my job.’
O’Keefe said he has learnt a lot from Kelly about the intricacies of coaching.
‘We’ve always had the same line of thinking, having both played VFL, and I’ve been able to sit back in the last couple of years and see how he does things,’ he said.
‘I’ve had a bit of input as well, but to be able to understand the process of being a senior coach, he’s been really fantastic in teaching me that as well.
‘The way that I see coaching is that you want to be a teacher and educator. I don’t want to be a coach that stands there and barks orders and is like a dictator. I want to continue to be at the same level as I have been this year and the last couple of years where I hope I’m approachable. A major focus of my coaching will be that the team is only as strong as the weakest link and that’s where everyone has to work together and make sure that everyone plays their roles and work together as one unit.’
The classy midfielder will continue Spotswood’s recent tradition of having a playing head coach supported by a number of bench coaches.
‘It will be challenging but I’ve seen in the last couple of years our bench coaches have been extremely good, and we’ll look to run a similar set up next year with making sure that we’ve got the right people on the sidelines who will give me the confidence just to get out there and play.’
