Spotswood’s sacking of Ray Jensen, right, has over-shadowed the reappointment of Chris O’Keefe, left, as senior coach for 2013. 70575_38 Picture: KRISTIAN SCOTT
By ADEM SARICAOGLU
SPOTSWOOD has sacked club legend and premiership captain Ray Jensen as its reserves coach after announcing senior coach Chris O’Keefe will lead the Woodsmen once more in 2013.
Both the powerhouse WRFL club and Jensen refuse to go into great detail about what happened, but it is understood there was a severe falling out between the two over the past few weeks.
Football manager Tony Walshe said Jensen’s role had become untenable after he reportedly took to social media to vent his frustrations about the club.
“I’m not going to go into the specifics of it, we’ll just keep all that in-house but needless to say we’ve got standards and we’ve got written procedures about all this sort of behaviour,” Walshe said.
“Ray unfortunately had not met our standards and had breached procedures and the club’s bigger than the individual.
“The club had to make a very difficult decision, which no-one enjoyed but had to be made.”
Walshe also hinted at a possible rift between Jensen and O’Keefe.
“All that transpired is that it’s important that the reserves coach is supporting the senior coach, and we felt that wasn’t the case,” Walshe said.
“Following a number of discussions about it, some things didn’t change and in the best interests of the football club we had to make a very, very tough decision to stand Ray down.”
Despite losing his job Jensen said he has received support from mates still at the club and doesn’t want to bring the club down so close to an important finals campaign, but maintains there are two sides to every story.
“It’s a pretty bitter pill to swallow, at this point in time I couldn’t think of any other place I wouldn’t want to be,” Jensen told Star.
“There’s no way known I’d step foot back in that place at the moment, maybe time will heal things but for the foreseeable future I don’t think I’ll be down there.
“I’ve seen some good times at that football club and the way it’s gone now, so be it, that’s the decision they’ve gone with and I wish the football club and my mates all the best in the future.”
The sacking does not seem to have affected the Woodsmen on the field with both teams scoring convincing wins on the weekend, but Walshe says “time will tell” if it will take its toll later in the year.
“I just hope that they (the players) can put it behind them,” Walshe said.
“This week might be a little bit tough for some of them but they know they’ve got a job to do, they don’t want to waste the work that they’ve put in, so hopefully they can get on with it and do the job.”
The club decided to reappoint O’Keefe five weeks ago but has only announced it publicly within the past two weeks.
Walshe said the decision to keep O’Keefe in his current role and the sacking of Jensen were not connected in any way.
“The appointment of Chris was one issue and we’ve got complete confidence in Chris,” Walshe said. “He’s a premiership coach, he’s got us into definitely finishing second on the ladder, he’s continually built the list with young guys coming through (and) he’s a champion on and off the field, so we had no hesitation in reappointing Chris for another year.”
O’Keefe said he was glad the club had enough faith in him for another year.
“I’m very pleased to be able to be in the position to be reappointed for next year and it’s always been my plan all along to hopefully (get) a minimum of three years at the club to make sure that we could implement the plans in place as we wanted to,” O’Keefe said.
O’Keefe also said he will continue his role as a playing coach in 2013.
