Lethal: No Fear And Few Rivals

The Age

Tuesday September 2, 2008

Rohan Connolly

ONLY three men have been involved in more VFL/AFL premiership victories from either the playing field or the coach's box than Leigh Matthews. Their names are Norm Smith, Ron Barassi and Jock McHale.

Throw in Ted Whitten, and you have probably the most famous quartet of names the game has ever produced. And Matthews sits very, very comfortably in their company.

For one very good reason. Of that pantheon of football greats, it's perhaps only Matthews who could walk into the AFL Hall of Fame as either a player or coach without any argument whatsoever.

As accomplished as were both the legendary Smith and his Melbourne protege Barassi purely as players, each with more than 200 games and four and six flags under their belts respectively won on the field, with due respect, as a player, Matthews towers above both.

Smith didn't make The Age's top 50 selected in June by a panel of football greats. Barassi was there, but not as a serious contender for the top 10. Matthews, with 332 games, four flags and an incredible eight best-and-fairests, finished at No. 2, behind only Whitten.

And as a coach? Well, McHale, Smith, Frank "Checker" Hughes and Jack Worrall all coached more premierships than Matthews' four, a figure he shares with Dick Reynolds, Allan Jeans, Tom Hafey, David Parkin and Kevin Sheedy. But it's the circumstances surrounding Matthews' premiership quadrella from the coach's box that arguably give them even more cache.

It's hard to decide which stands as a greater coaching achievement, leading Collingwood to one of the most famous premiership wins of all time in 1990, or the Brisbane Lions' "three-peat" of 2001-03.

Anyone thinking that an odd argument, given one premiership in his first coaching tenure versus three at his second and final home, is either overlooking or forgetting the sheer weight of the psychological millstone that hung around an entire club's neck as it strove to break a flag drought that had extended to 32 years, taken in a heartbreaking eight grand final losses, and coined a new addition to the football lexicon, the "Colliwobbles".

Collingwood didn't necessarily have the most-talented list in 1990, but it had unquestionably the best team in the true sense of the word, one which was also clearly the hungriest.

Matthews' team was fanatical in its desire, driven by the steely resolve of its coach, who elicited not only the best from proven players such as captain Tony Shaw, the brilliant Peter Daicos and Darren Millane, but managed to eke career-best performances from the far less-heralded James Manson, Shane Kerrison, Michael Gayfer and Jamie Turner.

Even so, his greatest coaching achievement with Collingwood remained simply having the Magpies survive the by-then suffocating pressure of expectation and legacy of near-misses and hard-luck stories endured by arguably the nation's best-known and widely supported sporting club.

Ever the pragmatist, an unemotional and calculating coach, Matthews famously forbade the presence even of black and white balloons around the Magpies' dressing rooms on grand final day against Essendon. His side's steely focus would not be disturbed by any potential for distraction.

A famous victory was won. Matthews would coach the Pies for another five seasons without a repeat, but after three years out of the hot seat and carving an equally impressive media career, he took up another sizeable challenge with a team in Brisbane that had imploded spectacularly in 1998 to finish last.

Matthews had the Lions back in a preliminary final in his first season and winning their first premiership in his third, challenging, then completely overtaking an Essendon team that had for a season-and-a-half seemed close to unbeatable, the turning point his famous adaptation of the Arnold Schwarzenegger quote from The Terminator, "If it bleeds, we can kill it".

Brisbane became the first juggernaut of the new millennium, Matthews' greatest ability to keep players who had already tasted premiership success hungry for more. The likes of his captain Michael Voss, Jason Akermanis, Simon Black and Nigel Lappin were quickly stars and household names, but continued to perform consistently for their coach.

Matthews' Lions had the capacity to peak at the perfect moment, not once in their remarkable reign finishing the home-and-away rounds on top of the ladder, yet owning September, most famously in 2003, when a team - by now a grand final underdog against Collingwood and fielding more than a handful of injured players - blew the Pies off the park.

Matthews the coach was sometimes criticised for not being able to work as effectively with up-and-coming players, a claim he always disputed vehemently, the flood of new faces introduced into the Lions' line-up over the past two or three seasons giving him at least some sort of comeback.

Neither was he one for tactical chicanery, paying less attention to the nuances of the opposition than did most of his contemporaries. Perhaps, as has been suggested, that began to catch up with him. Perhaps there have been, and are, better teachers of the game than he. But as the person to whip a collection of seemingly disparate and disconnected talents into a super, and ruthless outfit, he had few, if any, rivals.

© 2008 The Age

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