INTERNATIONAL RULES:Australia's coach Mick Malthouse places emphasis on discipline and deploys tactics which require it, writes SEÁN MORAN
IT’S NICE and apposite that Mick Malthouse, with his distinguished silver hair and neat moustache, should have such a well-flagged interest in military history.
Sitting in the Hogan Stand on a wet Wednesday night, he talks enthusiastically about the testudo, or tortoise, formation of the Roman legions in the Punic wars and the campaigns of Erwin Rommel and their influence in the development of a game plan that over the course of three years delivered his club, Collingwood, a first AFL premiership in 20 years.
“I’ve read a few things with interest,” he explains, “that I started putting in the context of sport and a few ideas popped out. It’s been three years in the making to have a game structure and strategies that resemble something I thought could bring success to our football club.
“The first was the Punic wars between the Roman Empire and Carthage. I took a bit more interest in the Roman legion. I must emphasise that neither the Roman legions nor Erwin Rommel, another influence, were successful in the long term. So this is not about finality.
“Two or three years down the road someone will come up with a plan that will destroy that tactic, like happened Rommel’s army and the Romans. But at the moment, when it works, we’ll make it work.
“Basically the Roman legion is a box formation and, even though it might be cut down at certain angles, that remains its strength because they replace each other.
“In Rommel’s case, it was just front-on attack, which was highly effective through France and up until he met a superior force in numbers, not necessarily in tactics, in Montgomery – although I’m not going into other issues like supply lines.
“But these have influenced the strategies I have undertaken at Collingwood, which fortunately have contributed to our winning a premiership.”
There is, of course, an irony in all of this. Malthouse, the keen student of warfare and battlefield tactics, was actually appointed to his current position, coach of Australia’s International Rules team, to bring peace and harmony to a situation that was considerably short on both.
And he has succeeded in pacifying the fresh territory as effectively as both his military influences did in ancient times and 70 years ago in France. His first series in 2008 delivered two well-behaved and closely contested Tests, with Ireland winning in Australia. Malthouse coped with the rule changes, designed to help Ireland stay competitive, and the competitive nature of the game without his team resorting to fisticuffs.
Maybe this shouldn’t have been too surprising. The coach places emphasis on discipline and deploys tactics which require it. In addition, he was conscious he was being asked to nurture the game back to sporting health.
“It’s like anything else in life,” he says. “We’re custodians of the future and what we do now will dictate that future. Spoil the game and wreck the game now and that’s it for the future. We can’t affect the past. It’s like if you cut down a forest it will take hundreds if not a thousand years to recover.
“Life and sport are very, very similar. You get out of it what you put in, and we’ve put in a heck of a lot of effort to pick the right players with the right mindset who value sportsmanship, value winning, value their team-mates and value the extraordinary opportunity they have to represent their country against a very worthy opponent.
“If you respect that the game will keep going, but if you spoil that while you’re in charge of it then maybe you’re tarred with bringing the game to a standstill.”
Malthouse values the series as a representative outlet for players of an indigenous game, and also appears to enjoy the intellectual stimulus of getting to grips with an unfamiliar concept, albeit featuring some recognisable structures.
His appointment as international manager has coincided with a great spell in the domestic game. Last month he became, at 57, the oldest coach of a premiership-winning team when Collingwood captured the first replayed final in 33 years, trimming St Kilda.
As the doyen of the Australian game – he is now the second-longest serving coach in the history of the AFL – he was a safe pair of hands to whom to entrust the international series.
Courteous and articulate – his answers can be long journeys with occasional detours down spur lines – to the media covering the internationals, he has a spikier relationship with reporters at home. And this week’s flinty criticism of the Irish media for what he sees as excessive negativity – he introduced his comments: “I have to say I’m a reluctant reader of newspapers in regard to sport unless it’s other than Australian Rules football” – reflected something of that relationship.
He gives the impression of seeing everything in terms of an intellectual challenge. This detachment showed even at home, and when interviewed on Australian television about his great success, Malthouse said he didn’t really know how he felt beyond being happy for his family, his club and its supporters.
He wasn’t noted as an outstanding player, but in nearly 200 matches for St Kilda and, predominantly, Richmond he built a reputation as a dependable defender and won a premiership in 1980, beating his current club, Collingwood, in the final.
His coaching career has been continuous since 1984 when he began with Footscray, now the Western Bulldogs, before succeeding John Todd (best remembered here as the mildly deranged Australia coach who denounced the 1986 Ireland team as “wimps” in a heated interview with the late Mick Dunne) at West Coast Eagles in 1989.
There he won his first two premierships in 1992 (the first by a club outside of Melbourne) and ’94, before moving to Collingwood 10 years ago. In another overlap with international history, Malthouse was accused by Kevin Sheedy (whose long record at Essendon he overtook) of never having won a premiership with his own list – ie, his Eagles’ successes had been with Todd’s players.
Sheedy’s own international influence was ambivalent. He was the first AFL coach to devise a game plan considerably superior to Ireland’s – scoring in 2005 more than 100 for the only time – but his teams’ taste for supplementing their on-field superiority with ultra-violence nearly sank the game.
The criticism of Malthouse was unfair given the Eagles’ low standing in 1989, and was fully answered this season when a Collingwood side manifestly of his creation won the title. He refused to comment on Sheedy’s jibe, saying he never took offence but “had a good memory”.
His thoughts on the interaction of different games have been interesting even before his involvement in this series. It was he who coined the phrase, “the Gaelicisation” of the AFL, as a comment on the changing emphasis within the Australian game and the influx of Irish players, one of whom, Martin Clarke, now back and an All Star with the Down team that nearly won this year’s All-Ireland, played with him in Collingwood.
“It’s more to do with the fact that we are so isolated in Australia,” he says. “Australian people are great travellers, forever wanting to go away and come back with different ideas.
“What have indigenous sports done about improving? The GAA control the games of football and hurling and there’s great reference to each other in that players can play both but also that one can learn from the other and they can challenge each other.
“The connection with Gaelic football is another method of us advancing our game. Too many people think our game is complete – that’s it! That’s the death of any sport, of anything. You’ve to keep expanding and looking outside.”
Despite the ample evidence to the contrary in Limerick last week, he continues to believe Irish footballers are more skilful.
“I’ve had first-hand experience of a Gaelic footballer, Marty Clarke. He came across and showed our boys how to kick a football correctly – an oval ball he hadn’t kicked as a kid, like our players. There’d be very few at Collingwood who could kick a ball better than Marty Clarke. He’s a superb athlete. The same would go for Tadhg Kennelly, for (Tommy) Walsh and for others.”
Asked whether he could see Clarke returning to Collingwood, he isn’t convinced.
“I think it would be difficult to come back. He’s played in this wonderful stadium when it was full and his county side nearly got over the line for the first time in 16 years. I always tell young players ‘do what’s best for you’. I can’t answer those questions for him, but I’ve said that the door’s wide open.”
It was no surprise this week when reports surfaced in Australia that the AFL were hoping Malthouse would extend his international contract. He appeared to knock that back yesterday, pointing out that the AFL coaches association believed in rotating the appointment.
Unless this evening’s series climax is drastically out of character with his three Tests to date, anyone succeeding Malthouse will have him to thank that there’s an international outlet at all.
