Great Scott: the two sides to Geelong’s coach
Steve Larkin |
Chris Scott, the player, was a “savage”; a hot-headed enforcer.
Scott, the coach, is a sophisticate; calm and analytical.
The split personalities were noted early by AFL legend Leigh Matthews, who coached Scott during most of his 215 games at Brisbane.
“What I really liked about Chris at the Lions was he was a savage on-field competitor and a mild-mannered bloke off the field,” Matthews has said.
“I love that combination.
“He’s a man of great character but very different as a person than he was as a player.
“As a player, his psychological mode is the enforcer. He was combative, he was aggressive, even hot-headed.
“But off the field, he’s a real thinker, he’s an analyser. Very calm and an excellent communicator.”
Scott will coach Geelong against his former club Brisbane in Saturday’s premiership decider with an unrivalled reputation as the AFL’s modern-day master coach.
The 49-year-old, at Geelong’s helm in a 15th season, has missed the finals just twice.
In Scott’s 13 final campaigns, he’s reached a preliminary final or better 10 times.
His overall winning percentage is 68.66. Of all VFL/AFL coaches to win two or more premierships, only Essendon’s John Coleman (68.80 per cent), who coached seven seasons, boasts a better rate.
Scott, seeking a third flag from four grand finals as Geelong’s coach, also played in two premierships for the Lions where his on-field reputation was forged.
Scott’s playing talents attracted instant attention from recruiters watching him, and his twin brother Brad, play at Melbourne’s St Kevin’s College.
The schooling at the plush college in wealthy Toorak was partly funded by Legacy: their father, Colin, died when the twins were aged eight.
Colin was a reconnaissance pilot during the Vietnam War, the first Army pilot awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross.
The sports-besotted twins played football for Eastern Ranges in the under-18 competition and Chris was taken by the then Brisbane Bears as pick 12 in the 1993 national draft.
(Brad, now Essendon’s coach, was taken a year later by Hawthorn with pick 60. Delisted after one season, the Hawks re-drafted him in 1996 before trading him to join Chris in Brisbane for the 1998 season.)
Their aggressive on-field style led to them being dubbed the Kray brothers by some pundits, referencing London’s infamous gangsters of the 1950s and 1960s.
Matthews, a renowned hard-man, arrived to coach Brisbane for the 1999 season when Scott’s split personality traits had already been noted by the likes of long-time Lion Craig Lambert, who lived with the young draftee in 1994.
“Chris was always unbelievably driven,” Lambert has said.
“He was almost like a protege of Leigh Matthews and would have taken a lot of his coaching philosophies off Leigh.
“You always knew that Chris would end up in coaching because he wanted to know the game plan back to front – even though his greatest strength was his competitive spirit.”
Scott won the AFL’s Rising Star for best young player in his debut ’94 season and was the Lions’ club champion four years later.
He featured in Brisbane’s premierships in 2001/02 but missed the famous ‘three-peat’ in 2003 when the team’s emergency.
Injury problems followed and Scott, the player, retired at the end of 2007. He immediately set about becoming Scott, the coach.
He joined Fremantle as an assistant under Mark Harvey and spent three seasons with the Dockers before pitching for Geelong’s top job at the end of 2010.
Despite being aged just 34, he won the job with Geelong hierarchy highlighting their desire for a ‘manager-coach’. The template was set.
In his first year as a senior coach, Scott won the 2011 premiership.
The Cats made a qualifying final the next year, followed by a preliminary final, then a semi-final.
After slipping to 10th in 2015 despite winning more games than losing, Scott oversaw another stretch of finals appearances.
Geelong reached, but lost, three preliminary finals and a qualifying final before losing the 2020 grand final.
Another preliminary final loss in 2021 stung, before Scott won his second flag with the Cats in 2022, demolishing Sydney by 81 points.
“It’s a metaphor for life, really,” Scott said of the win.
“If you want to do great things, don’t expect it to be smooth sailing.”
His roughest time followed the next year when Geelong stumbled to 12th, his worst finish in the only season his side lost more games than they won.
The rebound was swift, reaching last year’s preliminary final but falling 10 points short in a classic encounter against eventual premiers Brisbane.
“It’s the price of admission. You have to risk this feeling to have a chance to do something great,” he said post-match.
The statement evidenced Scott’s growing renown as not only canny tactician but a statesman of the game.
His reign has been marked by insisting his players spend more time away from the club.
“If you’re talking about performance, surely you’re looking for the outcome,” Scott has said.
“So if you can get that done really efficiently in a short period of time, the more the better.
“If you can do it while still spending time with your family and cultivating some interests outside of footy, then surely that’s a better thing as well.”
That preliminary final defeat came two months after forward Tyson Stengle was found unconscious in a Geelong nightclub.
In an often heavy-handed AFL world, Scott preferred a light touch. He selected Stengle for the next match when many were calling for a club-imposed ban.
“This idea of the public flaying is just not the way we do things,” he said at the time.
Scott adopted a similar stance this year when boom recruit Bailey Smith was the centre of a storm.
Smith was suspended for two games in 2022 during his career at the Western Bulldogs, when photos emerged of him holding a bag containing white powder.
He joined the Cats this season and, after defeating his former side, responded to a comment on his Instagram profile asking whether he had ‘nose beers’ – a common reference to cocaine – to celebrate.
‘Na bro, after the flag maybe tho’, Smith replied before deleting the comment.
AFL chief Andrew Dillon was disappointed but Scott took a different approach.
“It’s not a hanging offence,” he said.
“In the end, I just don’t think we need ultra-conservative people wagging their finger at Bailey.
“Things like warnings and when it extends to penalties just reminds me of the way teachers treat little kids.”
AAP
