IT’S a Monday morning early in 2021, and Shane Mattiske is sitting in the offices of Newcastle Jets with a to-do list of some magnitude.
Appointed executive chairman of the reformed Newcastle Jets just hours before, Mattiske has to re-sign a whole squad, sign a hire agreement for McDonald Jones Stadium and myriad other things, ideally all before the end of the morning. But he also knows that a major decision, one of the biggest a club has to tackle, is looming.
In football terms choosing a coach is the ultimate executive search, with those behind any appointment knowing that they will be answerable in the court of public opinion, and their accountability measured on the league table. Yet for all it sets the tone for so much of how a club will operate and how it will fare, it’s a process most often shrouded in secrecy.
Over a decade and a half, A-League coaches have been appointed in myriad ways – on a whim, through friendship, via Moneyball-style number-crunching, and even self-appointed by those carrying out the recruitment process. Club supporters, though, see only the exit of one coach and the arrival some time later of another, with just media rumours for company in between.
In a bid to understand the process – and the degree to which Australian clubs now try to follow a corporate-style objective search – aleague.com.au was granted unprecedented access to the decision making employed by Newcastle and other clubs in the high-stakes game of Hunt the Manager.
Mattiske was tasked with rebuilding the Jets at speed with the backing of a consortium of other clubs, in the wake of former owner Martin Lee being stripped of the licence by Football Australia.
“We were in something of a unique position, because it wasn’t just a question of finding a coach – we were also thinking through what the strategy for the Jets would be, we talked about what the club means, how we want to play, how we can be fiercely competitive,” Mattiske said.
To expedite that thinking, Mattiske was given access to the blueprint used by Sydney FC to inform the search for a replacement for Graham Arnold in 2018, and which led to the appointment of Steve Corica.
Sydney’s blueprint, designed by CEO Danny Townsend, is prescriptive in the sense of detailing roles for staff and directors, and a timeline, but also poses a series of open-ended questions to explore factors such as candidates’ experience and character through to media savvy and playing style. The answers are marked on a weighted points scale, and Corica’s subsequent delivery of two league titles in two years rather underscores its value.
For Mattiske, though, that framework needed fleshing out with Newcastle-specific criteria. He had already put a panel of advisers together, including veteran coach Ron Smith, former Socceroo Alex Tobin, and Matildas great Julie Dolan, and a checklist emerged including experience, character and football philosophy.
“Most of all, we had to ask how a candidate could fit with the community; we didn’t need a coach with a clipboard distant from the players and the local community,” Mattiske said.
And then, as happens every time an A-League coaching role comes up, the CVs came pouring in via email, Linked In, phone calls and social media.
SOME applications do tend to stand out, especially when they come as a What’s App message. Brisbane Roar CEO David Pourre felt his phone buzz on December 30 2018, with a message from Robbie Fowler – flagging his interest in succeeding John Aloisi, who had resigned two days before.
Fowler was eventually appointed the following April, but not because he was one of the world’s most famous footballers.
Pourre started the process with 165 applications, though many were easy to disregard as speculative or even sent by intermediaries with no obvious link to the actual coach. That list came down to 20, then a shortlist of five, before Fowler was offered the job.
“At the end of that (2017-18) season we went through a process of defining what style of coach we should want, what attributes they should have, and we used an external party to help us,” said Pourre. “Then all of the candidates on the shortlist were given the same 30 questions, and we overlaid some psychological analysis on top of that.
“Robbie was the standout candidate, and when we did our due diligence on him, the feedback from Liverpool’s academy was excellent, and he had come top in his Pro Licence class. We wanted to give him his chance.
“But part of that conversation was also to look beyond Robbie, to have a transition programme in place ready for whenever it might be. We were restructuring our academy to attract the top kids in Queensland, so it made perfect sense to appoint Warren Moon as the head of that given his local NPL experience.
“In that sense the process was always there to promote Warren from within the club, and that’s what happened when we parted company with Robbie (in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic in July last year).”
THE “external party” that Brisbane used was SRI Executive, a global recruitment consultancy that has developed quite an influence in Australian football through its work on the Sydney FC and Brisbane Roar head coach roles and on Bert van Marwijk’s appointment for the Socceroos.
Whereas SRI identify potential candidates in finding a new CEO, in a head coach exercise the role is more to manage the process – and the people, from stakeholders to candidates and their agents.
Even so, the methodical processes they work on require one crucial ingredient which SRI director Jonathan Harris admits can be in short supply when coaches are appointed – time.
“At the start you need to define the project – plan for success, decided on the outcome you want, create the candidate profile, and engage with as many stakeholders as possible to ensure everyone has buy in,” Harris said.
“But in so many coaching appointments, you haven’t got that time. If you’ve lost six on the trot and it’s mid-season, I understand why clubs have to make a really fast decision.”
Sydney, in fact, had months of time in 2018, thanks to knowing five months out that Graham Arnold would be leaving at the end of the season. “Sydney knew they had Steve Corica in place (as assistant coach) wanting to step up, but to their credit, (chairman) Scott Barlow and Danny Townsend decided they had to test the market, because of the size of the club they, just to see what was out there,” said Harris.
“Equally to Steve’s credit, when that was communicated to him, he invested in the process – he gave his presentation, made his case, and genuinely earned his selection as the new head coach.”
IN Newcastle’s case, though, there were effectively two processes running in parallel. “On the one hand, we had gone through the process of identifying more than 25 external candidates, then reducing that to eight using the criteria established by the panel, and interviewing them,” said Mattiske.
“But in the meantime we had Craig actually doing the job as interim coach, and we could apply the same criteria to him.”
Most importantly for Deans, three initial (and relatively unlucky) defeats were followed by two wins and a draw. His runs were accumulating on the board. “It’s an unusual decision, an internal figure showing what they can do while you’re running this external process,” Mattiske said. “But it meant that as we moved into deep interviews with four candidates from outside, we could do the same with Craig, to the point we felt comfortable giving him the job.”
It shows how things have changed, since the days when many clubs effectively outsourced one of their biggest decisions. In 2004, the well-regarded agent, Lou Sticca, was tasked by Sydney FC with finding players and coaches for its debut season.
Sticca flew to Europe, interviewed candidates including Harry Redknapp and Roy Hodgson, before finally putting former German star Pierre Littbarski forward. “To me, the choice of a manager reflects a club’s vision,” Sticca says now. “Walter Bugno, the first chairman of Sydney wanted an overseas coach and wanted to make something of a statement. We did that, and Pierre won the league.”
Ange Postecoglou likes to tell the story of when he was out of work in 2009, bumping into the then head of the A-League Archie Fraser after watching a game, and asking to be considered for any roles that came up. The following day Frank Farina left Brisbane Roar, and Postecoglou was recommended for the job by Fraser, going on to become arguably Australia’s most successful coach.
What Postecoglou didn’t realise at the time was that FFA’s then technical director, Han Berger, was lobbying furiously for A-League jobs to go to coaches with the highest qualifications. That’s why Postecoglou, as one of a tiny handful then to hold the Pro-Licence qualification, was already on Fraser’s radar, though the coincidence of the meeting helped.
But it’s the random factor that clubs are trying more than ever to take out of the equation. “It’s not an easy decision to make,” said Mattiske. “But if you make a decision that’s subjective, or knee jerk, or on a gut feel, you’ll always doubt yourself.
“We have a high level of confidence that we’ve made the right decision.”
