As a player, I saw two of my coaches get sacked. This is how the Melbourne players will be feeling

First comes the shock. Then a wave of guilt, followed by relief. Before you know it, you’re back on the training track preparing for another game.

I would never compare the sacking of a football coach to any of life’s real tragedies, but I know from experience that there is a grieving process players go through when the axe falls on their coach.

I witnessed two coach sackings in my time at Carlton. Brett Ratten was fired with a game to go in 2012 and Mick Malthouse got the bullet after just one win from the first eight games of 2015. That sense of guilt is my over-riding memory both times.

Ratts went at the end of my second year as a senior player. I was young and still feeling my way in the game and the team, but he was good to me and I was sad to lose him.

But there was also relief because our club had been engulfed in speculation about the coaching role for months. As a youngster, I didn’t get hassled by the TV crews and journalists door-stopping players for comments in the club car park, but I was certainly aware that they disappeared as soon as the decision was made.

The fact Ratts stayed and coached the final game of the season against St Kilda gave him a classy, dignified exit, which was the least he deserved for his service to the club as a player and coach.

Mick’s departure was much more messy and intense, but I was more established in the team at that stage and had a strong relationship with him, so it did sting.

But you don’t get much time to process these seismic changes in the AFL; there’s always another game on the horizon.

After Mick departed, we dusted ourselves off, the TV vans disappeared almost immediately from our car park, we breathed a quick sigh and got back to work, preparing for our match against Sydney.

Melbourne captain Max Gawn – one of my all-time favourite AFL players – made a similar observation last week as his players moved on after the abrupt sacking of their coach, Simon Goodwin.

Looking in from the outside, it appeared the Demons players, especially the senior core, were on good terms with Goodwin. And why wouldn’t they be? He’d been there for 11 years, nine years as senior coach, and lifted them from perennial cellar dwellers to the very top – a drought-breaking premiership in 2021.

That would have made those feelings more acute.

On a day-to-day basis, most AFL players these days are much closer to their assigned line coach or assistant coach than they are to the senior coach.

The best senior coaches are not micromanagers, they see their role as an over-arching one. They put frameworks in place that allow the assistants, and most importantly, the players to take control of the team’s destiny.

But for that to work, the players must have absolute belief and trust in their coach, and so it makes sense for there to be a void and a sense of loss when someone you are so invested in departs suddenly.

Although there was some speculation about Goodwin’s future, the swiftness of his sacking blindsided the footy world. While I’ve no doubt the Demons players would have been shocked when he did get the flick, I hope the senior players were kept in the loop and had some awareness that this decision was possible.

Gawn, Jack Viney and Tom McDonald were at the club before Goodwin arrived and still there when he left. They’d been with him in the dark days, bought in to his vision for the club and saw it realised. They might not have expected the decision to be made last week, but it would be disappointing if those senior on-field leaders were caught completely off guard when Goodwin’s time was called by Melbourne’s board.

The sense of guilt most players feel when their coach gets sacked is a natural reaction, I think. Even if a player privately thinks a change of coach might benefit their career, there’s no escaping the fact that it’s results that cost coaches their jobs, and, ultimately, it’s the players who are responsible for results.

But if you’re going to dwell on results, be sure to take the bad with the good. Melbourne’s players, especially those who were there for the bulk of the Goodwin years, could do a lot worse than reflect on where the club was when he started and where he got them to in 2021.

Zach Tuohy retired from the AFL in 2024 after 288 games for Carlton and Geelong. He played in the 2022 premiership for the Cats.

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