JLC 
Joined: 30 May 2000
Location: Keysborough still representing Hot Pies
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| Post subject: HOW TIMES HAVE CHANGED |  |
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A reversal of fortune
By Rohan Connolly
February 22 2003
Dennis Pagan is serious about taking on the challenge down at Carlton.
Just over three years ago, those famous old rivals, Collingwood and Carlton, met in a game for no formal stakes, but loaded with symbolism nonetheless.
It was the "Match of the Millennium", played on New Year's Eve, 1999, the dawn of a new era in many ways for Collingwood, the one-time giant reduced to mediocrity.
The recently-installed Eddie McGuire-led regime had delivered a huge coup in coach Mick Malthouse. The club's first official outing under his stewardship was to announce to the football world that at least the Pies would not be pushed around any more.
Perhaps nothing better illustrates the tenuous nature of success in the latter-day AFL even for established giants, than the fact that barely three years into that new era, we're confronted with a similar storyline - incredibly, however, with the roles having been well and truly reversed.
Playing the heavyweight champions at Telstra Dome today are the Magpies, fresh from a season which defied all expectations and odds and took them within 10 points of a premiership.
And the fallen foe newly-refurbished after bitter internal struggle is Carlton - if anything, in worse shape than were the Woods when Malthouse got his hands on them at the end of 1999.
Playing the Malthouse role three years on is Denis Pagan (also with two flags to his name), who will obviously want to avoid the same sort of rude introduction Malthouse received when Carlton went on a shooting spree in his ill-feted debut in the Collingwood box that New Year's Eve.
Playing the lead role for the Blues that evening with an even dozen goals was an emerging star called Brendan Fevola, these days battling simply to remain an AFL footballer.
But it is territory Pagan knows well. When he saddled up for his first match in charge of North Melbourne in 1993, the Roos were in absolute disrepair, having been humiliated by 147 points against Adelaide in a pre-season game, and having sacked coach Wayne Schimmelbusch as a consequence.
Pagan at least got a competitive performance from his side as it played grand finalist Geelong in Tatura. The Roos would then go on to win nine of their first 11 home and away games and reach their first finals series since 1987, helped, of course, by a group of young stars who had been carefully groomed and developed for years.
Even without that luxury at Carlton, there's enough pundits out there fully expecting a repeat, such is the strength now of Pagan's reputation. It shapes as perhaps the ultimate test of the age-old question about players making the coach or vice-versa. And you can almost see the scent in the coach's nostrils.
"I'm really excited, especially with what's gone on," Pagan says. "A lot of people said I was a dill to do what I did, but I'm really excited by the challenge. I've got to earn the respect of everyone at Carlton, most importantly the playing staff, and I'm really looking forward to it. Whatever it is that makes you want to be involved as a coach is certainly going to be there on Sunday."
As unlikely as it seemed when he first announced his move from Arden Street to Optus Oval, Pagan has walked into a club with its back almost as firmly against the walls as for a good decade appeared the Roos. And it's a comfortable fit.
"I'd love to be on auto-pilot and just sit back and have every thing fall into place, but it hasn't been like that for a long time now and it doesn't make any difference to me."
Would he be as good a coach in those circumstances? "You're probably right," he ponders. "We faced adversity head-on a lot of times in recent years. It makes you a better person, a better coach - I'd hope my people management skills have been enhanced by it all."
Pagan remains coy about the extent of the changes to the Blues we will witness this afternoon. Anthony Koutoufides, the explosive "shock trooper" reduced to a virtual spectator the past two seasons and whose re-emergence will be critical to any Carlton revival, will, says the coach "play down back, up forward and on the ball at some stage".
With Lance Whitnall, the prodigiously-talented but frustrating talent, it's going to be horses for courses, says Pagan.
"He'll probably play half- forward, but maybe half- back; we've got to be realistic enough to think that's going happen at times."
Problem child Fevola, meanwhile, has "worked very hard to get himself in the best condition physically he's been. We've just got to take it as we see it with him; he's done everything we've asked."
The Blues will today be without first choice key defenders Glenn Manton and Mick Martyn in the very area they appear most vulnerable. Pagan doesn't want to publicly nominate replacements until his team runs out on to the ground. But there's no problems talking about the sort of football his Carlton will play; the same as did Pagan's Roos, and his junior teams before that.
"Yeah, we'll play an inside, efficient, collision corridor game of foot ball," he declares. "I make no apologies for being a strategy coach, I don't reckon little tricks are going to win you games of football in September. We've got some very hard players here. I'm pleased with what I've got, and we'll go with that and hopefully put our best foot forward."
Just how far that will take Carlton in 2003 is of course a matter of conjecture. The sceptics point to an ageing band of stars, a surplus of "honest toilers", lack of leg speed and a group of kids on whom the jury is still very much out. In response, Pagan rattles off a list of 2002 absentees, the details of which underline just how hard he must have pondered the same question.
"Have a look at the people who missed games last year - Kouta 19, Darren Hulme 19, Matty Allan 18, Glenn Manton 13, Brett Ratten 10, Lance Whitnall eight - and have a look at the young boys given opportunities as a result. How invaluable are the 18 games Simon Wiggins played, the 17 of Luke Livingston, 11 for Bret Thornton, or the games played by Trent Sporn, Blake Campbell and Justin Davies? It's a pretty handy mix alone, before Denis Pagan got there."
Ever-cautious however, Pagan isn't about to set any grandiose targets for Carlton's new beginning. "The thing you've got to be careful of is that you don't start talking the talk, what you want to do is walk the talk, then perhaps you can talk about it. We'll have a few injuries on the weekend like everybody will, but we'll have a competitive side, and I'd rather people make their assessments after that.
"We've put a process in place. That's what we want the players to be judged on, and if we get that process right, who knows what's around the corner?"
Whatever lays in wait, it couldn't be worse than the last corner turned. In fact, for Carlton supporters desperate for an end to last season's humiliation, just avoiding the sort of hiding the Magpies copped when they unveiled their new skin to the football world three years ago would be a good start.
Its not arrogance if you can back it up
Fate is what you are given, Destiny is what you do with it
Essendon 2000 premiers
2001 runners up
2002 fifth
2003 ????
The slide continues |
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