Peter Blucher | Footy Nerd Central (18.03.26)

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1:00Waitly on SEM. Our last element on a Wednesday is unashamedly nerdy stats as we dig deep into the numbers in the game and the historic markers, which come upon us most weeks in the AFL. My partner and this is Peter Blucher. Blucher, welcome. Hello, Jared. Alistair Clarkson, 450 games has peaked your interest. And just how rare this is and where he sits in the grand scheme of things. Well, it's a pretty rare thing. It's going to get more or less rare because in the old days you're coaching 12, 14, 16, 18 games a year, and now it's 23 plus final. So it's going to get more common. But there's only been 10 in all the years of AFL 40. Well, AFL 40 is 1897. And it was 1936. That was 40 years before they had the first one. It was John McCale. Another 36 years to Norm Smith in 72. It's been fairly sort of common and consistent since then. And in 85, we had three of them. Barathe was around six then.

2:00And then amazingly, on the same day, would you believe in round 20? Alan Jones and Tom Hapy both coached 450 together. Then it was Parking, Cheedy, Moltaus, Matthews in 208. And they're Clarkson last weekend. They have their icons of the sport, aren't they? Oh, they certainly are. Absolutely unbelievable. Chris got to be the next. He's not too far away. But when you look at him, I haven't done it. I should have done it. The Emily Pimic is between them. They won. They'll be plenty. Plenty. All right. So from 450, how far did they all get? Well, Matthews is the all-time leader. He got to 718s, but I was four clubs. Moltaus. Yeah. Moltaus. And McCale, 713. His story is quite remarkable. I'll get to that in a minute. I guess 6678 Cheedy. 576 June. 522. Haping. 518 Parking. 515 Barathe. 461 Matthews. 452 North Smith. Of course, it was the coach of the strength of all 10th century.

3:02And now Clarkson at 450. The oldest when they got to 450? It's quite interesting. This surprised me a little bit. But Clarkson is the oldest. He's 57 going on 50, going on 58. Eight years older than 49 year old Barathe, who's at the other end of the list. Of course, Barathe did have a period of five years where he was playing coach. So that brought things down a little bit. But it was Barathe in Moltaus 49. Jean's 51. Cheedy 52. McCale 53. Haping 54. Parking 55. Matthews 56. And Smith and Clarkson 57. At the youngest one made to boot. As they started their coaching careers. This is an entirely different story to what we see today. But Alan James played 77 games from age 21 to 25. And was coaching at 27. He was 27. I mean, it's just amazing. Barathe was 28, but he wasn't playing coach.

4:03Yeah. McCale was playing coach for a little while, 29. Moltaus wasn't. He was 30. Cheedy 33. Smith, Haping, Parking, Matthews 34. And Clarkson was the oldest of that group as he said at 36. And it is interesting to look at the current coaches too when they began. I mean, I reckon you could have had, you could have won a plenty of money on a bit. But the youngest coaches of the current crop when they started. And it was Michael Ross and Brad Scott. They were both 33. Of course, Ross was a real fated first in the Brisbane. Chris got with 34. Clarkson and was 36. And McCreald was 36 when he took away with the caretaker coach. At 38. And he's on right. Haping 37. Long me were a Mitchell 39. Lion 40. And now we're getting more into the end of the current day once. Cox was 43. Beverage. Who's a 44? King was 44. When he got close to caretaker coach at Gold Coast 37. Car was 45. King was 47. McCreald was 48 when he started after a long, long apprenticeship. And then the grandfather.

5:04Chris Fagan was just a snappy. 55. And going strong. Going strong. Going strong in his 60s. At the win ratio of those coaches who have got to 450 games. Well, you could have won plenty money on this one too. Because the lowest win loss ratio amongst the whole group is Clarkson at 54%. Which is a long way behind McCale. McCale was 70%. Which is just an extraordinary win ratio. He had 311 wins and eight draws out of 4 and 50 games. So he was 70.4. Hopi, Chooley, Jeanne, Matthews, Park and 59. Brassie 58, Malta 58. And Norm Smith 57.1%. Price and interesting. It was nearly 59% at Hallton. He started at North Melbourne win win in 2023. Has it won two in a row since then? And the win on the weekend gave him a 12.147 record. It's 20.8%.

6:04So I guess that's why he's now at the bottom of the 450 game list. Yep, yep. So he's going from 59% down to 54% in his time at North. Most grand finals. Jock McCale, Lords, they've everyone here up. This is one of not just football's great stories, but World's Sports, great court. The story is he courses Australian football, Hall of Fame, agent coach of the Colingwood team this century. And he coached Colingwood for 38 consecutive years from 1912 to 1949. Now, Wayne Bennett for the closest thing we got to that in Australian sport. He'll be 90 or so when he's finished. If he's going to get to that. So he was extraordinary. He had 12, hopefully, nine Brafian Smith, eight Park and Matthews, Jones and Clark and five, and I'll tell four. And Judy, composing went at the bottom of that list with three. Three grand finals for Sheets. And the flags that they won, this is Clarkson, sort of sits mid. He sits mid-pack with a good bunch of four. Yeah. And Smith, the coach of the same, the century and my car,

7:05about six Park and Hapy, Brafian Matthews and Clarkson four. Sheedy, three, Jones, two. And I was seven years apart. That's in Kildred and Hawthorne. And then multi house surprisingly. Only two in his 450. He won a third one later on at Colingwood, of course. And the head-to-head coaching records. There are four pairs within club 450 that had stirring jules over time. Yeah. And Sheets were like this one. He's involved in two of them on one boat. 47 games. He was 27 to 20 over Maltese. And he was in 41 games. He was 26-1 on 14 over Park. Hapy and Brafian. Hapy had a better Brafian. And McCale and Frank Checker Hughes, who coached Richmond and Melbourne in long time, many, many moons ago, was a 21-1 and 21 split. How many coaches has Clarkson pitted himself against across 450 games? 78, which is low. Multi house did look 123.

8:05Wow. Not Maltese. And it's so different now, because I guess coaches tend to do tender, stay longer in the job. But he's coaching 78 different rivals. But he has a winning record against only four of the current coaches, which surprised me a little bit. He'd like that he's third only one on seven against Ross Lyne. He'd be happy to win on and see us against Brad Scott. He's three zippers against Jose. And he's one nil against Dave King, which probably doesn't count because King was at the goal. But he's 18-18 against Chris Scott. 7-1 on 10 against Harbwick. 5-7 against Bearbridge. 5-5 split against Ross. 3-1 on 6 against Vagan. 1-5 against Dixon Longbure. Even 1-1 against McCwolder. Hasn't beaten Mitchell in four-grows. Hasn't beaten McCray in Fugo's. Cox and McKinley. The phone, of course, hasn't been coached against Josh Carr. So he's got a couple still to tick off. Bluitch awesome work on the coaches have reached 450, the 10 of them. They are greats of the sport.

9:06I'll head back to Nerd Central, mate. That's a good day. Nerdy starts to finish off our Wednesday, Peter Bluitcher. Our coffee catch up. Makers, bistro, Bernace, Angus range is here. Chef's kiss.