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Roos a star with feet firmly planted on the ground
05 June 2004___Herald Sun
PAUL Roos was born to be a star, and not just because he came from a club called Beverley Hills.
Round 11 photos
Modest: "I'm no more important than the footballs or the goalposts," says Paul Roos.
He was only 18 in the first of his 17 seasons at AFL level, which ended up tallying more than 400 games for Fitzroy, Sydney, Victoria and Australia.
Given the extraordinary spring in his young legs, the athleticism that carried him to his mid-30s, his canny reading of the play, his nous, an illustrious career was no surprise.
What has been surprising to many has been the seamless transition from playing to coaching.
Roos as an assistant coach was one thing, Roosy as the boss something else again. Yet, midway through his second full season as Sydney coach, he looks as much a part of the coach's box as Matthews, Sheedy, Pagan and Malthouse.
His 44th game last weekend not only produced a win over the Bulldogs, but took his total of premiership matches as player-coach to 400. That's some achievement for a man of 40 years of age.
Roos admitted this week a change in coaching culture during the past five to 10 years had accommodated his personality.
"A lot of the coaches are calmer, more calculated these days," he said. "Traditionally, coaches were seen as guys who were volatile, emotional. That's changed. I think it's helped people with my personality. Probably Chris Connolly, too."
He said Leigh Matthews illustrated the change in his different guises at Collingwood (1986-95) and Brisbane (1999-2004).
There are times when "Lethal" looks like the Sphinx in the Brisbane box. While he wasn't quite Ken Judge or Tony Jewell at Collingwood, he was far more animated than he is now.
Although it is somewhat easier to be relaxed coaching Brisbane.
Roos always has looked in control, on and off the field. There's always been "other things" in his life.
Things like extended holidays in the United States between seasons, a promising flirtation with the media, via Channel_7 and Triple M, and other sporting interests such as basketball.
He deals in realities. When Brownlow medallist Adam Goodes hit the deck in the opening minute of the West Coast-Sydney game in Round 8, clutching his knee, his immediate response was: "Well, he's out for six; we'll worry about it on Monday."
Logical, yes, but easier said than done. As it happened, Goodes played the following week.
Kevin Sheedy referred to him as The Sundance Kid recently after a Roos throwaway line became a headline.
"The best $20,000 Hirdy ever spent," Roos quipped at the end of a media conference in Sydney, a couple of days after the Swans were on the wrong end of several poor umpiring decisions against Essendon.
It was a reference to the storm created by James Hird in his stinging criticism of Scott McLaren on The Footy Show.
After his comment made headlines, The Sundance Kid jumped on to the phone to Sheedy to explain the context and assure him the Bombers deserved their win.
"There's nothing worse, when you pick up the paper on a Monday, and the opposition coach that's lost blames someone else, or has some excuse," Roos explained.
He wanted to tell Sheedy he believed Essendon had been the better team.
"I was being interviewed out here (SCG). At the start of the interview, I was asked about the umpires, I said `Look, the game's finished. We've lost the game, let's forget about it; we've moved on'.
"In the end, the bloke (reporter) basically threw the hand-grenade at the end and I stepped on it." He was "staggered" by the fallout.
A week ago, Roos sent two assistants to Melbourne to watch St_Kilda play Carlton as part of the preparation for tomorrow's Sydney-St Kilda engagement.
The Saints won by 108 points; the assistants, according to Roos midweek, were still "in therapy".
That's him: natural, relaxed, honest, refreshing.
Ruckman Jason Ball botched a chance to win the opening round clash with Brisbane at the Gabba when he missed a set shot at goal from 35m on the siren.
The big bloke took it hard; the coach told him not to whip himself. "I just told him to forget it. `I've moved on, you move on'," he said immediately after the game.
More recently, Roos learned Jude Bolton had contacted Geelong assistant coach and former teammate Daryn Cresswell about his on-field struggle.
"I think that's fine," Roos said. "I haven't bothered to speak to him about it. It just shows he's prepared to leave no stone unturned to be a good player."
Roos isn't even curious.
"I suppose I'm reasonably relaxed about some things that other coaches might think are strange."
He remains in weekly contact with two of his enduring mates from Fitzroy, Brisbane full-forward Alastair Lynch and Lions assistant coach John Blakey.
"The little games outside the football don't worry me. I think the coaches sometimes become too much of a focus.
"At some stage, I'll get sacked or I'll leave. That's as sure as paying taxes. I'm here as a resource. That's all I am. I think we can get the balance wrong at times.
"I'm no more important in a sense than the footballs they use or the goalposts. All we are as a coaching group is people trying to get the maximum out of them for them.
"Obviously, there's a bigger picture, the club and all those sort of things, but primarily, the players have to look at it (as) `OK, I might have 10 years, what am I going to get out of my 10 years?'
"In the last three or four weeks, I've been telling the blokes, `Don't do it because you reckon I'm a good bloke, or you reckon Johnny Longmire might have you over for dinner, or you like Rossy Lyon'.
"_`You have to want to achieve in football because you're not in it for that long'. I think that's what drives the great players. The responsibility on the coach is to do the preparation, to put the game plan in place, to make the moves on the weekend.
"The Hawthorn game was probably the classic example. With three minutes to go, you're two points down. There's nothing that I can do to influence that game of footy.
"It becomes, `What has Roosy told me during the week and what did we train for back in November to January?'
"If you believe you've got a good system ? as I think we all do here, and the players do ? the players either buy into it or don't buy into it.
"If they don't buy into it, it doesn't matter how good your system is.
"You can do all your analysing, you can talk about long kicks, short kicks, contested marks, they're all relevant, but at the end of the day, you look at that Hawthorn game, if (Shane) Crawford kicks that goal, they win.
"When we're losing, you almost realise how helpless you are at times."
Roos said his list was a working-class team, light on for top-end talent, despite Goodes, Barry Hall, Paul Williams and company.
"In a sense it is harder for our guys to win games of footy than it is for Brisbane Lions or Port (Adelaide) or Essendon. Just because of the top-end talent more than anything else," he said. "We know we're a working-class team. We can win if we have all our guys playing at sixes and sevens.
"We rely on 15 or 16 players. We played absolutely up to our potential last year. That's what champion players are all about, but it's not about one year, it's about 10 years.
"We haven't really had any personnel changes so we're pretty clear on how we win and how we lose."
Super Saints were only a matter of time
PAUL Roos is as impressed by St_Kilda as the next person, but not the slightest bit surprised.
"I think everyone expected them to be good," he said. "Otherwise you might as well scrap the draft system."
The only query for him was the timing.
"It was whether you could match the old with the new. At the moment, everything's jelling together.
"(Robert) Harvey's still playing good football, (Fraser) Gehrig's playing good football.
"Maybe at the start of the year, everyone wondered, `Are the young guys a little bit too young and will they be able to overlap that older group'?
"I think we all knew they were going to be good at some stage."
He will see for himself tomorrow afternoon when Sydney hosts the all-conquering Saints.
There's a quiet air of expectation in Sydney. Two wins in a row coupled with the fact Roos is two from two against Grant Thomas have buoyed spirits.
The Swans will try to shut down the free-flowing Saints on the SCG, frustrating them into errors.
"When you're winning, people think you're a free-flowing football team," he says. Not always the case.
"Some of our best passages of play are when we just hold the ball, not giving it up to the opposition.
"I clearly remember them from last year. One was against Brisbane when (Jared) Crouchy kicked that winning goal.
"We worked slowly up the far wing, I think we had three or four short kicks before Crouch kicked a goal from outside 50.
"It can be a little bit misleading. People tend to look at the result and then match your thoughts up with the result."
The concern for the coach is the absence of two or three players so important to the team structure.
Andrew Schauble and Jason Saddington are two of them. Schauble damaged a hamstring on the eve of the premiership season and still hasn't played.
He would be the man for St_Kilda's goalsquare Goliath, Fraser Gehrig, who has kicked 50 goals from 10 games.
With Saddington missing, too, because of a knee injury, the Swans have to use Adam Goodes in defence, although he would be there anyway while he recovers from a posterior cruciate ligament tear.
Perhaps Leo "the Lionheart' Barry will have to fight out of his division yet again.
Barry stands 185cm and weighs 88kg. He would concede 10cm and 13kg to Gehrig, but he is enjoying an excellent season against players of all sizes.
"Schauble has certainly hurt us," says Roos.
"What Schauble does is play on (Matthew) Lloyd and (David) Neitz and (Matthew) Richardson, which frees up Leo Barry.
"I think Leo's had an outstanding season in a different role. He played on Lloyd, kept him to three (goals). There's a bit of a myth about Leo, that he's a free-running half-back flanker, which couldn't be further from the truth.
"His best footy's played when he beats his man then generates from the contest.
"Your structure changes (when you've got injuries). You've got to think differently. If you're Richmond, and you've got Richardson and (Greg) Stafford, you're playing different footy.
"It just shows how everything contributes to you winning a game of footy.
"Goodesy is a great example. We were a different team (with him in defence). He's a bigger body; he locks someone down.
"I thought our balance on the weekend was where it was at last year."
Roos said his men needed to be flexible and capable of making their own decisions tomorrow.
"One of the things that's made Brisbane such a good team is that they're almost impossible to scout. You really don't get a handle on how they play.
"If you pick them up quickly, they'll kick it long to (Alastair) Lynch; if you flood back, they'll hit targets.
"There's not a lot of team rules up there; there's four or five team rules and most of it is reliant on blokes making the right decisions.
"I think in any system, you have your guidelines and we know how we want to play but you're always relying on guys to make the right decisions."
Roos's Swans have a habit of making the right decisions against the Lions; tomorrow will tell us how they measure up against the new Brisbane.
05 June 2004___Herald Sun
PAUL Roos was born to be a star, and not just because he came from a club called Beverley Hills.
Round 11 photos
Modest: "I'm no more important than the footballs or the goalposts," says Paul Roos.
He was only 18 in the first of his 17 seasons at AFL level, which ended up tallying more than 400 games for Fitzroy, Sydney, Victoria and Australia.
Given the extraordinary spring in his young legs, the athleticism that carried him to his mid-30s, his canny reading of the play, his nous, an illustrious career was no surprise.
What has been surprising to many has been the seamless transition from playing to coaching.
Roos as an assistant coach was one thing, Roosy as the boss something else again. Yet, midway through his second full season as Sydney coach, he looks as much a part of the coach's box as Matthews, Sheedy, Pagan and Malthouse.
His 44th game last weekend not only produced a win over the Bulldogs, but took his total of premiership matches as player-coach to 400. That's some achievement for a man of 40 years of age.
Roos admitted this week a change in coaching culture during the past five to 10 years had accommodated his personality.
"A lot of the coaches are calmer, more calculated these days," he said. "Traditionally, coaches were seen as guys who were volatile, emotional. That's changed. I think it's helped people with my personality. Probably Chris Connolly, too."
He said Leigh Matthews illustrated the change in his different guises at Collingwood (1986-95) and Brisbane (1999-2004).
There are times when "Lethal" looks like the Sphinx in the Brisbane box. While he wasn't quite Ken Judge or Tony Jewell at Collingwood, he was far more animated than he is now.
Although it is somewhat easier to be relaxed coaching Brisbane.
Roos always has looked in control, on and off the field. There's always been "other things" in his life.
Things like extended holidays in the United States between seasons, a promising flirtation with the media, via Channel_7 and Triple M, and other sporting interests such as basketball.
He deals in realities. When Brownlow medallist Adam Goodes hit the deck in the opening minute of the West Coast-Sydney game in Round 8, clutching his knee, his immediate response was: "Well, he's out for six; we'll worry about it on Monday."
Logical, yes, but easier said than done. As it happened, Goodes played the following week.
Kevin Sheedy referred to him as The Sundance Kid recently after a Roos throwaway line became a headline.
"The best $20,000 Hirdy ever spent," Roos quipped at the end of a media conference in Sydney, a couple of days after the Swans were on the wrong end of several poor umpiring decisions against Essendon.
It was a reference to the storm created by James Hird in his stinging criticism of Scott McLaren on The Footy Show.
After his comment made headlines, The Sundance Kid jumped on to the phone to Sheedy to explain the context and assure him the Bombers deserved their win.
"There's nothing worse, when you pick up the paper on a Monday, and the opposition coach that's lost blames someone else, or has some excuse," Roos explained.
He wanted to tell Sheedy he believed Essendon had been the better team.
"I was being interviewed out here (SCG). At the start of the interview, I was asked about the umpires, I said `Look, the game's finished. We've lost the game, let's forget about it; we've moved on'.
"In the end, the bloke (reporter) basically threw the hand-grenade at the end and I stepped on it." He was "staggered" by the fallout.
A week ago, Roos sent two assistants to Melbourne to watch St_Kilda play Carlton as part of the preparation for tomorrow's Sydney-St Kilda engagement.
The Saints won by 108 points; the assistants, according to Roos midweek, were still "in therapy".
That's him: natural, relaxed, honest, refreshing.
Ruckman Jason Ball botched a chance to win the opening round clash with Brisbane at the Gabba when he missed a set shot at goal from 35m on the siren.
The big bloke took it hard; the coach told him not to whip himself. "I just told him to forget it. `I've moved on, you move on'," he said immediately after the game.
More recently, Roos learned Jude Bolton had contacted Geelong assistant coach and former teammate Daryn Cresswell about his on-field struggle.
"I think that's fine," Roos said. "I haven't bothered to speak to him about it. It just shows he's prepared to leave no stone unturned to be a good player."
Roos isn't even curious.
"I suppose I'm reasonably relaxed about some things that other coaches might think are strange."
He remains in weekly contact with two of his enduring mates from Fitzroy, Brisbane full-forward Alastair Lynch and Lions assistant coach John Blakey.
"The little games outside the football don't worry me. I think the coaches sometimes become too much of a focus.
"At some stage, I'll get sacked or I'll leave. That's as sure as paying taxes. I'm here as a resource. That's all I am. I think we can get the balance wrong at times.
"I'm no more important in a sense than the footballs they use or the goalposts. All we are as a coaching group is people trying to get the maximum out of them for them.
"Obviously, there's a bigger picture, the club and all those sort of things, but primarily, the players have to look at it (as) `OK, I might have 10 years, what am I going to get out of my 10 years?'
"In the last three or four weeks, I've been telling the blokes, `Don't do it because you reckon I'm a good bloke, or you reckon Johnny Longmire might have you over for dinner, or you like Rossy Lyon'.
"_`You have to want to achieve in football because you're not in it for that long'. I think that's what drives the great players. The responsibility on the coach is to do the preparation, to put the game plan in place, to make the moves on the weekend.
"The Hawthorn game was probably the classic example. With three minutes to go, you're two points down. There's nothing that I can do to influence that game of footy.
"It becomes, `What has Roosy told me during the week and what did we train for back in November to January?'
"If you believe you've got a good system ? as I think we all do here, and the players do ? the players either buy into it or don't buy into it.
"If they don't buy into it, it doesn't matter how good your system is.
"You can do all your analysing, you can talk about long kicks, short kicks, contested marks, they're all relevant, but at the end of the day, you look at that Hawthorn game, if (Shane) Crawford kicks that goal, they win.
"When we're losing, you almost realise how helpless you are at times."
Roos said his list was a working-class team, light on for top-end talent, despite Goodes, Barry Hall, Paul Williams and company.
"In a sense it is harder for our guys to win games of footy than it is for Brisbane Lions or Port (Adelaide) or Essendon. Just because of the top-end talent more than anything else," he said. "We know we're a working-class team. We can win if we have all our guys playing at sixes and sevens.
"We rely on 15 or 16 players. We played absolutely up to our potential last year. That's what champion players are all about, but it's not about one year, it's about 10 years.
"We haven't really had any personnel changes so we're pretty clear on how we win and how we lose."
Super Saints were only a matter of time
PAUL Roos is as impressed by St_Kilda as the next person, but not the slightest bit surprised.
"I think everyone expected them to be good," he said. "Otherwise you might as well scrap the draft system."
The only query for him was the timing.
"It was whether you could match the old with the new. At the moment, everything's jelling together.
"(Robert) Harvey's still playing good football, (Fraser) Gehrig's playing good football.
"Maybe at the start of the year, everyone wondered, `Are the young guys a little bit too young and will they be able to overlap that older group'?
"I think we all knew they were going to be good at some stage."
He will see for himself tomorrow afternoon when Sydney hosts the all-conquering Saints.
There's a quiet air of expectation in Sydney. Two wins in a row coupled with the fact Roos is two from two against Grant Thomas have buoyed spirits.
The Swans will try to shut down the free-flowing Saints on the SCG, frustrating them into errors.
"When you're winning, people think you're a free-flowing football team," he says. Not always the case.
"Some of our best passages of play are when we just hold the ball, not giving it up to the opposition.
"I clearly remember them from last year. One was against Brisbane when (Jared) Crouchy kicked that winning goal.
"We worked slowly up the far wing, I think we had three or four short kicks before Crouch kicked a goal from outside 50.
"It can be a little bit misleading. People tend to look at the result and then match your thoughts up with the result."
The concern for the coach is the absence of two or three players so important to the team structure.
Andrew Schauble and Jason Saddington are two of them. Schauble damaged a hamstring on the eve of the premiership season and still hasn't played.
He would be the man for St_Kilda's goalsquare Goliath, Fraser Gehrig, who has kicked 50 goals from 10 games.
With Saddington missing, too, because of a knee injury, the Swans have to use Adam Goodes in defence, although he would be there anyway while he recovers from a posterior cruciate ligament tear.
Perhaps Leo "the Lionheart' Barry will have to fight out of his division yet again.
Barry stands 185cm and weighs 88kg. He would concede 10cm and 13kg to Gehrig, but he is enjoying an excellent season against players of all sizes.
"Schauble has certainly hurt us," says Roos.
"What Schauble does is play on (Matthew) Lloyd and (David) Neitz and (Matthew) Richardson, which frees up Leo Barry.
"I think Leo's had an outstanding season in a different role. He played on Lloyd, kept him to three (goals). There's a bit of a myth about Leo, that he's a free-running half-back flanker, which couldn't be further from the truth.
"His best footy's played when he beats his man then generates from the contest.
"Your structure changes (when you've got injuries). You've got to think differently. If you're Richmond, and you've got Richardson and (Greg) Stafford, you're playing different footy.
"It just shows how everything contributes to you winning a game of footy.
"Goodesy is a great example. We were a different team (with him in defence). He's a bigger body; he locks someone down.
"I thought our balance on the weekend was where it was at last year."
Roos said his men needed to be flexible and capable of making their own decisions tomorrow.
"One of the things that's made Brisbane such a good team is that they're almost impossible to scout. You really don't get a handle on how they play.
"If you pick them up quickly, they'll kick it long to (Alastair) Lynch; if you flood back, they'll hit targets.
"There's not a lot of team rules up there; there's four or five team rules and most of it is reliant on blokes making the right decisions.
"I think in any system, you have your guidelines and we know how we want to play but you're always relying on guys to make the right decisions."
Roos's Swans have a habit of making the right decisions against the Lions; tomorrow will tell us how they measure up against the new Brisbane.
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