HS - Luke Beveridge details the 10 key moments that produced a fairytale premiership win, GLENN McFARLANE Exclusive

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Premiership coach Luke Beveridge. Picture: Getty Images

HS - Luke Beveridge details the 10 key moments that produced a fairytale premiership win, GLENN McFARLANE Exclusive
October 2, 2016 8:49pm

SIX hundred and eighty seven days ... that’s how long it took Western Bulldogs coach Luke Beveridge to end one of the game’s longest premiership droughts.

Beveridge spoke exclusively to the Herald Sun’s GLENN McFARLANE about 10 moments that helped secured the fairytale success.

1 THE APPOINTMENT

Beveridge had committed to joining St Kilda as director of coaching and to a family holiday in the US after the 2014 season. Then a phone call from Luke Darcy about the Bulldogs’ senior coaching post altered everything.

“Darc rang me the day before we left for overseas, and I said ‘the timing’s not great’. But (then chief executive) Simon Garlick called me a week later when we were in San Diego. I had a chat to (wife) Dana, and we committed. We came back four or five days early. I could tell from ‘Garlo’s’ messaging that I was a big chance if I came back.

“They still interviewed five or six coaches, so I still had to present really well.

“I met some of the players early. When a boss comes in and talks to you about what the future looks like, you want to give a positive message. I was trying to do that and help us look to the future and forget what had happened, so we could move on.

“As you know, it has definitely moved on quickly.


“I suppose in my wildest dreams, I thought about it (winning a flag within two years). We would have been 1000-1. But that’s OK.

“You have got no hope if your players are not prepared to get out of their comfort zone and explore discomfort. If you look at this year, and how many close games we won, in the end that steeled them for the final series to hang in there when things were tight.”

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Western Bulldogs announce Luke Beveridge as their new senior coach. Picture: David Caird.

2 CREATING NEW ROLES FOR VETERANS

Beveridge sat down with the club veterans, some of whom looked to be on the outer, and told them about an exciting new future … one that included them.

“We knew we had six really experienced players — Brett Goodes, Liam Picken, Will Minson, ‘Moz’ (Dale Morris), ‘Boydy’ (Matthew Boyd) and Bob (Murphy) — and we saw them as important to our future.

“We had a chat and I said to them it was my intention for them to play for as long as they could at the club because we needed to make sure they could bridge the players into a culturally positive environment. They were the positives for our club. Fortunately, the boys we talked about are of great character.”

3 THE EVOLUTION OF THE GAME PLAN

Changing a game style can take time, and the coach hoped for immediate results to give his young charges confidence.

“The players embraced it. They saw some early dividends. I think that NAB game against the Pies (in 2015), when we played really well, was the point where they started to think it could work. With all change management, you need some early results to get more buy-in. They trained hard over the pre-season, but when they saw some results, I thought ‘OK, we’re in’.”


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From his first day in the job, Luke Beveridge wanted to work with the club’s senior players. Picture: Michael Klein

4 A CLOSE ENCOUNTER WITH THE CUP, AUGUST 2015

The Bulldogs were flat after a flogging from West Coast in Round 21 last year. But as they arrived at Perth Airport, Beveridge spotted the 2015 premiership cup. He called his players and staff in to visualise what it would mean to hold it aloft.

“We are a week-to-week side, as you know, and we didn’t really want to talk about the cup because you had no right to talk about. You hadn’t earned that. But just through circumstance, they had the premiership cup in the lounge.

“We could see the potential in this group, and I thought it was just a good opportunity to just look at it and say that is really what we are after. That is what we are after, because we needed another one in the cabinet.

“On reflection, it is a nice thing to look back on.

“There is something about the (premiership) cup … Whoever grabs that cup … that is blood, sweat and tears.

“Today we can sit back and the cup will be in our presence. I am fortunate enough to have had some exposure to it, and I have seen what it has done to people — getting that Holy Grail in your hands.

“There is something about this cup that makes people feel like they have almost an out-of-body experience.”

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Luke Beveridge and his players had a chance encounter with the premiership cup in August last year. It wouldn’t be their last.

5 THE LESSONS FROM THE FINALS LOSS TO ADELAIDE LAST YEAR

The Bulldogs lost last year’s elimination final to Adelaide by seven points.

“There were some big moments in the game, but we didn’t dwell on those too much. I think we looked at about 85 bits of footage from the game on both sides of the ball. We needed to make sure everyone was aware of what happened.

“Of these 80-odd instances, if we get four or five right, we win the game.

“We went into this year trying to improve all that, but all through the year the same things kept happening with our offensive side. Our team defence became really stable. But our offensive game never got to the point where we were satisfied.

“You have just got to continue to train and teach and coach all the things that will give you the chance to hit the scoreboard, and hope the players can pull it off. In the end, they have. (AFL chairman) Mike Fitzpatrick said to me (after the Grand Final) ‘I don’t know how you score your goals, but congratulations’.

“It was an interesting comment because we do manufacture them (goals) in very different ways.”

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The Bulldogs used their elimination final loss last year as a learning experience. Picture: Michael Klein

6 CREATING A HANDBALL CLUB IN THE 2016 PRE-SEASON

The coach wanted an emphasis on fast handball and rapid-fire execution. So he and his staff formed a handball club in the pre-season.

“We weren’t great (in that area), we were OK, but the ball handling and execution was an area we wanted to improve.

“We had worked on it since day one, but we took it to a different level from the start of the pre-season and again through the season.

“It is one part of our program that remained constant. You don’t have to be going 100 miles an hour to pull it off. But our coaches, Jamie Maddocks, and Jordan Russell, the guys who have been overseeing it, have done a great job.”

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The creation of a handball club made the Dogs one of the slickest teams in the AFL. Picture: Getty Images

7 COPING WITH INJURIES

It started with Tom Liberatore’s knee in the 2015 pre-season. Then, there was the heartache of Bob Murphy’s knee in Round 3 this year. And, in Rounds 18-19, the club lost Mitch Wallis (broken leg) and Jack Redpath (knee) for the season, and, for a time, Liberatore (ankle) and Jack Macrae (hamstring).

“Our medical staff confront the full range of the physical and emotional turmoil.

“They have had an amazing, tumultuous year and they have held it together well, whereas as coaches we have to make sure we can continue on.

“The care and affection for our players is always there, but you have to have a sort of systematic approach to the game, quickly move on and work out who is the next player to come in.

“There was the incident with Bob and his knee, then there was the night that Mitch Wallis and Jack Redpath were injured. We walked into the rooms and Mitch was on the trolley and in agony.

“We went into the coaches’ rooms and shut the door because we needed to talk about things.

“But we could hear Mitch, and they were trying to move him but couldn’t comfort him. That had an effect on our players. It was like he had been in a road accident.

“After the St Kilda game, we needed to pull it together, and our players had in emphatic fashion. Right at that point of the (Geelong) game when we felt like we were coming over the top of them, we lost (Liberatore and Macrae). It took us a bit to get back up again, but we did.”

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The Bulldogs refused to let Robert Murphy’s knee injury derail their season. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

8 THE ABILITY TO MAKE HARD DECISIONS

Beveridge is a players’ coach, but knows he has to make hard decisions.

The decisions to drop Jake Stringer before the finals, to suspend Tom Boyd and Zaine Cordy after an off-field incident, and, hardest of all, the decision to leave players out of the Grand Final team had to be made.

“The individual messaging is really hard, but the mandate is to pick our best 22 based on performance and our players’ health. If you look at it like that, you don’t get clouded by personal connections or outside noise.

“If a player hasn’t been contributing enough for a period of time, he can’t stay in the side. It doesn’t matter who they are.

“And when it comes to taking a player into a final with a cloud over them, I have been involved with a side or two who has picked one or two boys who were right on the edge. We didn’t want to be that team.

“We got to the point of the year where we had the opportunity to pick 22 healthy and fit players, and we didn’t want to compromise that.”

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The decision to drop Jake Stringer was the right one for the Dogs. Picture: Getty Images

9 CHANGES AFTER THE ROUND 23 LOSS TO FREMANTLE

The defeat had people questioning if the Bulldogs could win a final, let alone a flag. The bye helped, but Beveridge decided to change a few things for the return trip to Perth, with five big inclusions.

“When we played Fremantle, we felt like we got it wrong. We went early and spent a couple of nights over there.

“We changed our approach when we went back. We stayed in a new hotel, not because we had concerns about the other one, but we just wanted to change things. We trained at Trinity College near the WACA (Ground) rather than go to Subi(aco).

“We felt logistically we had it organised better and our players were in a better frame of mind.

“And those players who came back in (Liberatore, Macrae, Easton Wood, Jordan Roughead and Stringer) have established themselves as quality AFL players.”

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One of the best Grand Final moments of al time. Luke Beveridge puts his premiership medal over Bob Murphy's neck. Picture: Wayne Ludbey

10 GRAND FINAL AND HANDING OVER HIS MEDAL TO MURPHY

Beveridge’s grandfather, Jack, played in the first of his premierships as part of the Collingwood Machine on October 1, 1927. Eighty-nine years to the day, Luke won his first AFL flag as a coach. In a touching moment, he handed his Jock McHale Medal to Murphy.

“Bob deserved it more than anyone. I spoke to (AFL football operations manager) Mark Evans after the game and told him I wanted to do it. It was tragic that Bob couldn’t play. He is an absolute star and the way I look at it, Grand Finals are about the players, not the coaches.”

Spot on article.

He is the master of fine tuning ...

“When we played Fremantle, we felt like we got it wrong. We went early and spent a couple of nights over there.
“We changed our approach when we went back. We stayed in a new hotel, not because we had concerns about the other one, but we just wanted to change things. We trained at Trinity College near the WACA (Ground) rather than go to Subi(aco).

“We felt logistically we had it organised better and our players were in a better frame of mind.

This says a lot about his capacity to analyse and act quickly to re-mediate any situation. He must have a good team around him to organise the logistic and made it happen.

Bevo the special one. Excellent article choco.