Not all great players make great coaches. But as a player with Hawthorn, Matthews was an unusual superstar. He was not tall, blond and handsome and thereby sought after by the paparazzi or preferred by those who vote for the Brownlow Medal. Rather, he was a stocky, swarthy fellow who found his way to among the greats of the his club – eight Hawthorn best and fairest medals – and his game through a grim and ruthless determination that left others either in awe or in pain. Put anything between Leigh and his goals, whether it was half a dozen defenders or a brick wall, and he would have no hesitation in running through any, or all, of them.
As a player, he earned the nickname Lethal and he now coaches the same way - lethally.At Brisbane he has taken a good list and improved on it by shaping the side in his own image. There is not one of the 22 players who will run out in the combined Brisbane/Fitzroy colours tomorrow who won’t go through a brick wall for the club, let alone any Collingwood footballer who gets in the way.
There’s another side to ruthlessness in football. It’s being able to separate the personal from the professional. All the time, coaches have to make decision that will hurt their players. It’s never easy, but some coaches do it better then others. Leigh is always prepared to make the hard decisions for the overall benefit of the club. He would have learned that from his Hawthorn days where Allan Jeans would ring a player to let him know he was out of the side in the interests of “team balance”.
In that respect, Matthews is very much the same as Mick Malthouse. When Mick arrived at Collingwood, he knew full well there were problems with the playing list. He couldn’t simply improve the players, he had to change a lot of them. There were footballers who had been kept at Collingwood for sentimental reasons, there were players who had been recruited who weren’t good enough for AFL. They tried, they trained as hard as anyone else at the club, but they were never going to make it at the elite level, let alone win premierships. Malthouse has gone through his list and weeded and replanted it as expertly as Peter Cundall does his backyard.
In 2002, he has produced a blooming miracle. In quieter moments, even Mick might reflect that he couldn’t have expected Collingwood to be in a grand final yet. But like every little back-pocket who ever thought he could coach, Mick is a doer and doers get things done. Both coaches, too, have been blessed with stable administrations.
Leadership crises were an hourly occurrence at Brisbane before Leigh went there. Now the only people making the headlines are the players and that is how it should be. Eddie McGuire is as confident and determined as Mick Malthouse and that might have caused problems. However, these two men have melded together perfectly. No doubt Eddie has learned an awful lot about football but the mellower Mick you see this days laughing with the media and writing newspaper columns has no doubt been influenced greatly by his president.
Strategically, Matthews and Malthouse understand football at a depth achieved by few others. A day in the coaching box against either provides tests for even the most experienced. Reading the play in football is just like captaining the Australian cricket team. To do it successfully, you always have to be three or four overs ahead of the play.So at the same time, you have to be able to react to what’s happening right now, but have a full appreciation of what that event will mean in the next five minutes, or the next quarter.
Both Malthouse and Matthews have that sort of split vision - Matthews because it came too him naturally as a player, Malthouse because back-pockets have to learn it if they are going to survive in a game of superstars and gifted athletes. Probably because of the different types of player they were, they coach differently. Matthews’ style is the more attacking, with Brisbane players running on to long hand-balls, while the Malthouse approach is more defensive.
If Mick had gone to Brisbane, he would have trained them to play his way and if Leigh had gone to Collingwood, he would have made them into a more attacking side. Mentally, both men are so tough, so single-minded and so resilient they can shape any club the way they want to shape it.
So as well as a meeting of the old and the new - the suburban traditions of Collingwood and the brave, sun-drenched world of Brisbane - this grand final is a meeting of two minds, or more accurately, two giant steel traps.
Nothing will be missed in the lead-up to the grand final. Nothing, not even the Brownlow Medal presentation or an extended AFL tribunal hearing, will be allowed to interfere with preparation for the ultimate goal.
At the final siren however, there will be a final separation between the two men, at least for 2002. One will have three premierships as a coach and one won’t.
