Former Essendon player Adam Cooney has weighed in on the findings of the club’s internal review.
Among the four big takeaways, club president Paul Brasher spoke of senior coach Ben Rutten and how his leadership will differ from outgoing coach John Worsfold’s.
“The second would be around standards and accountabilities. If you look at what their (John Worsfold and Ben Rutten) particular styles are, there’s a spectrum that has player empowerment at one end and absolute rigid standards and accountability at the other. John’s a bit more the empowerment end whereas Ben’s more towards the standards end. We think moving forward we need much clearer standards of accountability,” Brasher said.
Cooney hopes the Bombers find the balance in the coaching styles in 2021.
“There’s got to be a balance I think. You’ve got to give a player enough responsibility to be able to make the right decisions, but then you’ve got to have enough control to be able to monitor the situation all of the time,” Cooney told SEN SA Breakfast.
“Players want to feel like they’re being given the responsibility to do it, but then the senior coach at the end of the day should have full control over everything that is happening and know what every player is up to, certainly throughout the day and being professional enough away from the footy club.”
Cooney said Worsfold’s unique style of coaching and leadership gave a lot of freedom to players.
“John Worsfold was a coach who gave a lot of scope for the players to make their own decisions,” he said.
“When I was there, he just expected that you would do everything you possibly could to be better and you could be a self-motivator.
“That’s how he coached, he gave you the onus to do everything. If you didn’t do it, you would find yourself out of the side pretty quickly.
“Maybe – players didn’t take advantage of it, but if the coach doesn’t have full control over everything, then you can just lose one or two per cent here and there and that can add up in this industry.”