Video killed the spare time: How coaches are navigating world of footage

COUNTRY footy coaching is no longer a part-time job.

Gone are the days of training twice a week, picking a side and simply accepting the side with the better players would find a way to get the job done.

Now, coaches delve into deeper analysis to give their side the best chance of gaining the upper hand.

The Hampden league's investment in video technology which captures each match and makes it publicly available has taken the professionalism up a notch.

Almost every approach is different but there's one common theme - a universal need to keep feedback and analysis short and simple.

Sifting through match footage could be a lonely task. But for Neville Swayn, it's a chance for family bonding.

The Camperdown mentor teams up with wife Natasha to grab statistics from the Magpies' matches as the first point of analysis.

"It's Saturday night, it's all day Sunday, and then emailing your players on their own games as well," Swayn said.

"I reckon you probably need good assistants that can help. It just takes hours and hours to do it.

"I'm lucky in that my wife helps me. We'll go home and I'll yell out the stats from the game and she just punches them in for me."

Swayn uses video comprehensively in review. The Magpies train on Tuesday nights before meeting briefly to review the past Saturday's action and to have look at upcoming opposition.

The third-year coach will break down their closest opponent's best players, ball movement and gameplan and then talk about how his side will train to a plan on Thursday night.

"It's a massive tool for us. The great thing about this year has been that you can watch opposition, who you are going to play next week," he said.

"If you had assistants and the coaches I reckon you could do even more with it. We're just time poor and I reckon every coach would say the same."

Individual feedback also features. Swayn edits clips for players to demonstrate what they're doing well and where they could improve.

"For example, a few weeks ago (Brayden Draffin) came out home and we went over his game with running patterns and that king of thing," Swayn said.

"The individual stuff is the greatest part because you can sit there and go through it because a lot of the time if you're telling a player, it doesn't sink in, but if they can see it physically on the screen, they get it.

"You can overload players. You spend hours doing it but you're probably reviewing with guys for 10 or 15 minutes. You've got to make it short, say 'this is how it is' and then go out and train it."

Adam Dowie, meanwhile, admits self-restraint is a vital skill as a coach in an era of plentiful resources.

The multiple premiership coach, who is currently leading North Warrnambool Eagles, says the wider availability of video has been "a fantastic asset" but also has the potential to become a rabbit hole.

"It probably used to be that you didn't have enough. I remember the days where Kev Coulson did videos and he'd do one game a week," Dowie mused.

"Clubs would be ringing him trying to book him in advance and you'd go around there and get a DVD of your game and maybe of some other teams and you'd access it that way.

"But now it's almost like where do you stop? It's been great, but where do you stop? Where do you draw the line?

"Do you watch your game and then watch your next opponent's game? Do you watch two weeks down the track? I find as a coach it's opened a bit of a can of worms on that because you need to draw the line somewhere."

Dowie said his tendency to overanalyse was easing with experience.

"I feel I'm better than I used to be, in terms of being a control freak," he said.

"I think I've maybe stepped away from it a bit and I'm not trying to overanalyse everything. In saying that, it comes with experience.

"But I know there's a time of the year, which is probably coming up, where you do need to be burning the midnight oil and analysing things pretty in depth."

The former Koroit, Warrnambool and Terang Mortlake mentor admits the availability of video also poses psychological questions.

"You start thinking about how much the opposition are watching," Dowie said.

"You think about structure and stoppage setups and how you work the ball out and where you're moving the ball to. Even things like kick-ins. Are the opposition looking at that?

"You ask yourself whether to change it. You even might get tempted to go 'we've got to keep changing things because the opposition might be looking at that'.

"It could also be a figment of your imagination. Maybe you're changing things you don't need to change. But my initial response was that it's a great coaching and feedback tool. We'll watch edits of our game and the opposition and I'm sure most clubs do the same."

Dowie's biggest learning? Like Swayn, it's about keeping it simple.

"Sometimes you need to keep the meetings short and not overwatch footage. You need that sometimes," he said.

"Your players have access to it and I'd be disappointed if our players, particularly our defenders with certain roles on opponents weren't accessing the footage and watching opposition forwards or mids.

"Our middies should also be looking at how teams get the ball and where they take it out of a stoppage."

Outgoing Hamilton Kangaroos mentor Gerard FitzGerald is among the Hampden league's most experienced and decorated coaches but video is no longer his most valued tool.

The three-time VFL premiership coach, who will relinquish his role at Melville Oval after Saturday's bout with Terang Mortlake, is a long-term user of visuals but has cooled in 2021.

"I've found it of very little value to be honest," FitzGerald said. "It's side-on, it's far too narrow.

"My wish - and we've tried a couple of times at Hamilton when the weather was a bit nicer - was to create our own camera up behind the goals with a wider angle.

"Once you get used to behind the goal vision, you'd never go back to side-on. It was the most important component of my feedback (at VFL level), to get good vision."

FitzGerald said it followed the philosophy of show rather than tell, of which he was a stern believer.

"The majority of people are visual learners. If you can demonstrate visually what you're trying to produce - both the good and the bad - the next step is to go out and train with your drills," he said.

"But you're not going to get far trying to train for something unless the players actually believe it's an issue, either because they haven't absorbed the information themselves or are unable to.

"It's particularly effective if you show it and ask the player to explain what it is."

The veteran tactician said behind-the-goal footage - while not effective for regular viewers - was "the dimension in which the game is played".

"What we see side-on is not what the player sees," FitzGerald said.

"I think the league would be better off putting a camera on each point post at each end.

"But you need to have a clear understanding of what it is for. I'm looking at it from a coaching point of view but I imagine most people aren't."

Three-time Koroit premiership mentor Chris McLaren is trying to keep his focus on the present and has limited himself to a week-by-week approach.

"I made a conscious effort to stick at looking at the vision of the teams you're playing coming up," he said.

"You get to this stage of the year and there's only four other teams to be zoning in on. We had a pretty good look at South (Warrnambool) over the past few weeks because we play them this week.

"If we don't win (this week), we'll play them again next week. You've got to cut yourself off at some point, when you're self-employed and you've got a young family, you've just got other things you need to prioritise sometimes."

Another finals-bound coach - Portland's Jarrod Holt - uses the provided video mainly as a means to prepare his side.

Holt combines a pre-match breakdown with an old-fashioned approach - picking the brains of other coaches.

"They're really good with talking to each other and helping each other out, which is a good thing," he said.

"Every club uses it differently and I probably don't use it as much as other coaches but in terms of passing on heaps of vision to players (we don't do that as much).

"I think it can kind of engulf the players if they get too much of it. We've always been about doing what we want to do. I like to look at opposition from a coaching point of view so I understand what players' strengths are and if you're looking for matchups you can make that call with better judgement."

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