Why was Rick Davies Sacked from Sturt?

[Adelaide Hawk]

IIRC, South didn't do too bad under Davies in '85, winning eight games after a horrible start to finish eighth.

Downhill fast from there...

Graham Cornes took South to 5th in both 1983 & 1984. When Scott took over in 1985, he tried to improve upon that. South players struggled to adapt to the new game plan, and all Davies did when he took over was just revert back to what South were doing before Scott got there. As you said, they did alright for awhile but downhill from there.

Easy option ... short term gain, long term pain.

Not sure if it's been mentioned but Mark Naley quite openly rates Scott as a brilliant coach who was way ahead of his time.

I hadn't heard that, but I'm not surprised. The talk around Hawthorn in the late 70s -early 1980s was they had two players expected to be great coaches. One was Leigh Matthews, the other Don Scott.

[ORDoubleBlues]

I remember at the time, that one thing he did early that caused a lot of issues, was stationing water bottles around the oval in around 38 degree heat, and sending all of the players on runs around the oval, with the statement that any player seen taking a drink would be branded as weak. In today's era, this would simply not be allowed to happen.

Maybe they wouldn't do it now, but they did back when Don Scott played the game. I remember we were allowed to swish water around our mouths but then spit it back out. The only liquid we consumed for an entire match was the juice from a couple of pieces of orange. Sounds incredible, but it's true. I always recall Neil Kerley's colourful account of what happened to him after the turkish Bath Grand Final, having quickly consumed a couple of bottles of soft drink and then throwing up during a TV interview.

Scott endured the Commando training camps under John Kennedy at Hawthorn, and embraced the Kennedy philosophies. Kennedy was a vey hard task master who had no time at all for players who wouldn't try to break through brick walls. It was what made Hawthorn successful during that era, and you couldn't have expected Scott to coach any other way.

He would have conveyed that message loud and clear when South interviewed him, so why they were so surprised by his methods is anyone's guess.

Also in that era some would have been able to call for a coaches head because of his honesty about a certain part of his life.

Wouldn't be an excuse to sack someone now

[westcoastpanther]

Sojourner, you posed this exact same question 4 pages back in May 2009, your really digging or perhaps age getting the better of you!!