Kids, culture and cups: The Mighty Mick McGuane years at Keilor, as 300-game mark looms

There’s the inaugural secretary and treasurer David Milburn, who served for 10 years from 1946.

There’s Joe Brown, the secretary from 1959 to 1971, after whom the Keilor ground is named.

There’s Ray Sheridan, the treasurer for six years and now in his fourth as president.

And there’s Mick McGuane.

Sportsmen named Mick are often called “Mighty Mick’’ and in the case of McGuane and his tenure at Keilor, it’s appropriate. The former Collingwood best and fairest and fan favourite has been at the Essendon District league club since 2008, and is by some distance the Blues’ longest-serving coach.

His name alone fills the coaching position on the third panel of the honour board. He’s taken the Blues to four premierships and, with the team unbeaten from 15 matches and with a percentage touching 300 this season, a fifth flag is a strong possibility.

Little wonder McGuane describes his association with the club as a “pretty happy marriage’’.

Next week, when Greenvale visits, he’ll coach Keilor for the 300th time, a league record. Sheridan for one doubts it will be broken.

“I think Mick will have that for a long time,’’ he says. “You just can’t see anyone coaching for that long again.’’

McGuane has coached 219 senior players at Keilor, many of them out of the junior ranks he has helped nurture. Sheridan suspects that would be a record too.

As he sees it, McGuane’s longevity stems from a willingness to “change things up’’.

“He’s always ahead of the curve when it comes to getting the right players and getting the right training in place,’’ Sheridan says.

“He’s driven and he wants everyone to succeed.’’

He calls McGuane a “very honourable guy, an honest guy’’.

“He wears his heart on his sleeve about the Keilor Football Club. He’s very passionate. He’s very intelligent and one of the best communicators I’ve seen about anything to do with football. But he’s a good man to talk to on any level.’’

*****

It was first against last when Keilor hosted Avondale Heights at Joe Brown Reserve last Saturday.

McGuane had called a team meeting at 12.25pm to recognise a 300-gamer, Jay White, and a first-gamer, Nathan Ryan, and spoke about the task ahead against the bottom side. Having said all that needed to be said, he spent the next hour sitting on the fence chatting to two men and two women, sipping a can of soft drink and occasionally turning his back to the play in the reserves match to face the social club.

Inside, people spoke of his influence at Keilor and on its “culture’’. One supporter said the Blues had the best team in the league and also the best culture, and McGuane had shaped it.

How?

“Well, by just being himself,’’ he said.

“He talks to everyone, Mick. Takes an interest in how you’re going. When he asks you how things are going, he’s interested. You know it’s not bullshit. He’s genuine. He cares about people.’’

He mentioned how, when the third senior team played on Friday nights, McGuane turned up to watch. Last year, he also coached the Keilor Under 16s to a premiership.

Knowing the link from under-age to open teams is vital to clubs, McGuane has been invested in the juniors since he arrived at the Blues. Young players replenish senior teams, like his 16-year-old son Thomas, a Western Jets prospect who made his senior debut this year.

And, of course, they’re all one-pointers.

“That’s what good clubs do. The Egyptians built pyramids from the foundations to the top. That’s why they’re still standing,’’ McGuane says. “Strong foundations are what footy clubs should have.’’

Against Avondale Heights, Keilor used 43 of its 46 points, but 16 of the players were worth one. Recruit Reuben Williams, who played three games for Brisbane, took up seven points and Sunbury signing Cody Brand absorbed five.

But “home-growns’’ were predominant. In last year’s grand final, there were 16 of them.

“I’ve got a great affiliation with young kids and giving them a chance to get on the pathway or live their dream,’’ McGuane says.

“To coach Under 8s, Under 10s, Under 11s, Under 14s and Under 16s … there’s emotional attachment to that when your son’s playing in that age bracket, but to see him involved with his mates and see 14 of those boys who I’ve basically coached either at the Western Jets or Calder Cannons … I get a lot of satisfaction out of that, helping them on their journey.’’

*****

McGuane slipped into the changerooms just before his team ran on to the ground to tackle Avondale Heights.

Inside the social club, drinkers took in framed photographs of the club’s premiership cups, lined up above the bar. The last four feature McGuane and the captains and presidents: he’s with Lee Fraser and Kevin O’Reilly in 2008, Dylan Joyce and Brad Bult in 2016, Kane Barbuto and Craig Hill in 2018, and Barbuto and Sheridan last year.

What has made him so successful?

“Mick knows the game backwards – you only have to read what he says in the paper (his Herald Sun column) to realise that – and he knows the comp backwards,’’ one supporter opined. “He could tell you which opposition players kick on the right foot and which kick on the left.

“He does his homework. I was saying to someone a couple of weeks ago, I reckon he knows more about the opposition than their own coaches do.’’

And does McGuane raise his voice often?

“Only when he has to,’’ came the reply. “Most of the time you have to really get in there (the huddle) to hear him.’’

At quarter time, spectators 100m away could have heard McGuane. He had become increasingly frustrated watching Keilor struggle to shake Avondale Heights, repeatedly kicking the ball into the forward line more in hope than any system.

The Blues led at 2.7 to 0.0 at quarter time. Hands on hips, McGuane was waiting for the players as they came to the huddle.

And he tore into them, saying they had gone away from everything that had worked so well this season. He said it was as if they had all decided they needed to go kick-chasing to keep their place in the team.

“Well that’s the easiest way to find yourself out of it!’’ he fumed.

He started the second quarter on the interchange bench rather than in the coaching box.

Soon he was biting off observations and instructions: “Take off Cody, take off Kane!’; “Don’t hold on to it, give the first option!’’; “Nathan, do your work early!’’

After a few minutes he took the stairs to the box, constructed from two shipping containers. His mood wasn’t helped when one of his players was given a yellow card.

Before the quarter had finished, McGuane headed for the changerooms. He watched the last minute of play from the doorway.

But if he was hoarse at quarter time, he was the horse whisperer at half-time, getting to work on a whiteboard and speaking quietly to the players.

The inevitable happened in the second half, with Keilor breaking down Avondale Heights’ resistance, kicking eight goals in the third quarter and five in the fourth to pull away for a 109-point victory.

It was 44 scoring shots to eight. The scoreboard could have been a lot worse for the visiting team.

It was the seventh time the Bulldogs had won by more than 100 points this season.

After the game, McGuane explained how at quarter time he wanted to “realign them (the players) pretty quickly’’.

“We controlled the footy, we dominated possession, we certainly went forward inside 50 a lot. But our method going in was against the grain. I get it, because we had two late withdrawals and three boys go to the VFL and a few of them play in the front half. So we had a new environment in front of us.

“For the reserves players coming up, they’ve got to understand we play a certain way. We train it. We got our entry wrong. We kicked 2.7. Yeah, we understood they flooded back, which presents challenges at any level. We just had to make sure we got the right balance between deep entry and shallow, used the arcs, shifted the defence, not give them what they wanted to win the ball back. I just thought we needed to tidy that up if they (Avondale Heights) were going to present that for the rest of the game.’’

*****

Mick McGuane had already been a successful coach by the time he landed at Keilor.

In 2001, he took Burnie to a premiership in Tasmania. Returning to Victoria, he steered Gisborne to the 2002 and 2003 flags and to the 2004 grand final.

Both clubs had been struggling before McGuane arrived.

In 2005, AFL club Richmond put him on the payroll as a forward scout for coach Terry Wallace. Twelve months later, he was appointed an assistant coach to Grant Thomas at St Kilda.

After McGuane’s arrival at the Saints, The Age writer Michael Gleeson said McGuane was a “study in substance over style’’ and “has been seen to carry baggage’’, noting his reputation for liking a bet and beer.

The same article carried glowing testimonies from Wallace, his coach at Collingwood, Leigh Matthews, and his coach at Carlton, David Parkin, about his understanding and knowledge of the game.

Gleeson quoted McGuane as saying: “I reckon the only way to eradicate this perception about my attitude is if you speak to any footy person I played with or coached me or I coached. They know when you get to the point of footy I was locked in. I tried to be the best I could be, you don’t win a couple of Copelands and run second in another, be a member of a premiership side, unless you are totally committed and switched on to be an elite performer.’’

He “loved’’ his time at the Saints but it wasn’t to last. When Thomas was sacked at the end of 2006, his offsiders left too.

McGuane was not prepared to hang around and wait to see if the new coach would keep him on.

“When you’ve got timelines to make decisions, do you get shot or do you shoot?’’ McGuane says.

“In my case, everyone’s got bills to pay. I had to shoot first before I got shot. I wasn’t going to be left without a job.’’

He ended up taking a radio role with his former Magpies teammate Michael Christian and returning to “the environment that I love, the attachment to local footy’’.

“The people are real and the environment’s real, and they’re there to see the next generation player, boy or girl,’’ he says.

Suburban powerhouse Balwyn, preparing for its inaugural season in the Eastern league, secured McGuane, with president Richard Wilson describing him as “the best community coach in Australia’’ and declaring “he’s got a footy mind that’s at an AFL level’’.

His appointment attracted a lot of good players and the Tigers made the finals.

But McGuane was at Balwyn for only one season. At the end of it, he was in talks with an AFL club about an assistant’s role. The way Wilson explains it, the talks dragged on and Balwyn could wait no longer. It appointed Daniel Harford, who took the club to the premiership in 2008.

Seventeen years later, Wilson’s opinion of McGuane remains unchanged. When McGuane was writing columns for Inside Football, he was promoted as ‘‘The Footy Professor’’ and Wilson thinks it was spot-on.

“Mick should have coached an AFL club. I don’t understand why an AFL club didn’t take him on,’’ he says.

After leaving Balwyn, McGuane thought he might have a year off and concentrate on his breakfast radio slot.

But Keilor contacted and eventually contracted him, with Blues vice-president Brown telling the local press: “At this stage it is a one-year deal.’’ It has turned into the longest one-year deal in football.

McGuane started at Keilor with the bang of a grand final boilover. Owing to the lateness of his appointment, the Blues lost a raft of key players from their 2007 preliminary final side.

“The talk at the time was they might even be relegated for the first time. That was the noise, because of who they’d lost,’’ McGuane says.

But, he says, “we got to work’’. And they got to the grand final and defeated Greenvale, which had not lost a game since the 2006 preliminary final.

Their next flag was in 2016, when they saw off Aberfeldie in the grand final. They did the same in the 2019 decider.

Last year, Keilor was comfortably the best team in a strong competition, winning all 18 home-and-away matches, having a thumping win over Pascoe Vale in the second semi-final and then routing Strathmore by 52 points in the grand final. This season’s run has extended its winning streak to 35 matches.

Leading full-forward Dean Galea played in Keilor’s 2016 and ’19 premierships. He says McGuane took an interest in every player on the list.

“Whether you’re the best player or the 50th-best, he treats everyone the same,’’ says Galea, now at Riddell.

“Ripping coach and ripping bloke, Mick. I still speak to him most days.’’

He says McGuane’s contribution to the club has gone “above and beyond’’ senior coach.

“The amount of stuff he does for Keilor often goes unseen. He’s there at nine o’clock on a Saturday morning watching the 18s and 19s. He goes and watches the juniors on a Sunday. He’s phenomenal.’’

What keeps him coming back season after season?

McGuane says Keilor reminds him of his junior club, Sebastopol, where his father, Brian, was coach.

“You just become part of the club because you’re a mascot and you’ve always got a footy in your hand or at your feet. You see the senior players and you want to be them one day,’’ he says.

“It’s in reverse now. You’re the elder statesman and you’re watching the next generation come through.’’

He also answered that question last year in a brief Q&A with the Herald Sun.

“I love the club and it is about winning games but there’s much more to footy,’’ he said.

More Coverage

Two AFL games, five ACLs: New life of footy’s unluckiest player

Paul Amy

‘One of the great seasons’: Hynes puts name up in lights with Rays

Paul Amy

“I can offer up different experiences to players. As coaches, we have the ability to teach important qualities to young people through sport. I get great satisfaction out of being able to see these people grow from junior players to seniors. I’ve seen lots of people’s journeys and it’s something I really enjoy.’’

McGuane is contracted to coach Keilor until the end of 2025. Sheridan says it was a great day when they agreed to the extension.

“It’s much easier than trying to find another coach of Mick’s calibre!’’ he says.