‘Turn you into a maniac’: Scott’s rise to greatness... and how he sent shiver down legend’s spine

Chris Scott strode to the podium, his dark hair bushy at the back and hanging over his collar, with a confidence that belied his youth and served as a pointer to his future.

The subject of his oration was Roger Merrett, the former star Essendon forward come Brisbane skipper who had helped mentor the young Bear since his move from Melbourne in 1994.

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Three decades on and Lions legend Alastair Lynch, who was appointed captain of the newly-formed Lions in 1997, can still recall the shiver down his spine as Scott spoke.

Lynch had already seen a lot in footy by that stage. He was the AFL’s first million dollar man, lured north from Fitzroy by an offer too good to refuse, only for the club he joined to merge with the one that he left.

He also overcame a debilitating bout of chronic fatigue syndrome and other injuries to serve as the spearhead in Brisbane’s hattrick of premierships between 2001 and 2003.

But the poise with which Scott, who was still a teenager, spoke with when honouring the hard-bodied and beloved big man Merrett was beyond his years and astonished Lynch.

“It was at the best-and-fairest and it might have been his first or second year there and there some acknowledgment for Roger Merrett and Chris Scott was mentored by him,” Lynch told foxsports.com.au this week.

“The club had a sort of buddy system going on, with older players looking after younger guys, something along those lines, and that meant Roger was Chris Scott’s buddy. So Chris got up and spoke at the best-and-fairest, this 18-year-old kid, and just nailed the speech and I remember thinking, ‘My goodness. How impressive is he?’ Now we see that regularly, whether it’s his press conferences midweek or post-game, or whenever he appears on TV.

“He’s very impressive and very clear in his thoughts, which is a bit like Leigh Matthews, I suppose. Leigh always had this great ability to make the most complicated things sound simple. That is part of the talent of coaching. I suppose, to be able to get us to embrace things from him making it simple, and Chris appears to have that ability as well.”

While playing alongside Scott, who can further his legacy as one of football’s greatest coaches in Saturday’s grand final at the MCG, Lynch did not envisage him in the role.

Instead he believed the tough but highly-skilled defender would probably end up as a “captain of industry somewhere, an MD or CEO of a big company” given his intellect.

The 49-year-old has scratched that itch in recent years and currently heads the leadership department at Morris Finance along with a directorship of 5G Networks Ltd.

But no matter the path Scott, who played in the 2001 and 2002 premierships, chose, his former captain had no doubt about what would happen once his playing days with Brisbane were complete.

“He was articulate and intelligent. Chris was going to do well at whatever he wanted to do, realistically,” Lynch said.

‘ONE OF THE GREATEST COACHES OF ALL TIME’

Scott is vying to join masters Alastair Clarkson, Matthews and Damien Hardwick as the winner of at least three premierships as senior coach in the AFL era on Saturday. They are all-time greats.

But even if Brisbane instead delivers Chris Fagan successive premierships at the MCG, Scott’s phenomenal winning percentage near 70 per cent from 359 games is outstanding.

A finals record that once led to some mockery _ evidence the toxic Tall Poppy syndrome is strong in footy given how hard it is to remain in contention _ has balanced from 7-15 in 2021 to 16-all heading into this decider.

Not bad for someone once considered a reluctant assistant coach who was persuaded to move to Perth with his wife Sarah after injury ended his career with Brisbane in 2007.

Scott said the decision to work under Mark Harvey at Fremantle stemmed from the feeling that if he did not accept the role, “then I’ll never know whether I could have done it, whether I would have been good at it”.

The Dockers had bounced back into the finals by 2010 by the time Scott was being headhunted elsewhere, initially when assessed by Port Adelaide before ultimately winning the Geelong job ahead of Ken Hinkley and Brenton Sanderson.

Cats chief executive Brian Cook labelled him a “coach manager” in the style of English Premier League bosses, a phrase used regularly by those foxsports.com.au chatted to this week when describing Scott’s approach in his 15 years in charge of Geelong.

Scott set the tone from the infancy of his tenure at Geelong, a club which had won premierships in 2007 and 2009 but was considered to be past prime-time as a contender heading into the 2011 season.

“We put a plan together that was really, really ambitious. And, to be frank, it was unlikely to work,” he told the AFL website at the start of the 2023 season.

“The idea that we should try to win a premiership every year and yet still prepare to win a premiership in 10 years time had not been done before. It was unlikely to work. But if it did, how good would that be?”

Only twice have the Cats missed the finals during his reign and this will be their fourth grand final after the successes of 2011 and 2022, with the loss to Richmond in 2020 the outlier. That, for Geelong fans, has been extremely “good”.

Geelong has managed to rebuild on the run with superb drafting and recruiting, with Bailey Smith and Jack Martin added this year, along with reinvention and resilience to remain a contender.

It is notable that only 11 of the 2022 premiership players featured in last week’s preliminary final, which has been indicative of Scott’s willingness to embrace change.

Cats great Tom Hawkins was a premiership player when Scott arrived at Geelong, but said in his autobiography he was initially surprised he had been chosen over Sanderson.

It was considered a challenge. Champions including Matthew Scarlett, Steve Johnson and Paul Chapman were both decorated and hardy characters. But they flourished once more as he cajoled the best out of them again.

So, too, did Hawkins, who spent time in the VFL midway through that season before emerging as the champion he would become as Scott gave him full backing to assume control of the forward line from another Fox Footy favourite in Cam Mooney.

Fast forward to 2025 and Scott continues to develop the skill set of his players, as evidenced last Friday when vice-captain Tom Stewart was concussed early at a time when the Hawks were soaring in the preliminary final.

There was no panic because, Hawkins said, he would have been prepared for the scenario. He had levers to pull in case of an emergency and was able to swing things around without destabilising the Cats.

Scott may not “sweat the small things” and does not micromanage his assistant coaches, but those who know him say that his preparation is always on point.

“Building players to play multiple positions is part of the strength of his model and so, too, the willingness of players to execute a role,” Hawkins said.

“Tom Atkins is one of the greatest examples at Geelong. Just like Max Rooke did in Geelong’s premiership successes from 2007 to 2011, he has players who are not externally seen as important pieces, but the way that he manoeuvres them and the way he gives them roles, along with their ability to be able to execute those roles, is critical.

“Chris has always got something in mind. His mind would have often drifted to thinking, ‘What if this player goes down? What if something happens to Tom Stewart, who is arguably our most important defender behind the footy given his ability to intercept and then rebound? What do we do then?’

“That is an example of the lateral thinking that … has him in the position to be considered one of the greatest coaches of all time. Now I say that respectfully, because I know that other coaches would have similar sort of mechanisms that they use, but I know Chris intimately from my time at the club and have seen the way that he thinks outside the square.

“It is not a fluke. He trains that throughout the year. And he was then able to use it on the biggest stage against the Hawkers.”

KEEPING AN EYE ON THE EIGHT BALL

On the Tuesday after the 2020 grand final, Scott bore a stony face as he walked through the security checkpoint at Brisbane Airport and into a public lounge. And he looked tired as hell after Dustin Martin snatched a flag from the Cats clutches.

This is scarcely surprising for a couple of reasons. In a rare chat about his methodology and life with award-winning podcast The Howie Games, he revealed just how much he despised losing.

“The way it manifests for me if we lose is that I rarely sleep and, when I do, it’s almost to the minute that I am (awake) at 3am thinking about all the things I could have done,” he said.

“I take it really personally. The 24 hours after a loss I feel horrific, but there is work to be done and you have to get back on the horse.”

It is said there was an asterisk to that premiership but one look at his face would have been enough to know that description is bullshit. It was the hardest season given the emotional toll and personal ramifications caused by the competition upheaval.

The Cats were shattered that all that effort effectively came to nought. But Scott went back to work to plot for 2021.

He may be the senior coach. But it is said he has a strong hand in recruitment as well, with what Geelong needs to succeed in the future firmly in his thinking and the Cats went after Jeremy Cameron, among other changes.

It did not work that season, with several Cats including Hawkins crook as they lost to Melbourne in a preliminary final in Perth. But it did in 2022. And the work began again as soon as the Cats returned for pre-season training.

“He would say, ‘We need to get back to work. We all need to get better. We all need to improve. We’re going to improve our list to continue to allow us and you guys as players to compete once again,’” Hawkins said.

“But he puts it in a really gentle way that puts the ownership back on the playing group, just to be able to get back for step one, which is day one of the pre-season. The message is ‘Don’t allow yourself to fall behind the eight ball, because we can’t waste time.’

“He is not one of those coaches where it is balls away until after Christmas. He gets to work on strategies from day one. As an example, we tried Sam De Koning in the ruck a t the start of the year and that would have been something that they spoke about in his exit meeting last year and then slowly integrated into whole group training sessions as players were getting more comfortable and understanding what their roles would be.”

‘DON’T LET THIS TURN YOU INTO A MANIAC’

In Anson Cameron’s fine book called Neil Balme: A Tale of Two Men on the longstanding footy figure who served as football boss at Geelong among his many roles, Scott offers further insight into his philosophy, as noted by The Guardian this week.

He said Balme told him; “This job changes you. It has the real potential to negatively affect your life. Neil used to say to me, ‘Don’t let this turn you into a maniac.’”

Scott has had his moments, with a recent bake of an AFL staff member that created headlines an example. But his general calmness from one day to the next, no matter the situation, is considered a strength.

Hawkins said an outsider would never have known whether Geelong had won or lost on the Monday following a game based on the demeanour around the club from one week to the next if they walked into the club.

Some coaches eye the clock to the minute. If you are one minute late for a meeting, expect repercussions. The only timing the Geelong coach worries about is peaking in September. It is why Patrick Dangerfield is primed to perform on Saturday.

But family, and life, come first, though it is something he rarely talks about from a personal perspective.

His father Colin flew helicopters during the Vietnam War and was awarded a distinguished flying cross for rescuing American soldiers behind enemy lines.

But he died of an asthma attack at the age of 41, with the Scott twins and their siblings raised by his mother Lynn.

Hawkins said the empathy with which the Geelong coach supported him in the aftermath of the death of his mother Jennie in 2015 is part of what makes him so successful in the role.

Scott met the star goalkicker in the carpark outside Kardinia Park with a footy and a shoulder to lean on soon after and showed understanding as the big Cat worked through his grief over the next couple of years.

“That is consistent right across the board if you’ve got one of your best mates’ graduation or if there’s a wedding or a service that you need to get to,” Hawkins said.

“He is really cognisant of the fact that he wants us to be the best footballers that we can be. But he certainly empowers you, without knowing, to make decisions to be the best possible version of yourself. And that’s broader than just playing footy.

“He’s got this overarching theme of not wanting players just to be known as Chris Scott, the footballer and coach, or Tom Hawkins, the AFL player. He wants you to broaden that. I look at it through the ‘Boys to Men’ lens and learning things from your life opportunities.”

It has worked wonders for champions including Hawkins and Dangerfield, who have young families. But the point was clear from those who know Scott.

As long as his coaches and footballers are putting in and ensuring they can deliver when the ball is bounced, there is leeway for other things. But don’t take the piss because, within a season or two, you will be found out.

“If you half-arse something, no matter what industry you are in … you get found out and it is no different at Geelong. But the flexibility that is on offer at Geelong is a place that really allows you to grow,” Hawkins said.

THE LEGACY PIECE

Footy observers noted the appointment of former Geelong captain and current Cats assistant Steven King as Melbourne’s new coach earlier this month with interest.

It is an appointment that was well deserved according to Scott, who praised the manner with which King continued to focus on his current duties with Geelong while seeking an opportunity to further his own career.

“I feel really happy for him that he’s got the chance. It is really rare. It is a great acquisition for Melbourne,” Scott said.

“I do think the fact that it’s been one of the best days of his life, and I think back to the call I took from Neil Balme offering me the Geelong job, and it’s difficult to explain that feeling. You’d be quite entitled, if you were Kingy, to be so consumed with that, that it was all he could think about.

“But the way that he did what he needed to do (to win that role) and just bounced back into his responsibility with us is something that I’ll always be thankful for.”

Hawkins spent “too much time” in the coaches box when either suspended or injured but said it gave him an insight into the manner with which Scott allows his assistants to flourish.

“The way he interacts with his assistants, he certainly empowers them to be able to think and have a say and have their blueprint on what’s happening,” he said.

“We can’t lose sight of the fact that they’ve been important and he has been blessed to be able to have some of the minds that he does.”

Great coaches tend to deliver a production line of men capable of assuming the senior role in their own right in decades to come, with Scott’s former coach Matthews a prime example.

Aside from Scott, Collingwood’s premiership coach Craig McRae and current Carlton coach Michael Voss are among several former Pies and Lions to secure senior positions over the past three decades.

Similarly, premiership coaches Hardwick, Chris Fagan and Luke Beveridge are among current head honchos who were influenced in some way by Clarkson at Hawthorn.

A premiership win on Saturday would see Scott join those all-time greats as a coach. But Lynch and Hawkins are confident his legacy will be shaping footy for decades to come through those who have either played under or coached alongside him.

“You get these teams that go through great eras _ you look at the Hawthorn team of the 1980s and there were a few from there with Leigh one of them _ so I would imagine Leigh has had a number of his team go on to coach AFL footy,” Lynch said.

“I would imagine Chris will have the same sort of impact. It has been a successful organisation that is made up of high quality people, and no doubt Geelong will have a number of coaches in the future who have ties to Chris.”

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