For a time, Frankston senior coach Patrick Hill thought he might never get the chance to celebrate a Peter Jackson VFL win with his team.
The Dolphins went through 2015 – his first season in charge – winless, and a 144-point defeat at the hands of the Casey Scorpions in Round 1 wasn’t the most auspicious start to 2016.
It had Hill – previously an assistant coach at the Box Hill Hawks, including for their 2013 premiership year – thinking of good friend Austinn Jones, who coached the Bendigo Gold in the VFL for two years in 2013-14 without a win.
But a weight was lifted off Hill’s shoulders when Frankston memorably knocked off Richmond by 13 points in Round 3, ending a 24-game losing streak stretching back to Round 16, 2014. Even for someone who had experienced the ultimate VFL success, this victory ranked as one of his most special moments.
“The overriding emotion was probably relief,” Hill said.
“Austinn Jones did two years in the VFL without a win, and after some chats with him, I know he’s not happy with that. Certainly after the shemozzle at Casey Fields in Round 1, those thoughts started to come in: ‘What if I don’t get a win?’
“I had a pretty horrible off-season personally as well, losing my father, and then I lost my grandmother just before the season started. To get that win then was pretty special on the back of that.
“The other emotion was that you’re just so happy for the players. They’ve stuck by the club and stuck by you as a coach, and you see all the work they’ve put in. To see the joy on their faces and to finally get some reward for their 18 months of hard work was a great thing to be involved in.”
While the Dolphins have only added one more win since – defeating Coburg by five points in Round 5 – the signs of improvement from the disappointment of 2015 are there. They’ve been highly competitive in games against the likes of Williamstown, Collingwood and Footscray for three quarters but fallen away late.
Hill would like a few more wins on the board this year but said his team’s consistency of performance through the season was ahead of where he thought it would be earlier in 2016.
“There’s been a lot of development over the last 18 months to two years,” Hill said. “The team is now getting an understanding of modern footy – our game plan, what it means, what their roles within it are and how what they do on the field affects other players.
“We’re trying to get people to about 50 games, when they really start to understand how they fit into things and start to understand their own games.
“We’re really excited about year three (2017), which is generally when you go from understanding the game plan to being able to do it in an unconscious fashion – when it just becomes natural and they can actually start to develop some of the on-field stuff themselves. That’ll be the next step for them.”
Hill said his game plan this year has been based around playing a brand of football designed to bring people to watch his team play. Indeed, Frankston is averaging 35 more uncontested possessions per game in 2016 compared to 2015, with its lower kick-to-handball ratio (1.2-to-1 in 2016 from 1.4-to-1 in 2015) indicating a willingness to run the ball forward at speed.
While the Dolphins are conceding almost 25 fewer points per game this year than last year, Hill said team defence was still something his troops needed to work on, as well as fixing up costly turnovers in the back half.
He’s excited about what 2017 has in store but admits he never thought his tenure would turn out the way it has when he first took on the role.
“Initially when I took on the job, I thought it was going to be a fine-tune,” Hill said. “We’d add some players and with a couple of things I thought I could bring to the group, that’d have us really close to finals in year one, if not in them.
“Unfortunately it didn’t work out like that. It wasn’t long into last year when we realised what we had was a long way off the pace.
“When I first joined, we had about 400 games of VFL experience on the whole list; right now we’re sitting at about 900 and by the end of the year, I think we’re going to have nine players over or close to 50 games and we started the year with one (Corey Buchan). It’s starting to get to where you need to be.”
The game plan is evolving, his players are becoming hardened with extra experience and even Hill’s coaching methods are changing. This year he’s gone back to basics, eschewing the large amounts of opposition analysis he brought from his time at Box Hill to focus more on his own team, and replacing electronic teaching means with the more traditional whiteboard and his own voice.
It hasn’t been a smooth introduction to the VFL senior coaching caper for Hill, but the Dolphins coach is finally starting to get into the swim of things.
The draftable Dolphins
Frankston senior coach Patrick Hill gives his thoughts on the Dolphins most likely to be picked up by an AFL club this year and continue the club’s enviable recent record of having eight players join AFL lists over the last seven years.
‘The Recruit’ contestant Jackson Sketcher: “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bigger change in attitude from one player in a positive way than I’ve seen from Jackson (since his early years). He was never a bad kid, but he’s turned into probably the most engaged, switched-on, hardest-working, professional player at the club. He’s been terrific with the young guys and he’s felt quite free to share his stories of how he thinks he went wrong and how he assumed winning the Morrish Medal (alongside Dyson Heppell in 2010) would guarantee him getting drafted.”
Ben Cavarra: “I think his game’s gone to another level this year. He hasn’t been at his fittest, but he’s battling through and does what he needs to do to get up for each game. He’s kicking more goals and I think he’s a bit quicker. If some club takes a chance on him, I know he won’t let them down. He’ll do everything he can to be successful.”
Josh Newman: “Josh – whose brother Nic is at Sydney – has had a pretty good year. He’s a brazen half back flanker who loves to take the game on. He’d be right up there in our best and fairest.”
Brandon Wood: “He’d be amongst the best clearance players in the VFL, if not the best. I wonder what he could do if he was a full-time footballer – he comes from a basketball background and didn’t play footy until U19s. He’s still got a lot of scope for improvement, but he’s a very smart kid, learns very quickly and has a great footy brain.”
Last Modified on 24/08/2016 23:25
