FORMER Port Adelaide captain Matthew Primus played 137 games with the club from 1997 to 2005 after starting his career with Fitzroy. He developed into one of the most dominant ruckmen in the competition, winning the Power's best and fairest award and All-Australian honours in 2002. He continued with the club as an assistant coach.

How has the role of an assistant coach changed in your time as one?
Probably the greatest thing that’s changed is the amount of time you spend with players one-on-one, using technology such as video.

The demographics have changed, too. The Generation Y kids learn differently to older players at the club, so you have to find ways to talk to them and teach them. The way you deal with them and inspire them to play a consistently high level of footy is a lot different to when I first started being an assistant back in ’05.

As an assistant, there is an open door policy in your office. You need to be open to players’ thoughts about how they’re going, what they think works well and throwing ideas back at them.

It’s a lot more about discussion – showing them the benefits of doing things a certain way. Once they realise they’re going to get some good benefits out of what you’re saying and doing, they are pretty into how you teach them.

Nowadays your presentation skills are also important. You might use PowerPoint or Keynote programs to present to the players. Quite often we get other coaches in from the Institute of Sport or from other sports, who present ways of mixing up training drills or meetings, so it’s always something fresh and new for the players.

Our senior coach, Mark (Williams), is right into that. He’s always innovative and looking for something different to turn the players on.

How important have development coaches become?
Development is a massive part of modern coaching. Every team at the start of the year wants to make the eight and the ones that do, or at least bounce back after one year, are big on development coaching.

The younger players you draft in get to know your game style, club culture, how they need to play, fitness, diet – all that stuff they need to learn as quickly as possible to become as good as your experienced players. Your development coaches are the ones who drive that day in, day out.

Your line coaches and your main coach will see players once or twice a week but your development coaches are the ones who live and breathe with them. The quicker they get them to learn and get up to scratch, as a club you’re going to perform at a higher level for a longer period of time.

Every club now is putting a lot of time and money into that area of their football department.

Have you ever had to give a player a serve?
Every coach at some stage has had to do that. Not setting up properly for stoppages in the midfield, giving players too much latitude, or for a 15-minute period we’ve dropped off and it’s cost us the game or cost us the lead. At some stage a spray is needed. Hopefully before that you’ve sent out a message via a runner or the leaders of your group have been able to acknowledge that straight up.

I would dare say sprays have become less and less in today’s footy. It’s more about the way you speak to the players and handle them. You can show them on computers at the quarter and half-time breaks, you can draw it up on whiteboards, you now have two runners so you can send messages. Times have changed but sometimes the message doesn’t get through and a spray can work.

Being at a club where I had a relationship with most of the players, it wasn’t a problem having to give my first spray. As a player, individually I was able to take it off the boss and he was able to give a few good ones in his time – no doubt!

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The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the clubs or the AFL.