JEFF White made his name in the AFL for more than a decade as an undersized, mobile ruck, playing for both Fremantle and Melbourne.
Now, he's helping another ruck who wants to tap into their athleticism around the ground in Brisbane AFLW ruck Tahlia Hickie.
When Lions coach Craig Starcevich made a call to his ABC commentary colleague to see if he wanted to come and become a specialist coach last year, White jumped at the chance.
“I’d seen Tahlia from afar previously, but we wanted to try and maximise her athleticism in the centre ball ups, but the real growth area for her was her ability around the ground, where to go, positioning, and stuff like that,” White told AFL.com.au.
“So, from day one, we started getting into video analysis, and the beauty about working in an AFL environment is you have behind the goals (vision), which I’m a big advocate for because you can see where the running patterns are. The progression just took off from there.”
Hickie, admittedly, didn’t know much of White before he came on board. White was already six years into his AFL career when Hickie was born in 2000, after all.
“Probably not as aware of him as I should have been,” Hickie said with a knowing laugh, sitting alongside White.
“But when Jeff came on board, I think we were lucky that Craig really made it known of how successful Jeff was, and brough a lot of stuff up which was good. But I definitely, definitely could have been better. I’m not that good at past male players.”
The role opened up when former Brisbane men’s player Oscar McInerney chose to step away from his coaching position early in the 2025 NAB AFLW season. One ruck coach for another seems like a simple swap, but for Hickie, the style change tapped into exactly what she needed to excel.
“Rucks these days, you look at Luke Jackson for instance, he’s not a Mason Cox in height, but the athleticism around the ground, you can become very dangerous in that sort of aspect. And that was my background as a player going against the taller rucks, and it’s the same thing with Tahlia,” White said.
“She’s definitely tall but very athletic, but the thing that I could see in her game is the ability to run around the ground and be dangerous, be used to link up, she’s really good below her knee.”
Rule changes at centre stoppage further benefitted rucks like Hickie, and has given White more to work with.
“I was really excited for that rule to come in, we spoke about that it benefits me as someone who wants to run and jump, and obviously having to have played against so many bigger bodies in my career, we were really excited about that,” Hickie said.
For White, it threw the centre stoppage conversation back to align with what it was like when he was still out on the field.
“It offers so many different hit patterns, so that was a real positive outlook. Because going back to my day where players weren’t crossing the line, which was happening over the last several years, and taking that run and jump and that athleticism out of the game. So, bringing that back provided not only the opportunity for Tahlia to get angles right and understand her direct opponent, but also different hit zones we could starts implementing,” White said.
That’s not to say McInerney wasn’t helpful in his time as coach, his clean tap work and thoughtful aerial game was all absorbed by Hickie, but White’s understanding of what it’s like to leap at the ball and run the opposition off their feet tapped into what Hickie did best.
“Oscar was really clever in actual tap-specific drills and stuff, he was really, really good in that sense, but obviously him being a bigger body, it was a different perspective that I hadn’t had before… Jeff was really big about focusing on stuff post-ruck contests and post-stoppage… Jeff came in with some really, really helpful and really good cues, which I hadn’t really heard before about field positioning and getting used more around the ground,” Hickie explained.
“I really appreciated that part of what he brought to our player-coach relationship, that was something really different and I just really loved looking at that aspect of it and not so much just the pure ruck craft stuff. That really helped take my game to another level.”
Since coming on board last year as a specialist ruck coach, White has progressed to the club’s backline coach in 2026. But his rucks are still the No.1 priority.
“One of the things that we addressed at the start of the year was at quarter time breaks, half time, for me to have the opportunity to speak to Tahlia before I speak to the backs,” White said.
The promotion was born not out of a call from Starcevich this time, rather White’s insistence that the AFLW space is a place he wants to be on a more permanent basis.
“Love it. I absolutely love it. It’s the old saying, I should have done this years ago,” White said.
“I had a little bit of a taste of it last year and I just wanted a bit more. And then when Ryan (Davis) left, I hounded ‘Starce’ while he was away for the opportunity to come into the role. I also get to work with the academy as well, which I’m really passionate about.
“I should have done it years ago.”