Alistair Nicholson

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378 appearances 6 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 23 Jul

Alistair Nicholson’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 6 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 6.

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Whateley · Alistair Nicholson in the studio | AFL Coaches Association CEO (22.07.26) · 22 Jul 2026 podcast

So, yeah, I can see why they're, I think they've got all their options open.

I don't think they've necessarily narrowed it completely, but I can see why they may be looking to potentially one of those untried coaches, if you like.

I think my thing about, you know, when it sort of became clear that it was these three really good candidates was, well, I don't mind who gets it.

I think they're all quality candidates.

I think they will all – the other two guys, if they choose, will coach again at senior level.

And so, look, you know, discussions with Taddy and Brendan were around, obviously, an experienced senior coach, but they spent a lot of time working through that criteria and really what it –

they really wanted rather than, you know, who's just got the best coaching record.

So Ken's done a great job at, you know, at Port Adelaide.

And so, yeah, he was the fit, but the other two are very good.

I think the other thing, just to comment on that is,

What sometimes gets lost is, because there's a lot of focus just on the senior coach, is just the importance of the assistant and development coaches underneath.

So for Ken now to be as good as he can be, he needs a really good football manager and then really good, definitely sort of top two sort of senior assistant coaches around him.

Because they then take...

uh things off him that he doesn't necessarily need to do so i think now that the thought goes to okay how are they building their coaching team because it's probably sexy to talk about what players they're getting on their list but obviously we're thinking about okay well how are they actually then building a really good good coaching group as well and that has been part of their essendon conversation i know mark harvey gave voice to it the idea that it might be desirable to get two coaches in whatever sort of arrangement given the the scope and the magnitude of the job

Yeah, and some of that stuff might not necessarily be tactical or whatever.

It might just be the assistant coach knows the senior coach well enough to say, you need to go home today and you need to go and pick up your kids and we'll handle this or whatever it is.

So I think some of the role is also the soft skills as much as the hard skills of coaching.

Yeah, so one of the things, we have the coach votes, as I call them, but who the coaches think the best player of the year is, where each coaching group for each game gets five votes.

And that's really now recognised really well as a really well thought of award.

But one of the things that the senior coaches, and we've talked about last year, was the

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