Stuart Waitley

You can go for a run.

You can go to the gym, whatever you want to do.

But just to take a little bit of a breather and just to back off a little bit because I can see where this is heading.

We're going to unfortunately end up in a position where these coaches are just going to completely break down.

it's not pretty it's bad for your health it's the human element we see and unfortunately what we saw recently with with vossi and also to scotty where they where they lost their jobs and it was it's all we were talking about and you know those those guys obviously an enormous stress that they were going through so i'm not just talking about coaches i'm talking about everyone this is this is leadership um across all industries but in our industry in footy

I think we can do it a little bit better.

So I just wanted to shine a light upon that and make sure that we are providing the best opportunity for our coaches to enjoy their roles, but also to just be happy, be healthy, keep trying to win games, but not at the detriment of your own health.

And then there's the broader commentary, I think, around...

how we discuss coaches.

You will never do anything around the level of scrutiny, so that's unachievable.

But when coaches took breaks across the summer, so Chris Scott and Craig McRae were the two that we know about who took lengthy periods.

Instead of that lazy default to, oh, part-time coach, not there anymore, trying to recognize that this is actually the necessity to have any form of longevity here.

There has to be a designated period where if you haven't chosen to go away and refresh, then you're told to go away and refresh.

And we have to be mature enough as an industry not to link the first loss of the season for Geelong to the fact that, oh, Chris wasn't there over summer.

I thought that was so naive and actually quite foolish.

And if we're not better at that...

We have to ensure that there's a mature conversation going.

Of course, they need to go away and have a break.

This was Craig McRae's first break of any length since he took the Collingwood job.

It has nothing to do with whether they are immediately successful or not.