getting to know Saints football staff

[saintbrat]

just a little more info on one of the saints back room men.

http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/rfnews ... ntentSwap2

DANNY RYAN, ST KILDA
Nor is Danny Ryan, until last year a graphic designer and part-time football coach in Sydney, now on St Kilda's coaching staff, on show with the Saints' stars most training and match days, yet anonymous among them. He is living what he calls his "secondary dream".

Since it is well established that not all former players are good coaches, it has to follow that not all good coaches must have played 200 games.

Or, extrapolating, even one. As football grows more intricate, more mazy and more demanding, it is also employing more coaches, with more and wider coaching skills — more professionals for a more professional game.

This season, there are more than 100 assistants at the 16 clubs. Most still are from what one called "the old boys' club", but, increasingly, clubs are looking as much for knowledge and know-how as renown.

The hierarchy and nomenclature are different from panel to panel, club to club, but the briefs are similar. It's multi-tasking. Typically, this new-breed coach has played less football than he might have — usually because of injury — but none is pursuing personal fame and glory. Indeed, the job demands a particularly healthy — not to be confused with big — ego: to be a peer to, brush shoulders with, improve and aggrandise the stars, past and present, yet remain invisible among them. "The key thing about coaching, if you want to do it well," said McCartney, "is to remember that it's a very selfless exercise."

Also typically, the unknown coach is absorbed by the game as only the lesser-performed sometimes can be, and needs a way to sublimate that passion.

"I saw that Eric Bana movie in Carlton the other night," said Ryan. "He was talking about having a passion away from your work. That's what footy has been for me. Now I've got a chance to work at it."

Ryan noted that in other big professional sports, the head coaches were not always former elite players. Sometimes, they were elite thinkers.

"How do you do the apprenticeship to become an AFL coach?" he asked rhetorically.

"Ninety-nine per cent of the time, it's ex-players who land in the role."

He wasn't pitching. "I'm realistic enough to know I'm never going to be a head coach," he said. What he didn't say, but must have thought, is that one day, someone like him might.
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DANNY RYAN, ST KILDA
AT 16, playing senior football in Colac, Danny Ryan backed into a pack "and got a big knee".

The surgeon was unequivocal. "He said I shouldn't play footy again, shouldn't do any form of contact sport, shouldn't ski," Ryan said.

"I was the youngest in Australia to have a laminectomy (removing discs from his back) at that stage. I was 17."

Ryan moved to Melbourne to do graphic design at the Phillip Institute (now RMIT), live the student life, and play a few games for Old Paradians.

At 21, he shifted to Sydney to work, and to play for Pennant Hills, eventually completing nine seasons and earning life membership before retiring for good at 30. "I didn't want to be a cripple at 40," he said.

Variously, Ryan was vice-captain, fitness and assistant coach, then upon his retirement, senior coach for five years. Since Pennant Hills was a sister club to Melbourne, he also did some opposition scouting work for Neale Daniher. He completed at level three coaching course in Canberra. Seventeen of the other 19 in the class were former AFL players; it was the makings of a network.

Later, through Pennant Hills' old boy Lenny Hayes, Ryan acted as in a liaison role for St Kilda in Sydney.He also coached the NSW Rams, the under-18 team, and last year coached a Sydney rep team that lost narrowly and honourably to the VAFA.

All the while, though barely consciously, he was on a path. "It was in the back of my head, but without going a million miles an hour at it," he said. "It was bit of a pipe dream."

Late last year, St Kilda appointed him to a full-time job as opposition coach and development manager. It meant moving to Melbourne, a wrench after nearly 20 years.

"In all honesty, I probably call Sydney home," he said.

Now, it's St Kilda. If he is not somewhere else scouting forward, "peering through the binoculars", he is on the ground at training, and on the bench on game day, manning the match-up board or perhaps sitting with the younger players.

The anonymity sits easily with him. "All the time I was in Sydney, I had half-a-dozen players who were much better than me," he said. "Right from the start here, it was: 'I'm here to help you guys. It's not about me, it's about you blokes'. It doesn't matter that I'm a bit of a nobody; it's what I contribute."

His dream was every boy's dream. At 40, he admits that this job is in lieu. Timing was everything. "We were just talking about it at a meeting this morning," he said.

"Two or three years ago, St Kilda didn't even have a development coach. Now there's two-and-a-half of us (he's the half). The industry is growing. That allows opportunities for guys like myself. It's the right time."

http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/rfnews ... ntentSwap2