Three-time premiership coach Mick Malthouse claims he is unlikely to ever work
full-time at an AFL club again, but says he would be open to the idea of
working with Australia’s national cricket side as a consultant.
Collingwood’s
38-point grand final loss to Geelong last week marked the end of
Malthouse’s distinguished 664-game coaching career, which yielded two
flags with West Coast and one more with the Magpies.
The
58-year-old has all but ruled out a return to coaching in the future,
and said even a less hands-on role at a football club wouldn’t appeal to
him if it’s full-time.
But with Cricket Australia currently
revamping their coaching structure in the wake of the Argus Report,
Malthouse said he would consider taking up a part-time consultancy
position with them if it was deemed a good fit by both parties.
“I’d
love that. I don’t know whether it would be on the agenda (but) it
would certainly be something I would consider,” Malthouse said in Perth while launching his new book, The Ox is Slow but the Earth is
Patient.
“I certainly won’t be involved in a football club. I see that chapter’s finished right now.
“Put it this way, I don’t see myself doing one particular thing only.
“I
need a range of things to get my teeth into. I don’t think I could go
cold turkey on work ethic. I need to keep involved and keep myself busy.
“Over
the next month I’ll take a deep breath and weigh up a few things that
have been put in front of me at the moment … and I’ll see what’s best
for the family and what I’m capable of doing.”
Malthouse also nominated his decision to drop Mitchell
White from West Coast’s 1994 premiership-winning side as one of his
greatest football regrets.
White missed four weeks with a groin
injury before making it back for the ’94 preliminary final win over
Melbourne, where he tallied just eight possessions and failed to kick a
goal.
With key defender Ashley McIntosh an automatic inclusion
for the grand final after missing the previous week, Malthouse made the
tough call to axe White instead of a “young player” who was also on
shaky ground.
Malthouse refused to say who he should have dropped instead of White.
But
there’s a fair chance he was referring to Shane Bond, who was just 19
at the time and tallied only nine possessions in the preliminary final
before booting two goals from five touches in the grand final.
West Coast defeated Geelong in the grand final by 80 points.
“On
reflection, and one of my great regrets, is that I wish I had have
played Mitchell White in the 1994 grand final,” Malthouse said.
“Would it have made any difference? Probably not. But in my mind he should have played.
“I didn’t have the intestinal fortitude to make that decision as I should have.
“We
had a young player who had played OK. (He was) carried along by a very
good football side (and I stuck with him for the grand final).”
