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Sam Mitchell\u2019s post-season sojourn to Tottenham Hotspur\u2019s extraordinary facility at Enfield, north of London, has already influenced the Hawthorn coach\u2019s handling of training.<\/p>\n
Mitchell, who met up to 25 Tottenham officials \u2013 including Australia\u2019s most celebrated coaching export, Ange Postecoglou \u2013 has changed his training reviews in a small shift that was spurred, so to speak, by watching the sessions that Postecoglou oversees, without actually \u201ctaking training\u201d.<\/p>\n
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Sam Mitchell came away with some valuable insights after spending a week with Ange Postecoglou\u2019s Tottenham. <\/span>Credit: <\/span>Eddie Jim<\/cite><\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re quite different personalities, so I\u2019m not going to try and coach like Ange Postecoglou,\u201d said Mitchell, who spent just over a week with Spurs at the end of the 2023 AFL season, whilst Tottenham were vying for supremacy in the English Premier League.<\/p>\n \u201cBut there are some things that he does that I certainly try and introduce to my coaching book.\u2033\u2063<\/p>\n Mitchell, who was accompanied by Hawks assistant coach Adrian Hickmott, nominated just one basic method of the famed Australian coach that had influenced Hawthorn. \u201cBasically, just how he reviews training.<\/p>\n \u201c[Postecoglou] Has a quick meeting at the end of training to get everyone\u2019s thoughts on how the session went, who stood out, who perhaps didn\u2019t perform as well, which drill was set up well.\u201d<\/p>\n Mitchell was struck by how Postecoglou, whose assistants take training, organised the review. \u201cThe structure of the meeting was really strong \u2013 something I\u2019ve tried to implement straight away.\u201d<\/p>\n Mitchell did not spend much time with \u201cAnge\u201d, who was busy coaching Spurs in the middle of an EPL season, but came away from numerous meetings \u2013 plus attending two Tottenham games \u2013 with several observations and a keen sense of how the AFL differs from the elite teams of European soccer.<\/p>\n Sam Mitchell also spent some time with the Football Association\u2019s technical director John McDermott.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>AFL Photos<\/cite><\/p>\n \u201cIt was one of those trips you come back from saying \u201980 per cent of what we\u2019re doing at Hawthorn is pretty good, you know, we\u2019re on track\u2019. Ten per cent is just not viable because of the size of their organisation. They\u2019ve got 50 full-time groundsmen at their ground, at their training ground, that\u2019s serious … you can\u2019t really compare.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then 10 per cent you\u2019re like, \u2018that\u2019s actually a really good insight, there\u2019s really some stuff you can do there\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Mitchell\u2019s conclusion is that AFL teams, such as Hawthorn, cannot gain much from the EPL teams in recruiting systems. Nor did Mitchell focus much on Postecoglou\u2019s game plan.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s not recruiting. I mean, it\u2019s such a different model. They\u2019re buying players. Their focus on development of players is much less than us because it\u2019s a much bigger talent pool. They can just buy them and bring them in. So they don\u2019t have the talent\/development focus that we do.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd even game plan \u2013 to be honest, I don\u2019t look at soccer in the way they play it and look for huge insights via coaching. You watch the games and might ask questions about \u2018why you do that, why you were playing inverted wingers\u2019 … some strategic insights.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the most part, it\u2019s about people management \u2013 how do they manage the staff? How do you have role clarity for different positions?\u201d<\/p>\n Mitchell, who also spent a couple of days with the Football Association\u2019s technical director John McDermott, an ex-Spurs academy boss the Hawthorn coach knew, said he had been focused \u201cmore the how<\/em> he coaches it, than what he coaches\u201d. Method, not content.<\/p>\n Mitchell, who was visiting Spurs as an organisation rather than just meeting the coach\/manager, suggested that Postecoglou\u2019s success derived from clarity and consistency in approach.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the number one thing is he knows exactly what he wants, and he knows the standard at which it should be done, and he\u2019s got a philosophy and he sticks to it.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you listen to his press conferences, the one consistent theme in everything that he does is \u2018we know what we\u2019re working towards, and we\u2019re going to keep working at it. It doesn\u2019t matter if we\u2019re playing Manchester [City] at the Etihad, or we\u2019re at a game we should win comfortably\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cThey are so consistent in how they go about it and that\u2019s what makes them so strong.\u201d<\/p>\n Ange Postecoglou salutes Tottenham Hotspur fans after the clash with Manchester City earlier this month.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Getty Images<\/cite><\/p>\n Mitchell was asked whether there were facets of the AFL clubs that were ahead of the much larger EPL outfits, which turn over hundreds of millions and are privately owned by oil oligarchies and the super rich.<\/p>\n \u201cI came back really confident in a few areas … I think sports science, GPS and I think player development.\u201d<\/p>\n Mitchell said the EPL teams had a vastly different model for recruiting and developing players because they had only a \u201csemi-controlled free market\u201d compared to the more regulated AFL draft system.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we can\u2019t afford to do is let players with high talent slip through the cracks because they\u2019re so hard to replace,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we get players, we do every single thing we can to get the best out of them. Whereas in soccer, if a player doesn\u2019t fit a system, they\u2019re much more likely to try and find a replacement than change an individual player.\u201d<\/p>\n Mitchell had visited Spurs in 2019 and seen Tottenham in Australia a few years ago. \u201cThe best day we had, they put us in an office and they just sent people to us for most of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n Mitchell and Hickmott saw Australians Scott Munn, chief football officer for Spurs, and Mile Jedinak \u2013 the former having helped set up the Gold Coast Suns and Melbourne Heart (before it was bought by Manchester City), while Jedinak, an ex-Socceroo, is one of Postecoglou\u2019s assistants.<\/p>\n They also met Tottenham academy director Simon Davies, assistant coach Nigel Gibbs and head of football strategy Andy Seldig. \u201cLots of different people within the organisation.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, spent a bit of time with Ange, but he\u2019s obviously a busy man running a juggernaut organisation.<\/p>\n \u201cYou know, when we were out at training he stood with us for a while and spent a bit of time there. You\u2019re just sort of eating with the team and all those sort of things. You\u2019re just in and around them.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve done a few things with Spurs over the years because, they\u2019ve come out to Australia, I\u2019ve helped them with advertising and that sort of thing a few years ago.\u2033\u2063<\/p>\n Mitchell was taken with how Postecoglou\u2019s Tottenham stuck to their largely attacking system even when they lost players. Playing Chelsea, Spurs were \u201cdown to nine men and they continued to play high line and continued to try and attack.\u201d Mitchell observed: \u201cHe\u2019s certainly strong in his beliefs, and he sticks to it regardless.<\/p>\n \u201cAnge is quite unique in that way, how he coaches. He\u2019s obviously had the same system wherever he\u2019s gone, he\u2019s done a great job at inventing that game style … he\u2019s so consistently been able to get any team of any quality into playing the way he wants.\u201d<\/p>\n Mitchell said Tottenham, skippered by Korean Son Heung-min, had welded together players from different cultures. \u201cBut I think it\u2019s really how he\u2019s been able to build his group together has been fascinating.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s obviously been phenomenal in that area of consistently having a strong culture that people want to play for him. Within a month of getting there, Harry Kane \u2013 perhaps the greatest Premier League scorer of all time \u2013 left, but he still managed to put together a really strong outfit who played together.<\/p>\n \u201cCertainly, when you look at their team, one plus one, plus one equals much more than three. I think that\u2019s what every coach is trying to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Keep up to date with the best AFL coverage in the country. <\/i><\/b>Sign up for the Real Footy newsletter<\/i><\/b>.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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