Buckley off to study at Notre Dame
The Age
Tuesday June 16, 2009
THE AFL's most watched coach-in-waiting, Nathan Buckley, is furthering his coaching education this week with American college football team Notre Dame.Buckley was due to arrive at Notre Dame yesterday with AFL officials on an AFL-sponsored trip that will enable him to meet senior Notre Dame officials, including the head coach of the famed "Fighting Irish", Charlie Weis.Buckley is travelling with the AFL's head of game development, David Matthews, and Alan McConnell, whom the AFL has just appointed as high-performance manager for the incoming western Sydney team.Buckley's trip is being paid by the AFL as part of his agreement to be an assistant coach with the Australian Institute of Sport-AFL Academy (he is also coaching the Victorian Country's under-16 team), but the trip, obviously, is as much about preparing him as an eventual coach at club level as part of his role with the AFL.Buckley's manager, Craig Kelly, said spending time with Notre Dame - college football's biggest name team - was an extension of the work Buckley had been doing with the AFL since his retirement as a player in 2007."It's part of Nathan's personal development to be better prepared to be involved in football at some stage down the track," Kelly said.Buckley is spending almost two weeks with Notre Dame, which fills its 80,000-capacity stadium in South Bend, Indiana, for every home game and has its own national television deal - worth $US9 million ($A11 million) annually.In the twilight of Buckley's time as a player, Collingwood president Eddie McGuire suggested that the club skipper could further his preparations for coaching by travelling overseas and learning from elite coaches of other sports.Buckley has already spent time at various AFL clubs, and has indicated that he wishes to start work as a coach next year - leaving open the question of whether he serves an apprenticeship as an assistant or steps straight in to senior coaching in the manner of Brisbane Lions' Michael Voss.The league sees elite college football as the sporting competition that most resembles the AFL, given its size - heavy supported, but not as enormous as the National Football League - and with a recruiting and development process that involves picking teenagers, at around 18 years.The AFL has a relationship with Notre Dame, having employed a soccer player from the university as an intern at its Docklands offices.In a year in which several clubs have coaches coming out of contract, and Terry Wallace leaving Richmond, Buckley is perhaps the subject of more speculation than any other prospective coach including Hawthorn assistant Damien Hardwick, who is one of the favourites for the Port Adelaide job should it become available.Notre Dame was coached for 12 years (1918-30) by famed coach Knute Rockne, who is best remembered for a stirring half-time speech in which he implored the Irish to "win one for the Gipper", the dying George Gipp, the former player who was famously portrayed by former US president Ronald Reagan in the 1940 film Knute Rockne - All American.
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