Newcastle Jets’ Gary Van Egmond’s remarkable rise up the A-League coaching ranks culminated recently after being recognised with FourFourTwo’s Coach of the Year Award.
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Was there any point in the season and you thought, ‘hold on a second, we can do this. We can make the Finals.’?
I think to use an old cliché, it was one game at a time. When we won three on the belt early on and we won away against Queensland one-nil and then the game against Adelaide 2-1 when we went down to ten men and then Nicky scored that fantastic goal you start to think that someone must be smiling on you. There were a couple of times when we didn’t take our opportunities as far as getting a result but what was good was that the team was getting stronger mentally all the time. I really believe it’s that mental toughness that is the difference between having a really good season and not having a good season.
For you, you’ve had quite a long kind of apprenticeship. Have you taken on any one person’s style or is it more a conglomeration of a number of styles and ideas?
I think it’s more a conglomeration. Two really stand out in Arnie and Ian Crook. I’m in contact with them quite regularly as well. I think in the style of football that you like to play as well, knowing the cattle that you’ve got to utlisie. I watch a lot of football on the TV and now we have ESPN and Fox and what have you and you see all the best players week in, week out and you get to see how they play with the different camera angles you can see what they do. I think last year both Chelsea and Arsenal played some extremely good football. I’m a diehard Liverpool supporter but I really appreciate the way that Arsenal plays. They’ve been likened to PlayStation, it’s just magnificent how they play. The system that they’ve adopted has them playing very much like the French national team in years gone by and I thought they have a very attractive way of playing. We set up the same way because I thought we had similar players with attributes that would lend themselves to making it work. As a player as well – you think back to how you’ve been coached. You think back to when you’ve had disastrous seasons and how you were treated as players and the information they gave you. Sometimes as a player you don’t realise until you step back and have a good look at it. It’s good with all the different coverages that come out and information is very accessible.
You seem to be quite a modern coach. How important is scouting the other team and their weaknesses and strengths?
We do that. Mark who I was allowed to bring in – we don’t have a strength and conditioning coach as such – but has a very strong background in strength and conditioning as well also has a coaching background in his own right as well. He’s been working with the AIS program for many years and was involved in the boy’s program and before that the women’s program. We have a strong contingency in Newcastle of Matildas, Young Matildas from U-17 Matildas who have been doing very well under his guidance and he’s come in and is quite good with the computer stuff in relation to video analysis and sports tech program where we can analyse our performance and the team that we’re playing down to how many times did this person touch it and in what third... That’s probably the most time-consuming part of the week but it’s all about preparing properly and getting the little things right. Just little things we can pick up on to give the players as much information – not to overload them – but on the basis of what we feel is important and to the point.
What will you look back on most fondly from this season?
Walking out as the head coach against New Zealand was a moment I will remember quite distinctly. And then the next one would be playing Sydney on New Year’s Day when we broke the ground record. That for me was another point, seeing the support and on a day which is not seen synonomously as a day for crowds to turn out. And obviously the home game against Sydney was phenomenal for me. To have the crowd at capacity and to win the night was great.
Next season, where will the improvements be made?
I think you’re buying and selling is very important as the manager where you really earn your dollars. Many coaches can put sessions on about how to play but if you don’t have the talent you’re not going to achieve it. Your hiring and firing has to be spot on. You’ve got your jigsaw puzzle in your head and you’ve hopefully got the pieces around it to fit it. That for me is extremely important.
To find out who else scooped a coveted FourFourTwo award, make sure you pick up the April 2007 issue on sale 7 March.
I think to use an old cliché, it was one game at a time. When we won three on the belt early on and we won away against Queensland one-nil and then the game against Adelaide 2-1 when we went down to ten men and then Nicky scored that fantastic goal you start to think that someone must be smiling on you. There were a couple of times when we didn’t take our opportunities as far as getting a result but what was good was that the team was getting stronger mentally all the time. I really believe it’s that mental toughness that is the difference between having a really good season and not having a good season.
For you, you’ve had quite a long kind of apprenticeship. Have you taken on any one person’s style or is it more a conglomeration of a number of styles and ideas?
I think it’s more a conglomeration. Two really stand out in Arnie and Ian Crook. I’m in contact with them quite regularly as well. I think in the style of football that you like to play as well, knowing the cattle that you’ve got to utlisie. I watch a lot of football on the TV and now we have ESPN and Fox and what have you and you see all the best players week in, week out and you get to see how they play with the different camera angles you can see what they do. I think last year both Chelsea and Arsenal played some extremely good football. I’m a diehard Liverpool supporter but I really appreciate the way that Arsenal plays. They’ve been likened to PlayStation, it’s just magnificent how they play. The system that they’ve adopted has them playing very much like the French national team in years gone by and I thought they have a very attractive way of playing. We set up the same way because I thought we had similar players with attributes that would lend themselves to making it work. As a player as well – you think back to how you’ve been coached. You think back to when you’ve had disastrous seasons and how you were treated as players and the information they gave you. Sometimes as a player you don’t realise until you step back and have a good look at it. It’s good with all the different coverages that come out and information is very accessible.
You seem to be quite a modern coach. How important is scouting the other team and their weaknesses and strengths?
We do that. Mark who I was allowed to bring in – we don’t have a strength and conditioning coach as such – but has a very strong background in strength and conditioning as well also has a coaching background in his own right as well. He’s been working with the AIS program for many years and was involved in the boy’s program and before that the women’s program. We have a strong contingency in Newcastle of Matildas, Young Matildas from U-17 Matildas who have been doing very well under his guidance and he’s come in and is quite good with the computer stuff in relation to video analysis and sports tech program where we can analyse our performance and the team that we’re playing down to how many times did this person touch it and in what third... That’s probably the most time-consuming part of the week but it’s all about preparing properly and getting the little things right. Just little things we can pick up on to give the players as much information – not to overload them – but on the basis of what we feel is important and to the point.
What will you look back on most fondly from this season?
Walking out as the head coach against New Zealand was a moment I will remember quite distinctly. And then the next one would be playing Sydney on New Year’s Day when we broke the ground record. That for me was another point, seeing the support and on a day which is not seen synonomously as a day for crowds to turn out. And obviously the home game against Sydney was phenomenal for me. To have the crowd at capacity and to win the night was great.
Next season, where will the improvements be made?
I think you’re buying and selling is very important as the manager where you really earn your dollars. Many coaches can put sessions on about how to play but if you don’t have the talent you’re not going to achieve it. Your hiring and firing has to be spot on. You’ve got your jigsaw puzzle in your head and you’ve hopefully got the pieces around it to fit it. That for me is extremely important.
To find out who else scooped a coveted FourFourTwo award, make sure you pick up the April 2007 issue on sale 7 March.
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