Fagan’s journey from gravel-ground gory to MCG glory
Chris Fagan has gone from a gravel ground in a small Tasmanian town to MCG glory and an unprecedented AFL coaching feat.
Brisbane approached Chris Fagan with a dual purpose.
The Lions had just finished 17th in 2016, and 17th and 15th in preceding seasons. The club had played finals just once in the previous dozen years.
After sacking Justin Leppitsch, the Lions’ then-chief Greg Swann hunted for a new head coach.
He wanted Brisbane to be relevant in the AFL again. And he wanted someone who could educate players.
So Swann sounded out Fagan, a teacher from Tasmania who never played in the VFL/AFL but was a highly regarded development coach.
“The first thing ‘Fages’ said to me was: ‘I’m a coach, you know. I have coached a lot … I want to be an AFL coach’,” Swann has said.
Fagan had indeed coached a lot before being appointed by Brisbane in October 2016. His desire to do so can be traced to his childhood.
Christian Fagan was born in 1961 at Queenstown on Tasmania’s West Coast; a place with a footy oval as rugged as the coastline – the surface was gravel, not grass.
His father Austin coached the local team and would frequently invite players to dinner, to get to know them better.
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“Maybe he was a bit before his time,” Fagan told AFL.com.au three years ago.
After moving to Hobart, Fagan played 263 games in the Tasmanian Football League, including two premierships, and also featured a dozen times for his state.
A 21-year-old Fagan coached for the first time – his primary school’s team.
On retiring as a player, he was an assistant coach at North Hobart and head coach at Sandy Bay, before taking over as Tassie Mariners coach in the national under-18 competition.
Fagan thought he had the best of both worlds.
“I had always loved the teaching bit. I had always loved footy,” he has said.
“I thought: ‘I’ve got a chance here to do the two things I love the most full-time’.
“I didn’t do the Tassie Mariners job as a stepping stone to the AFL, I just wanted to do it.
“I probably thought I would do this a while and go back to teaching.”
Fagan never taught in schools again, but admitted failing as the Mariners coach.
“I decided I was going to be a real hard-arse … I was ridiculously hard on them. It didn’t work,” he said.
After spending 1995-98 as Mariners coach, Fagan noted a trend in the AFL of appointing development coaches, so he sent his resume around.
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Only Melbourne replied. And then-Demons coach Neale Daniher would later remark: “Finding Chris Fagan was the best recruiting decision I made in all my time at Melbourne”.
Fagan moved to Melbourne, coached their reserves team in 1998-99, was an assistant to Daniher from 2000-04, and the club’s football operations manager from 2005-07.
He joined Hawthorn as their head of coaching and development in 2008 – the Hawks tried to lure him a year earlier, but he stayed at Melbourne out of loyalty to Daniher, who was sacked at the end of 2007.
Swann and the Lions came calling at the end of the 2016 season and appointed Fagan as head coach.
“Chris is the perfect fit for the Brisbane Lions as we strive to regain relevance,” Swann said at the time.
“His knowledge, experience, mentoring skills and ability to communicate are all elite.”
Fagan set about rebuilding the Lions to relevance – they “won” the wooden spoon his first season, then placed 17th.
The Lions returned to the playoffs in 2019, when Fagan claimed the AFL Coaches Association award as coach of the year.
He won the honour again last year, when the Lions claimed the flag; and again this season, when Brisbane will meet Geelong in Saturday’s grand final.
Fagan is the only three-time winner of the award.
And all the while he has demonstrated traits developed from his upbringing in Tasmania: put people first, the results will come.
“You need to get to know them as a person, what makes them tick, what motivates them – that’s a key pillar,” Fagan has said.
“You have to create a supportive environment where people have the opportunity to grow and develop and thrive.
“To do that you’ve got to make it safe. Safety means they feel respected, can have an opinion … if they don’t feel supported, they’ll feel fear and trepidation and uncertainty, and that can get in the way of progress.
“That doesn’t mean we create a warm, fuzzy environment where we all hug each other and sing Kumbaya.
“It’s about honesty.
“I’d rather be a transformational coach, somebody who can coach the all-round athlete and help them develop as a person, as opposed to a transactional coach who just is interested in what you can do and what you play on the weekend.”
-with AAP
