Lyon maintains self-belief
04 May 2007 Herald-Sun
Trevor Grant
THERE is something about St Kilda coach Ross Lyon that doesn't quite jell.
Pressure intensifies: St Kilda's indifferent start to the season has placed more pressure on coach Ross Lyon who attempts to break a 41-year premiership drought for the Saints. Picture: Michael Dodge
He should have been sitting there with a furrowed brow explaining, in a suitably serious tone, the magnitude of the job he confronts as his injury-riddled team starts to crack around the edges.
Yet there he was, at another midweek media conference, trying out his dry humour on reporters, being candid about injuries and rolling his eyes and grinning mischievously in a self-deprecating manner that is both delightful and puzzling.
Lyon appears anything but a rookie coach with a limited reputation and profile now at a club whose lone premiership came 41 years ago and, according to some, has once again let slip a real opportunity to end this miserable history of failure.
He's the man charged with trying to jimmy open a premiership window that an increasing number of observers believe is all but shut, especially as the gap between even the best Victorian teams and their interstate rivals grows wider by the week.
But, as he deals with a stuttering start to his senior coaching career, Lyon's relaxed, understated demeanour suggests he is as confident and assured about his direction as any coach, let alone an untried one, could be.
In a business that likes to disembowel unsuccessful coaches, it takes some doing to be your own man but Lyon is not just willing to do so, he knows no other way.
There's no false bravado here. It's in the genes, as he outlined this week when explaining the results from the two psychological profiles that were produced on him, the first at his former job as an assistant to Paul Roos at Sydney and the second at St Kilda late last year.
Asked how he thinks he will cope with the pressure that is already starting to build at a club with so little success and so much expectation, he looked at me with that grin and said: "My profile says my stress tolerance is really high. So throw a brick at me."
He might have been smiling but he wasn't kidding. There is an unerring self-belief in his methods that is obvious to anyone who has worked with him.
His former boss, Roos, said many AFL coaches at Victorian-based clubs these days caved in to pressure exerted by outside influences, such as the media, supporters and boards, and ended up deviating from their own methods. But he was convinced Lyon would not be one of them.
"I've watched a lot of coaches in Melbourne and I've noticed quite a few of them haven't really gone down swinging," Roos said. "They've taken too much advice from people in the media, Joe down at the sandwich bar, Snowy the tram driver. One week they play one way, the next week a different way.
"The pressures are so much greater in Melbourne than Sydney or Brisbane and I think the greatest challenge coaches face there is really to stay the course. The thing I see with Ross is that he'll do it his way. He won't waver."
When Roos started out his career as a coach, taking over from Rodney Eade at the Swans in Round 13, 2002, he was 2-3 after five games. Lyon has the same ratio after five rounds, having lost successive games to Essendon and Port Adelaide and facing Carlton tonight at Telstra Dome to get out of negative territory.
Although they are now officially rivals - and will certainly be so in Round 7 when Sydney comes to Telstra Dome to play the Saints - the friendship that was begun in their days at Fitzroy and then enhanced through four seasons at Sydney, including the 2005 premiership, has not diminished. Indeed, Roos speaks regularly to Lyon, offering support and advice from afar.
"I talk to him once or twice a week. I don't interfere," Roos said. "It's more about reinforcing the things he's trying to do. The main thing I've been talking to him about is that you can't change things overnight, especially when you've got a lot of injuries.
"He rang me on the Saturday after Friday night's game. I just told him what I observed the previous night and we had a chat. I've spoken a bit to him about the things he's going to try to change. He's not making dramatic changes. He knows even small changes take time, that you have to do things in small increments.
"It's easier up here, where AFL is not the predominant sport and you are not getting 1000 letters a week and everyone telling you that you are doing things the wrong way. It's important Ross keeps in contact with people he trusts. He's got a couple of really good friends in his two assistants Tony Elshaug and Steve Silvagni. As long as there are people around him who are reinforcing his views and the fact that it's not going to happen overnight, he'll be fine."
Lyon gives the impression nothing could faze him in this venture into the unknown, but he conceded there was one thing that had certainly surprised him - the intensity of the support for St Kilda.
"I'm a passionate footy person and I was prepared for it. But even then it was a lot more than I expected," he said. "When you get to Telstra Dome against Essendon and see 40,000 passionate Saints fans expressing such love for the club, you certainly feel the responsibility."
The way he carries that responsibility, especially in the initial stages, has been closely monitored, inside and outside the club. So far, in trying circumstances that have included losing his three best key defenders - Matt Maguire, Max Hudghton, and Sam Fisher - to injury, he has stood up well to scrutiny.
"There's no doubt a few of the injuries have put me under a bit more pressure, personnel-wise, than I'd like to be under. But everyone is going to go through that at some stage," Lyon said.
"If you start thinking about what can go wrong, you can doubt yourself and that can filter through. It's my job to be confident. After we lost to Brisbane in the second game, we walked in and said, 'This is what we are going to do against the Bulldogs the next week. We believe we can.' And we did it. It's the same this week.
"I know when we do what we want to do and execute, we play good football, even without key players.
"Our indicator board in our wins is nearly all green. When we we lose it's all red. If we were losing and our indicators told us we were achieving, I'd know I had the wrong plan. There's strong evidence to show we are going the right way.
"I spoke to Robert Harvey this week and asked him a few things. Are the messages clear? Are they consistent? Do you believe in it? All the answers were, 'Yeah'.
"He has real belief. He said the challenge was consistency. In the games we've lost there have been these quick little bursts from the opposition that have put us under pressure; 10-minute patches where teams have scored pretty quickly. When we are disciplined we win."
As he works through the inconsistency that has brought the 2-3 start, Lyon draws on the inspiration of watching his close friend Roos two seasons ago.
"I've been at a club that was 2-4 after six games and won a premiership under all sorts of pressure," he said. "There was an unbelievable amount of pressure about the game plan but he never doubted it or what needed to be done. You need to be hard and smart until it turns. We just want a bit more persistence and perseverance."
In the meantime, Lyon, who worked as an assistant at Carlton from 1997-2003, also reminds himself of coach Denis Pagan's philosophy through the dark season of 2003, when the Blues won only four games.
"I remember Denis saying all the time, 'Never doubt yourself, son'," he said.
You might say the apprentice has learnt well from the master, no doubt about it.
] are ready to write him off after 5 games...
