Non playing coaches at uni clubs

I've been meaning to say something about this for a while, and at some point I'll have a more in-depth post on it, but I think non-playing coaches make an enormous difference to a team, especially mid-level teams. Just look at last year's final placings, and which teams had a non-playing coach.

1st - UQ
2nd - Macquarie (Nikki Shires)
3rd - UNSW (Ryan Purcell)
4th - Monash (Chris Stephens)
5th - UTas
6th - ANU (Lu Fearnside)
7th - USyd
8th - New Zealand
9th - Melbourne (Steve Wealands)
10th - UWA (Billy Alexander)
11th - QUT
12th - Flinders
13th - Ballarat
14th - Adelaide
15th - Murdoch
16th - UWS
17th - Latrobe (Lachlan McDonald)
18th - Griffith
19th - CSU
20th - UTS

So aside from the outlier (Latrobe - first AUG, mostly new players) the six teams with non-playing coaches made the top ten. Sure, with the list those teams had they probably would have finished up there anyway, but it got me thinking about how lower teams would benefit from having a non-playing coach on the sideline at AUG.

• Experience - the obvious one. Who wouldn't want a Worlds player giving advice to your beginner and intermediate players.
• Game plan - a really good captain would be able to have this covered, but an NPC would have a better perspective on how to capitalise on the skill level of your team.
• Watching the opposition - Hard to do when you're actually playing. An NPC would be able to spot flaws in an opponent's gameplay, and work out how to exploit it.

So how do you go about getting a coach? An ex-player would be the obvious route, but speaking to your sports association about funding, and your state association about who qualified coaches are in your area would be a starting point.