Troy Schwarze still loves AFL football, but he reckons it can be suffocating and some are better-off away from it all.

Not for a moment, mind you, would he swap his seven seasons including a final at St Kilda.

It’s just that it was all-enveloping and he was unable to do anything outside a sport now fully professional.

“The AFL is great and all that, but I have moved on in my life,” says Schwarze, now playing coach of the Sorrento Sharks on the Mornington Peninsula.

“There are bigger and better things out there. Before my life was being dictated by something else. It’s good to have the freedom and your own life back again.”

The 26-year-old says he can now enjoy a beer after a game and get away, too, and indulge his family, wife Kim and baby daughter Belle at weekends.

“You don’t realise how big footy is until you step away from it,” he says.

“Once you have stepped away, you realise it takes up everything in your life. Every day it fills up the newspapers. All you watch at the weekends is football.

“At the time it would have been nice to have still stayed there (at St Kilda), but I wouldn’t change anything for the world now. Life is more relaxing when you’re not playing.”

Schwarz had debuted for the Saints as an 18-year-old and says he was privileged to have played alongside some of the greatest of the modern era from Robert Harvey through to Nathan Burke and Stewart Loewe.

He still vividly recalls his one and only final, when the Saints were thrashed by a red-hot Brisbane at the ‘Gabba, but he says it was still an experience just to be out there.

“We were absolutely pummelled. They were in their prime back then, but it still remains a real memory, along with my first game and the late goal I kicked against Brisbane which helped to get us over the line one Saturday night at the Telstra Dome,” he said.

If he could have his time again, he says he’d be a more complete player for the experience of coaching, but he has few regrets about having his League career terminated.

Since 2007, he has been coaching Sorrento and says it’s as big a learning curve as any he’s had in the game.

“(As a coach) You are continually learning,” he says. “We made some mistakes late in the year last year. I actually coached better as the year went on but the results were not reflected, not at the end anyway. We went out (of the finals) in straight sets. “But we have picked up some handy players this year who are quality players at this local football level and we have been playing reasonably consistently too. “I try and give confidence to the players by backing them in as much as possible. “I’ll back them in to win their position. We have a game plan we train to and all train the same way, looking to keep things steady. “I don’t try to change tactics from week to week and every week I ask them to come with the same level of intensity, whether they’re playing top or bottom.” Sorrento was beaten only once in the first half of the season, by the Frankston Bombers and Schwarze says the lessons were immense. “Next time around we need to counter their best players and get our better players into the game earlier,” he said.

“We struggled when we got the ball forward last time. We need to attack the game a bit more and run and carry.”

Asked if he tried to implement some of the AFL tactics like switching and handballing almost as much as kicking, he said he liked the team to “keep it pretty basic.”

“We do handball as much as possible and if we can switch (direction) we do, before bringing it back inside,” he said.
“But if there’s nothing on, we go straight and long down the line and ask the forwards to make a contest. We’d certainly like to be back up there again this year.”

Schwarze says his playing-coach role makes it difficult to fine-tune all the tactics and he is lucky to have a most able back-up staff including Tony Blackford and Pete O’Gorman.

Among Sorrento’s standouts in the first half of the season have been utilities Sam Edmond, and Trevor Mattison, ruckman Scott Cameron and midfielder come forward Matt Burns who made the Victorian Country team.

Schwarze has been playing at centre half back and has carried his AFL nickname of “Wool” to his adopted club.

“I think my hair is even curlier now I’m coaching,” he says.

By Ken Piesse

< Prev		Next >