PAUL Roos says his senior coaching successor won’t be anointed this year, after the club initially wanted to lock in that position soon after the new Melbourne coach’s appointment.

But Roos said there was no rush to lock the next Melbourne coach in now, given he would be at the helm until at least the end of 2015, possibly 2016. 

“Not now [we won’t appoint my successor before the 2014 season]. It was a process we embarked on and it was never going to be something that was urgent,” he said at AAMI Park on the first day of Melbourne’s pre-season campaign.

“Ideally, we would’ve liked to have had someone in place, but again, I’m here for two or three years anyway.

“It’s getting the synergy and getting the right person in place … and through part of the process you start to realise who does want to be a coach and who doesn’t want to be a coach.”

Roos said potential candidates would emerge over the next year.

“There’s still that school of thought for some assistant coaches that they feel a little bit reluctant to put their hands up for jobs, because as we’ve seen over the past decade, if you miss two or three jobs, you tend to get pushed back in the line a bit,” he said.

“It really now gives us 12 months to make some inquiries of managers and see who does and who doesn’t [want to become a senior coach]. Hopefully, that’ll emerge over the next 12 months going into the following season.”

Roos said dual premiership player and now Sydney Swans assistant coach Stuart Dew, who was earmarked as Roos’ successor, was ruled out due to family commitments.

“At the end of the day, Dewy wasn’t a candidate at the end, because he couldn’t leave Sydney for family reasons, so it really had nothing to do with the other stuff,” he said.

“Sydney in the end was actually quite good, but Dewy, part of the process of when it emerged, was that from a family point of view, he had to stay in Sydney, so he couldn’t apply for the job.”