MELBOURNE Football Club is pleased to announce the appointment of Neil Craig to the position of Director Of Sports Performance.
Craig is a highly regarded and respected identity in Australian Sport.
He comes to Melbourne following seven successful years as senior coach of the Adelaide Crows, the longest serving coach in their history.
Prior to that, Craig was an assistant coach with the Crows and also acted as fitness adviser, overseeing their back-to-back premierships in 1997 and 1998.
Craig has also worked at the Olympic level, advising the Australian cycling team at the Sydney Olympics. As a player, Craig amassed a total of 319 games in the SANFL as well as 11 State of Origin matches for South Australia. He is a member of the South Australian Hall of Fame.
Neil Craig said: “I am convinced through my dialogue with Cameron Schwab, Garry Lyon and the Board, that the Melbourne Football Club is serious about becoming a high performance football club."
“I love the history of the Melbourne Football Club. When I walk through the MCG and look at the honor boards I see that the Melbourne Football Club started this game, wrote the rules and have produced some all time great coaches.
“In Mark Neeld I see a coach that has a clear vision and I wanted to be part of this coaching group that will work really hard to give the members and supporters what they have been craving for."
The Director of Sports Performance is an overarching Club leadership position, reporting to Chief Executive Officer Cameron Schwab.
The position will provide leadership, strategic direction and management support across all aspects of the Football Department’s performance structure including Senior Coach Mark Neeld, Elite Performance Manager David Misson and General Manager, Player Development & Strategy Todd Viney.
As part of this, a key responsibility for the Director of Sport Performance will be supporting, developing and mentoring the coaching team. The role will strongly focus on the establishment of an elite performance culture, in particular strategy and innovation.
The reporting structure shall not, in any way, dilute the status, scope or significance of the role of Senior Coach, but allow the senior coach and his coaching team to focus on achieving their full potential both personally and in context of team performance.
Senior Coach Mark Neeld said: “I have said from the outset that we must demand to have the very best people at this Club and the prospect of Neil Craig in this role was a big enticement in my decision to take the senior coaching role at Melbourne. “
CEO Cameron Schwab said: “Our first consideration in relation to our football structure was to establish a model which reflects the challenges and complexity of an elite sporting environment."
"A key focus was to ensure that we build a coaching model that allows a well-resourced and highly credentialed coaching team to operate with minimal distraction. Simply, we want coaches to focus on coaching.
“At the same time, we have a strong objective to be innovative across all areas of performance, be that team and player development or sport science.
“We targeted Neil Craig for this role as we sought to secure our coaching structure. As with Mark Neeld, Neil Craig was our first choice for this position and we are delighted he has accepted this role.
“This is a different model than has traditionally existed in AFL clubs, but we are confident it in the structure we now have in place being the very best for our purpose.
“With Mark Neeld, Neil Craig, Todd Viney and David Misson, together with recently announced assistant coaching appointments, we have put in place a highly credentialed team with a broad range of experiences and expertise.”
