Lions.com.au takes a look at the five key points that Chris Fagan made at today's press conference:
Strengths Fagan brings to the Lions:
“Im very experienced, I’ve been around a long time."
"I think I’m really strong in the development area. Very strong in developing leaderships skills as well."
"That’s something I spent a lot of time on at Hawthorn and I think is really important for our football Club going forward."
"Ive been fortunate enough to sit in the coaches box at the Hawthorn Football Club for the last 9 years and that's probably been, you’d have to say, the best coaches box in the country for that period of time, so I’ve learnt a lot from Alistair Clarkson and all the other Coaches there."
"The Hawthorn Football Club is a bit like a university in a sense, the number of people that it’s developed."
"So all those experiences I think I bring those to the club and hopefully I can pass those onto the players and the staff because the staff are really important too, you have to develop a really strong coaching group that can guide our young players forward."
Improvements:
“I had a look at our points against last year (2016), I think we averaged 130 points a game against which is a massive number and so we’ll be looking to make gains in those sorts of areas, get better at defending, get better at winning the ball, get better at using the ball."
"The statistics from last season aren’t great, but they’re just numbers and those numbers can change pretty quickly."
"Things can turn around pretty quickly, we’ve just got to get the talent in, train it up really well and hopefully their youthful enthusiasm will bring the stadium alive again.”
#1 Priority:
“A real priority of mine is to get to talk to all the players before we begin pre-season because I just want to talk to them about themselves and their own goals and get to know them a little bit so thats a real key priority for me, thats the absolute starting point I think that we need to make.”
Where are we and where are we going:
“I think the Club is very realistic about where the team's at, it's a very young team. There are not too many guys in this group who have played 100 games. So i think what we need to create here is a highly demanding environment but also a highly supportive environment so that we can get improvement as quickly as possible."
"I’m not coming up here for 3 years to swan around and not care whether the team improves or not, we want to see improvement, that's what you Coach for, is to see that improvement, thats why I want to be a Coach."
"That's the thing I enjoy most in life is actually, seeing young people improve and achieve things. So there will certainly be an edge to it but we need to be patient aswell."
Fagan's first task:
“I’ve got to earn the respect of the players and the people here at this Football Club, that’s the first thing a coach has to do, thats what I’m going to work hard at developing."
"That’s a two way process too, I’ve got to develop trust in the people around me and once you get trust you get a lot of connectiveness around the football club and things start to happen and thats the goal."
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