Rob Chancellor: Richo's left hand man

ALL of St Kilda’s coaches are recognisable figures. Aaron Hamill is a former skipper, Adam Kingsley a Port Adelaide premiership player, Rohan Welsh an ex-VFL coach and Carlton player, and Danny Sexton a former number 11 draft pick who has risen through the ranks to become the club’s Director of Coaching and Strategy.

Perched high above the park, the coach and his support team have a bird’s eye view of the action on game day. The coaches’ box is a privileged space with limited seating and each person has a defined role within a confined area.

But there is one man who is not as recognisable as the aforementioned names. He is not an assistant coach, a development coach or even a stats man.

His name is Rob Chancellor, he is 25 years old and St Kilda’s Football Technology Manager. He sits on Alan Richardson’s left shoulder on game day and plays an integral and underrated role.

“It can be stressful in the box. Richo is one of the more calm and collected coach’s I’ve worked with,” Chancellor tells SAINTS.com.au earlier this week.

“It’s really important that in the heat of battle you remain calm so that you can make rational decisions instead of emotional decisions.”

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Previously Chancellor worked at Hawthorn for three seasons under Alistair Clarkson before spending two years under Mark Neeld and Neil Craig at Melbourne.

He spent a full year doing opposition analysis for the Demons, a role which also allowed him to present in front of the playing group.

In order for his career to advance in this niche field, moving clubs was essential.

“There are only 18 of me in the country,” he says matter-of-factly.

“So for me to progress from number three to number two in charge I had to take opportunities elsewhere. I was third in line at Hawthorn and then was second in line at Melbourne.

“When an opportunity came up at St Kilda, [Former Head of Football] Chris Pelchen - who I knew from the Hawks - gave me a call. I was keen to take the next step and it seemed like a good progression for me.”

Richardson and Chancellor share constant dialoguge throughout the match.

Chancellor heads St Kilda’s three-man football IT department - a rapidly evolving area of the industry that has grown infinitely over the last 20 years.

Supporting Chancellor is Callum Willis and Chris McKay.

On Sunday, Chancellor will arrive at Etihad Stadium around midday. He, Willis and McKay will set up the coaches’ box with all the technical equipment required to analyse the game.

By the time Alan Richardson and co take their seats one minute before the first bounce, their laptops will have a live stats feed from Champion Data and a live vision feed ready to go.

“Cal will sit next door, code what is happening out on the field and then push that vision through to all of the coaches,” Chancellor says.

“There are times when Richo will say to me ‘tell me what is happening with our rebound?’ So because I don’t have to watch the game play by play, I will go back and look at our last five rebound 50s and deliver feedback back to Richo.”

“It might be there isn’t enough movement ahead of the ball or that we haven’t moved it on quickly enough.

“At quarter-time I will give Richo a 30-second spiel about how I saw the quarter based on what the numbers mean. I put a bit of perspective and context onto the numbers for him… I’m there to help filter information.”

While plenty of analysts and experts base their fundamental opinions on raw statistics, Chancellor prefers to work the other way. He watches the play, forms a view and then finds the stats to back it up.

“You can get caught up in numbers but sometimes they don’t actually reflect what is happening,” he says.

“For example last week we had 76 tackles which is a great number when you look at it in isolation, but when you break it down to tackles where we prevented disposal, we actually didn’t prevent that many. So it’s an effective tackle, but we want to either disposes them or lock it in, so it’s not really what we are after.”

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(From right to left): Chancellor in his office with Callum Willis and Chris McKay.

Chancellor relies on his eye for football, and more specifically, his knowledge of structures, styles and the broad evolution of the game.

The last point is crucial, because as Chancellor’s role has expanded, so has his thirst for information.

He spends his summers watching other sports and studying trends from around the globe.

While he is acutely aware that football is a simple game at its core, he is equally passionate about staying ahead of the curve, no matter how left field his ideas and theories are.

“I love looking at other sports and comparing what principles we can apply to our game,” the Blackburn Cricket Club all-rounder says.

“In soccer, the whole team defends and if someone pushes up then a teammate will drop in behind to cover them. That’s very similar to footy.

“I look at basketball and how clean their hands are, tackling technique in rugby, and how structured they are in the American Football. We’ll find vision from other sports and then use that to educate players.”

Football pundits would be hard-pressed to agree on a stat that trumps all other stats. Chancellor has his own views based on eight years in the industry and thousands of hours of studying game patterns.

“The trend stat at the moment is the teams that can create midfield turnovers between the arcs are essentially the best teams,” he says.

“Last year the top six teams in this area were close enough to the top six teams on the ladder.