With a plethora of small and medium-sized forwards at Linen House Centre, the appointment of former Sydney and Hawthorn star Ben McGlynn as a development coach has had an impact on St Kilda’s offense, according to Senior Coach Alan Richardson.
McGlynn landed at the Saints in November after finishing his playing career on the game’s biggest stage, where the Swans fell short against the Western Bulldogs in a heartbreaking finish to the 31-year-old’s career.
Richardson said that McGlynn has got off to a positive start in his first few months at the Saints, where he has worked closely with forwards coach Aaron Hamill and the young, emerging forwards at the club.
“Benny has been able to bring a fair bit of his own experiences as one of the better small forwards in the game and we think that he’s been able to impart that knowledge really successfully so far,” Richardson told saints.com.au on Tuesday.
“He has been very impressive; he’s working really closely with Aaron Hamill and the forwards. It’s only early in Ben’s coaching career but so far it’s been a positive start.”
With more than a handful of players capable of playing a similar role to the one McGlynn executed in more than a decade in the game, Richardson believes McGlynn has the potential to make St Kilda’s forward line a more balanced threat in 2017.
“We believe our depth and quality of small forwards has the potential to be a competitive advantage for us as a footy club,” Richardson said ahead of St Kilda’s opening JLT Community Series game against Port Adelaide on Thursday night.
“If we can be really dynamic at the fall of the ball in our front half with players like [Darren Minchington and [Jack] Lonie, [Ben] Long’s now joined our footy club, [Jade] Gresham, [Maverick] Weller, [Nathan] Wright, [Jack] Sinclair and [Jack] Billings, given that we’ve got three or four big blokes that draw the ball, it has the potential to really be an advantage for us”.
“If Ben can transfer the way he prepared and played to our players then we’re going to have a really good balance between being good when we have the ball and being equally as impressive and influential when we don’t have the ball because that was certainly a strength of his.”
Richardson, who will hand the reins over to Adam Kingsley and Aaron Hamill in the first fortnight of the JLT Community Series, revealed that some of St Kilda’s senior players had picked McGlynn’s brains on the programs and cultures he’d been involved in the harbour city and at Waverley Park.
“He adds a bit more holistic value to the program given the respect that he has because of the way that he played and the programs that he was with,” he said.
