AFTER leading Imperials to flag favourite status in 2021, new Red Cliffs Tigers senior coach Ryan Doherty says he is hungry to coach a premiership after COVID-19 deprived him of the opportunity last season.
Doherty said he was excited by a future of sustainable success at the Tigers, but he said it had been a “tricky decision” moving to Quandong Park after leaving behind the football club he had grown up with.
“It’s a club that I’ve been at my whole life,” Doherty said.
“I played premierships, (was an) assistant coach, senior coach – it was a tricky decision.
“I was pretty disappointed with (Imps naming a different senior coach for 2022) but … it gave me time to just have 12 months off and reinvigorate myself a little bit, just to see where I wanted to go.”
Doherty first coached Imperials as an assistant from 2011 to 2013 and was part of their 2013 premiership. In 2021, Imperials had a 9-1 record when the season was cancelled in August.
The two-time premiership-winning player with Imperials said he took “a few months” to find his “hunger” for premiership success.
“We (Imps) didn’t really get a good chance to strut our stuff and we were in a really good position to probably get a flag,” Doherty said.
“I only really got to dip my toe in the water of the coaching scheme, so I was pretty keen to get back on board and do that again somewhere.
Doherty said he had “sneakily” watched a few Tigers games during the season and that he was excited both by the Red Cliffs being a one-team, one-town club and its investment in developing juniors.
“(Red Cliffs) are not looking for a quick fix,” he said. “They want more long-term sustainable success.”
Doherty said he would begin reaching out to players in a couple of weeks and that he was keen to imprint his philosophy of player empowerment to encourage them to lead their own growth.
“We’ll have sessions at training where you opt into things that you think you needed to work on based on the previous game,” he said.
“(I’ll be) putting the onus back on the players to identify what their strengths and their weaknesses are and then getting them to work on it.”
Doherty said he would establish common pregame and postgame expectations across under 18s, reserves and seniors so all players were ready to step up if needed.
He said he was reluctant to make bold predictions for 2023, but he expected the Tigers to show “continued improvement”.
However, after participating in the turnaround of 2011-2012 wooden spooners Imperials as they won the 2013 flag, Doherty said judicious recruiting combined with development could sometimes lead to unexpected outcomes.
“(2011-2012) was a good chance for us to get games into kids that wouldn’t necessarily have got much of a run,” he said. “We ended up recruiting pretty well the year after we won the flag.”
