WESTERN Bulldogs coach Brendan McCartney was so excited this week by the Dogs' training form - and more importantly their adherence to his methods and new game plan - that he has compared the feeling it gave him to the exhilaration of winning a game.
McCartney is yet to coach an official AFL match in his own right let alone win one, but he knows a lot about success after being an integral part of Geelong's dynasty.
At a dinner at the town hall in Swan Hill, where the Bulldogs held their two-day community camp, McCartney revealed Monday's session at Whitten Oval was a small landmark for coaches and players.
And it might one day be viewed as something far more significant than that if McCartney's plan for the Bulldogs comes to fruition.
"We had a session yesterday where it just worked, and it went very well," McCartney said.
"As a coach - and it's a bit like being a parent or a teacher or a boss in any form of work - when you see things come together it's incredibly satisfying.
"It's almost more satisfying than winning a game sometimes to see young players improve and master things that you've been asking them to work at.
"It is the best part of the job.
"It's something, as a senior coach, after probably waiting a long time to get the opportunity, I'm most looking forward to."
During the interview process that eventually landed him the Bulldogs coaching job, a club official asked McCartney to rate the playing list. He replied: "Never ask me that question again. It's not about the list, it's about the team, and how the team functions, and how people come together and do their job."
"That's something I understand and get," he said this week.
"And I've got a group of coaches around me who also understand it and want to be part of it, and a group of senior players who understand it and want to help create it.
"So our list is going to be fine as long as we stick to that formula where people play as a team and fit the team, fit the club and are good workmates and good teammates.
"We've come a long way in that area, and we've got a long way to go to get it to be exactly where I want it to be. But we're well down the path."
McCartney has found the step up to senior coaching exhausting but rewarding.
"I'm going to bed most nights pretty puffed because it's a hectic lifestyle, but I'm also going to bed really satisfied that we're doing a good job as a footy club to give some fantastic people and players a great opportunity to have a long-term career," he said.
"Our main aim is that hopefully we can create some premiership players, multiple premiership players; coaches that are a part of premiership success and who can go on and be better coaches themselves; physios who help put great teams together and can go on and get more important lines of work because that's what the world's about …
"And I think - I think - we've been OK at it so far. But our test is coming."
The community camp was a homecoming of sorts for McCartney, who spent the first nine years of his life in the Swan Hill region, in the small Murray River town of Nyah.
"I loved my time up here and I've still got some relations (here) - there's a couple over there that I own up to, and a couple that I don't own up to," he told the town hall crowd.
McCartney's country roots continued to influence his coaching.
"I've probably spent a lot of my footy (career) in country clubs," he said.
"I guess, coaching in the AFL for 15 years, the same fundamentals apply.
"As coach of the Western Bulldogs, it's a massive responsibility to win games for all our supporters (and) there's a marketing element with the corporates and sponsors, but it's pretty much the same thing …
"I guess (we want) to create an environment which is rather like a country town in that the older players in the club have a great responsibility to teach the younger players how to train, how to live, how to do the right thing and how to be a good teammate, and most of our summer's been about that.
"We've got a fantastic crop of experienced, hardened AFL players (who) know what to do and are going to handle this season brilliantly well, I've got no doubt," he said.
"We've also got a big batch of young people who are just embarking on what I think for some will be long-term careers."
As part of their quest to engage with the local community, the Bulldogs also visited Swan Hill Hospital and ran a NAB Auskick superclinic and training session at the home of Central Murray league club Tyntynder Bulldogs.
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