Can you believe this is your 25th season?
I suppose I can. When I look in the mirror in the morning, I can. I know it's been a fair while.
After all these years, do you think it's easier to get yourself up mentally for a season of playing, or a season of coaching?
A season of playing. It's a long time ago that I played, but it's a lot easier.
Did you always want to coach?
Towards 26 or 27, I was starting to think about coaching.
What sort of coach do you consider yourself to be?
You'd have to ask the players. Your own perception is sometimes so far off the mark, it doesn't make any difference.
Has it turned into a younger man's game with the influx of young coaches coming through?
I think the media have latched onto that. I can now talk about it, being a 'senior' coach, as in age. Quite frankly, I am amazed that we are so hell-bent on age. I know Sheeds (Kevin Sheedy) has said in the past, 'You can just as easily lose your marbles in this game at 35, 45, 55.'
You're either good enough or you're not good enough, and you're not going to convince people because of your age. [Manchester United's] Sir Alex Ferguson is 60-odd, most of the US coaches are mid-40s to mid-60s and the average out suggests 50-odd. But I would say it's closer to 60.
It's not age. It's how your players respond. If they can't respond to me at 54, or they can't respond to [Essendon coach] Matthew Knights at 38 … age doesn't matter. That's why it's important to have good people around you.
Do you think you have good people around you?
I think so. I don't coach per se, I manage coaches and I have a bearing on the match or a say on the match day more so than I do during the week. I go to training, have a look at it, see what's happening, help to select the side, but from then on in you have to have trust in the people around you.
Football can be very selfish. It can be very much all for us and none for the league - you think of the club more than the competition. But when it's all said and done, in my time in football there are very few bad people. Most people are very good people, and I'm talking 95, 97, 98 per cent are very good, very decent people.
With the number of people around you now to what it was like 25 years ago, your role must have changed a considerable amount.
A coach coming in right now, he can't do what I do. You've got to take control as a young coach coming in. When you get your feet and you're happy with the way things are going, you've got the confidence and you've been around for long enough, you can say, 'If I stay in this role any longer, the players are going to get sick of me.' So you let them get sick of someone else, step one out, one back, still control it, but without being in their faces.
How many hours does it involve?
I couldn't tell you.
How many days?
We just have one day away.
What would you do if you weren't coaching?
I have no idea. I really don't know, but it will come one day. Coaches don't choose how long they coach; the committee chooses that. Coaches don't have a say. Any of us can say we'd like to coach another 10 years but you can't say that. There are too many elements that determine how long you're going to coach for - the playing group's success, non-success, new committee, new coaches.
There's been a lot of coaches stabbed in the back by their assistant coaches and there's been a lot of board changes where they've said, 'We don't like that coach' or there's been a lot of administrators that do or don't want that bloke in.
There's a lot of factors. It's not just a matter of turning up and saying, 'Here I am, I'm going to coach.'
Do you still enjoy it as much as you did when you started out?
Do I enjoy it as much? I think naively, as a first-year to three, four and perhaps five-year coach, you think everything is fantastic with life and that winning and losing is a by-product of your efforts. You really don't get caught up too much in anything because of your raw love of the game. I have got a far different opinion of football than I did back then. There's so many things I just don't like.
Is it an even playing field?
It's far from an even playing field. It's one of the idiosyncrasies of having 16 teams in a 22-week year and having non-Victorian sides and some that get allowances and others that don't, and salary caps and drafts and priority picks, travel. But you know what, that's part of the game. There are certain things that should change and there are certain things that can't change.
If you bring an 18th side in, it just means we play 17 sides and less sides twice. It means probably more travel, which is good because it's a national competition. Is there going to be concessions? Yes, and that will be wrong, because our Collingwood members pay for us to win and they shouldn't be compromised because the competition is compromised by some teams having extra in their salary caps, others getting hand-outs for mediocrity, others getting first round or priority picks because they've been down the bottom or whatever.
There's a few things I don't like - and they don't listen to the coaches - but I'd change a lot of things if I was in a position at the AFL that was consistent with trying to make the game more even so that a member, when he puts his dollar into a club, has the same opportunity as the members from another club.
Collingwood members are pretty blessed, aren't they?
They might be blessed, but for every dollar there's been no hand-outs to Collingwood. When we were out at Victoria Park and the place was falling down around us, I was in a condemned room with toadstools growing up the wall and the AFL didn't bother putting any money into our football club. It was done by us. At the end of the day, thank God we didn't get it so we're not relying on the AFL for hand-outs.
We did it ourselves through Eddie McGuire, getting here to the Lexus Centre from a rat-infested area into one of the great sporting precincts in the world. Eddie didn't do the whole lot, but he certainly did a big part of it.
Is it nice having Eddie back around again?
Ed has always been a very good friend of mine. He works unbelievably hard. Where does his energy come from?
What do you consider the biggest myth in footy?
I was absolutely intrigued and loved [Adelaide coach] Neil Craig's pre-match interview on the ground with a South Australian boundary rider. The boundary rider said to him, 'Did you get into them and really stir them up?' and Neil said, 'No but I must remember that.' That, to me, says so much.
Everyone thinks, and I cannot believe how many people say to me as I'm going down the race, 'Get into 'em, Mickey'. What does that even mean? Let me assure you that if there's a backside to be kicked, I'll do it, but generally speaking most of my boys understand where I'm coming from without having to raise my voice too much.
The myths and legends of football still believe that [St Kilda and North Melbourne coach of the fifties and sixties] Alan Killigrew gives a speech before the game and it peels the paint off the walls and the roof falls down and the carpet rolls up, and the players run out smelling the salts and everything else. It doesn't happen.
If you were starting a team from scratch and had the whole league to pick three players from, who would you choose?
Scott Burns, Josh Fraser and any one of our Nick Maxwell, Tarkyn Locker and Scott Pendlebury. They'd be in my team. I love them.
I don't wish for any other player. I'm very content with my group. I love my group, they're good boys. And they fight hard and they are easily coached, and I respect them.
Click here to read part two of our exclusive interview with the Magpie coach.
