Adrian Fletcher - Herald Sun

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Fletcher plan matches up
25 May 2002 Herald Sun
By JON RALPH

ADRIAN Fletcher has the best of both worlds. As a player with Williamstown and skills coach at Collingwood, he racks up 30 touches every weekend in the VFL, then sits next to Mick Malthouse in the Pies' coaching box and picks one of footy's best minds.

While countless players have agonised about the right time to retire before moving into coaching, Fletcher is performing the transition gradually and, by all accounts successfully.

Fletcher, the ultimate football journeyman, played at four AFL clubs in his 231 games, and could have gone on.

But after being delisted by the Dockers, despite a top-10 best-and-fairest finish, he was approached about coaching at Collingwood, and the chance to learn the trade and play at its VFL-aligned club Williamstown was too good to pass up.

Fletcher continues to star in the VFL, patrolling the centre square with sure hands and precise kicking, but it is his coaching that is the main priority.

The 31-year-old is responsible for match-ups in the Collingwood coaching box.

"It is a great opportunity. What I am learning from listening to people in the box is something I wouldn't have got anywhere else," he said.

"It is hard to get the match-ups when teams are flooding and zoning back. It can be quite hard, but you just have to do your homework and know where people are going to play."

As a student of the game and a weekly participant, Fletcher is perhaps the best person to judge the standard of VFL football compared to the elite competition.

"It is a great standard and I am really enjoying the challenge. The AFL is a little bit quicker, but in the VFL you have to get in and win the footy, like any game, and there are more stoppages in the VFL. Once it gets out, it is very quick football."

Away from football Fletcher, a qualified plumber, is getting work experience in the trade through an AFL grant and completing a management course from home, everything building towards a dream of coaching an AFL club in the future.

"I have just got to get as many strings to my bow as I can in the next 12 months," he said.



"Racetracks are for racing, roads are for getting there."