Football was a simple game: Jeans
Jeans was dour and conservative by nature, but the teams he coached at Hawthorn were the complete opposite.
LEGENDARY premiership coach Allan Jeans, an iconic figure at both the St Kilda and Hawthorn football clubs, has passed away after a long illness. He was 77.
Jeans had been battling a respiratory illness for a considerable period and was living in an outer-suburban Melbourne nursing home that, because it was owned by a fanatical Hawks supporter, had a wing that carried his name.
Jeans's place in St Kilda's history is assured by the events of September 24, 1966, the day on which he coached the Saints to their only league premiership.
Recruited from the New South Wales town of Finley, he was a skilful, but admittedly slow defender for the Saints over 77 games between 1955 and 1959.
After a short stint as assistant coach, he was named St Kilda's senior coach in 1961 and within a few years was in charge of a side laden with superstars such as triple Brownlow medallist Ian Stewart, Darrel Baldock and the 1967 Brownlow winner, Ross Smith.
He led the Saints to their first Grand Final in 52 years in 1965, losing to Essendon, but they went one step better the following year, beating Collingwood by a point in one of the most famous Grand Finals of all.
Jeans spent another 10 years in charge of the Saints, guiding them to another Grand Final in 1971, in which they were beaten by seven points by Hawthorn, despite having led by 20 points at three-quarter time. "The season went one quarter too long for St Kilda," he said afterwards.
But he also said that he could think of no better club to lose to than Hawthorn or coach than John Kennedy, and it proved to be a prophetic statement because in 1981, after a four-year break from coaching and at Kennedy's urging, he was appointed coach of the Hawks.
Jeans was dour and conservative by nature, but the teams he coached at Hawthorn were the complete opposite. The Hawks were a side with flamboyant personalities such as Dermott Brereton and Robert DiPierdomenico and they brought a new approach to the game with gut-running, switching of the play and setting up their attack from the deep in defence.
Under his tutelage, the Hawks won the 1983, 1986 and 1989 Grand Finals. They also won the 1988 flag, the year he stood out of coaching after becoming seriously ill and handed the temporary reins to Alan Joyce.
Players from both clubs adored Jeans. To many he was a father figure and to those who followed him into coaching (six former Saints and nine ex-Hawks did) he was a mentor and confidante. Dermott Brereton told the AFL Record in 2009, "Some day he'll go to God, and there will be more grown men crying at Allan Jeans's passing than anyone else I can think of."
Football was a simple game, Jeans used to say, with three simple phases that he described as, "We have the ball, they have the ball or the ball is in dispute." And when asked to explain how he dealt with the various personality types that make up a football team, he compared them to sausages, saying, "You can grill them, fry 'em, curry 'em, barbecue 'em, bake 'em, but they're still sausages."
Jeans finished up at Hawthorn at the end of 1990, before returning for one season with Richmond in 1992.
He was named a legend of the St Kilda Hall of Fame and is a member of both the AFL and Hawthorn halls of fame.
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