Dean Bailey

Bails by Harv

Sadly Dean Bailey has left us. Again. He was a dignified man, a positive man and a players' coach, whose senior coaching career, it seems, was ultimately undone by his players' commitment to him.

Apart from vague memories held by some of a nuggety and spectacularly unspectacular small man running around for the Dons a decade or so earlier, most had never heard of Bails when he was thrust head-long into the hot-seat at the Dees. He quickly made himself known and popular throughout the club, the playing group and the whole League. A TV panel favourite, open and hopeful.

There's no doubt he bore the brunt, wore the finger, of both the Melbourne Footy Club's self-distructive impulses, and the AFL's confused and schizophrenic attempt to put paid to the notion of tanking - both through the days of those dubious games, and the whole questionable denouement cheer-led by the conveniently myopic Caro Wilson and some other media attack-dogs.

He had a job to do and he set about doing it. His role was to develop a team from a rabble. In his final, rudely shortened, season he managed to pull 8 wins out of that team and have them arguably on the doorstep of the top 8. That is until they were crushed by 186 points by Geelong in what, if you believe what you hear, was the players' attempt to get the Club to sack then CEO Cam Schwab and protect Bailey from Schwab's meddling micromanagement. The irony, of course, is that the Club had just sacked Schwab but, in the light of that result, then reinstated him and sacked Bailey instead.

Bailey accepted this decision with a rare dignity. As he did his suspension for being found NOT guilty of tanking (Wilson et al constantly untruthfully push a historical rewrite of that decision to read 'guilty').

Dean Bailey was diagnosed with lung cancer in December, he passed away this morning. He was 47. His warmth, positivity and dignity will be sorely missed.

Thanks to PunchDrunk's one and only Harv for the fine pencil portrait of Bails.