Adelaide Hawk wrote:I've never quite known where I sit with Mike Nunan. Obviously a great rover, and many Sturt supporters have told me if Nunan had worn a double blue jumper instead of a red & blue one in the 1978 GF, Sturt would never have been beaten.
I can understand Mike's annoyance with Sturt's dismissal of him, but I thought it was a bit much hearing him tell Norwood members that night that the 4 flags he won at Sturt meant nothing to him. In view of that exhibition, I've often wondered about what Nunan said about Norwood when he got to North Adelaide.
It is true that certain people at Norwood indicated to Nunan that he would be coaching the club in 1980. The problem is, those people overstepped their bounds and the people entrusted with the role of appointing a coach opted for Balme instead. Once again, I had no problem with Nunan feeling as though he'd been dudded and his decision to join North.
In the first 5 years of Balme's coaching tenure, he took the club to the finals each year, 3 Grand Finals for 2 flags. For all purposes it appeared as if Norwood's choice was irrefutable.
However, watching Nunan's coaching methods from afar, I've often wondered what sort of success Norwood may have enjoyed had we appointed Nunan. Certainly in the late 80s there would have been none better to manage the Norwood list than Nunan, and I wonder if he may have brought more than the two premierships to Norwood in the 1980s.
Fair post AH ... I always got the feeling that Nunan was so ferocious about the way he tackled his role and the entire culture at North, that it wouldn't have sat well at Norwood where I just couldn't see the powerbrokers behind the scenes relinquishing that much power.
I thought Norwood wasted most/half of the 80's and had a really hard task-master like Nunan been in charge, who knows how differently things might have turned out
