FORMER Sydney forward Craig O'Brien says Paul Roos is the perfect man to coach the new Gold Coast club. And he should know.
Sydney's 2005 premiership mentor is contracted until the end of the 2009 season and has indicated he is committed to completing that deal. But with Gold Coast joining the AFL in 2011 and western Sydney entering the competition a year later, and with Michael Voss snapped up this week to coach the Brisbane Lions in 2009, Roos stands out as a key target for the new franchises.
"Roosy is in control of what he wants to do at the Swans. It's up to him if he wants to move on or stay where he is," said his former teammate O'Brien, who now coaches Gold Coast club Palm Beach-Currumbin. "We talk about role models and figureheads - he'd be perfect for the Gold Coast 17 team. If you really looked at what someone had done in football on and off the field, you wouldn't get any better credentialled than Paul Roos.
"He has turned the Swans around from a mediocre sort of club to a super club and a strong club. Maybe he has done his job there and he might move on and give himself a new challenge. No one knows how a coach thinks.
"The same thing happened up here with Leigh Matthews. Even though he was as good as he was, there's a fair bit of excitement about the Brisbane Lions next year with Michael Voss coming on board. It's up to Roosy but he probably would look at other options, I would imagine. It's more about the satisfaction or the challenges that you give yourself."
O'Brien served as an assistant coach for the Swans in the second half of 2002, when Roos took over from Rodney Eade.
"Knowing Roosy as a person, I don't think he'd be jumping ship for the money," O'Brien said. "We all know he's worth a fair bit of money in this market … but he wouldn't be saying I want to go up there for X-amount. He'd be more saying I'd like to go up there just to challenge myself."
O'Brien has been on the Gold Coast since 2002, and while all the ex-Victorians in the area are keen to see a locally based AFL team, the situation will be different in western Sydney.
"Sydney's a hard market and that's what you've got to look at," O'Brien said. "That's one area more than any that you need a figurehead, west Sydney, because I don't think you're going to attract a lot of crowd out there unless you get someone with a really big profile. I think he fits that perfectly as well.
"That's the only thing that worries me out there. It's a populated area but how many people really support the AFL out there?"
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