In the United States, the country who anoints the winners of their major sports as world champions, they get a lot of things right.

Their promotion of sport is really world leading.

Their programs at both development and elite level continually produce athletes of the highest standard.

It is for these reasons and more that many Australian sports follow the lead of the Americans.

Now after Chris Fagan guided the Brisbane Footy Club to the 2024 AFL premiership maybe we should listen to the Yanks a little bit more.

The thing that makes Fagan’s success on Saturday, and indeed through 2024, is the fact that he did not play footy at the highest level. My understanding is he didn’t even come close.

Now the fact that he was then able to coach a side to such success goes completely against a long held Australian sport maxim that you have to have played the game to coach the game.

A quick scan through the coaches of the AFL clubs at the moment would show you that this is an ideal that runs deep in Australia’s most popular professional sport.

If we were in the United States of course this would go by without mention. For in the ‘land of the world champions’ they have long acknowledged that coaching requires very different skills to playing.

So much so that coaching can, in a lot of the US, be seen as a viable vocational option for anyone who might want to pursue it.

An avenue that is still not readily available to Australians.

The lack of a traditional path to success has not been the only original part to how Fagan took his players to the promised land.

He has been able to create an environment where players want to go.

He has built relationships with his playing group of such strength that he not only wants them to succeed but they don’t want to let him down.

He shows such trust and faith in his players that they seem to repay his trust in kind.

This is a hugely important part of coaching for once you create such a situation, the players will work harder to ensure that whatever tactical acumen you throw at them works.

In short, they start to play for more than themselves.

This is all not to say that anyone could do it.

Prospective coaches should still be respectful enough that they need to learn the game they want to coach and develop the skills required to do so.

However, with Fagan making it to the top of the mountain it will hopefully start to open the door for more coaches with non-playing backgrounds to be given a chance at the highest level.

The argument against this will always be that without experience at the highest level the coach will struggle to gain the respect of the room and also have an idea of what it requires to succeed.

The thing is though that people have changed. No longer are people absorbed by others reputation but more receptive to care and concern.

Common ground is not the currency that the youth of the twenties work they just need to know that you’re interested in them.

Chris Fagan (Photo by Quinn Rooney/Getty Images)

Australian footy is no doubt the most popular sport in Australia.

The powers that be often claim that the sport is at the forefront of so many parts of what makes a sport so successful and so professional.

They often claim to be constantly on the lookout for how to continually improve what is already a pretty good product.

Much, of not all, of those improvements in recent years have come from the home of professional sport in the US.

How the game is promoted, how the game is presented even how the game is built through the draft process.

Many of these steps have been great for the game. Now hopefully the game will take one more.

Off the back of a small, diminutive schoolteacher from the north of Tasmania hopefully the game will now sperate the idea of playing from coaching.

AFL clubs, who so often copy the model of those who most recently succeeded, will now hopefully continue to look outside the square when looking at making coaching appointments.

Hopefully they will start to give the job to the applicant who can build the best relationships, who respects the game and their players, the coach who understands what it takes to get the best out of young people in 2024.

In short hopefully they will continue to listen to the Yanks.