The Coaching team

The only downside is that it's yet another old boy appointment. We still desperately need some new blood. SCCC is a bit like Norfolk, if you know what I mean.

On paper a heavyweight appointment, compared to the other names on the coaching staff.

But is this his first coaching appointment?

Because I know what fb means about Norfolk. The entire Sussex coaching set-up - Davis, Greenfield, Hopkinson, Lewis and now Goodwin - have never coached anywhere other than Hove in their entire  careers, I think?

Coaching seems to be a job in which the most successful practitioners move around a lot, expanding their CVs and the range of their experience. Someone like Farbrace, for example, has England women, Sri Lanka, Kent, Yorks and now Team England on his CV. It's one of the reasons he's become one of the msot respected coaches in  world cricket. But like a 19th century country vicar, Sussex seem to disapprove of such promiscuity and to be absolutely terrifed of anyone who might import alien new methods and scary fresh thinking from the outside world.

Going to stick my head above the parapet on this one - a poor appointment in my view.

Unless I've missed something, the role was originally batting and second XI coach - no mention in the press release of the latter, so one can ask what is to happen with the 2nd XI this year. From a development perspective the 2nd XI is arguably more important than the 1st XI.

Last time I checked, it cost over £10K to fly in a coach and family from Australia (buisness class), so that's additional funding that presumably wouldn't have been budgeted for, and an interesting decision given this year's projected budget position. Bear in mind accommodation, car, visas etc too and the add on costs of importing for such a role are very high.

Not aware of Murray having held any kind of coaching role previously, so what "previous" did he have to sway the interview panel.

In all, an expensive appointment made late on in pre-season - seems a bit of a panic move. BUT Murray is a good man with Sussex in his heart so good luck to him and the club.

Most clubs build up a culture that dictates how they do things - and most clubs have quite different cultures, which is why cross-fertilisation is helpful and in-breeding is hazardous.

I'll give you one recent example. The young keeper Ryan Davies left Kent for Somerset at the end of the last season. Here's what he had to say at the start of this year's pre-season about the difference between coaching and training methods at the two clubs:

“I’m starting to pick things up, but there seems to be a lot more things done here at Somerset than I have been used to previously. The training is a lot more full on and structured which is really good and I can tell that I am going to be better for it come the summer.Darren Veness (Somerset CCC Head of Strength & Conditioning) has been good with me and realizes that I haven’t done a lot of the things before.”

Now I've no idea whether the Somerset method is better than the Kent method. They're clearly very different and possibly both have their merits. And no doubt the 'Sussex way' is different again. But a good coach who has knocked around a bit and has experience in different environments surely combines best practice from all those he has worked with. The Sussex approach simply doesn't permit that.

borderman, flashblade and others have all made some good points about the selection of Goodwin: the lack of obvious coaching experience, the divergence from the advertised role of batting AND 2nd XI coach, the continuation of non-contentious "family" relationships. There also some fairly odd comments in the Sussex Press Release advertising the appointment:

Goodwin... said of his new appointment, “I believe I can bring to a very talented squad some belief and options on playing certain situations in all forms of the game."

What kind of situations does he have in mind? He goes on to talk about adding "a winning culture to this talented squad", so is this about the batting responding to a formidable total set by the side batting first, which isn't very complimentary to Jon Lewis's stewardship of the fast bowlers, or is he talking about adaptability of batsmen to respond to different situations between different forms of the game i.e.responses to being 20-3 on the first day of a championship game being radically different to being 20-3 after 5 overs of a T20 match?  Or is he just being inarticulate? Perhaps he's better at doing things than analysing them and explaining them to others?

Then there is his own confirmation that, as the release says, the "..recruitment process... attracted a strong group of candidates with international as well as domestic experience." I wonder if that included those who had coaching experience at international and/or domestic level or was confined to players? Sussex are fortunate in having a Head Coach with a lot of coaching experience following his playing career, and Mark Davis seems to be being followed in this way by Carl Hopkinson. The problem is that we now have a bowling coach with limited experience, a youth coach straight from playing, and a batting coach who excelled as a player but doesn't appear to have coached, certainly not at first class level. The only thing they have in common is that they were all hired as Sussex players during the Moores/Robinson era. That does seem to raise the question delicately alluded to, but not spelt out, by flashblade that there might be a genetic problem in that all of these fine players and willing coaches have been conditioned to a certain set of attitudes and responses to situations on the field over many years. However, they are now faced with a different challenge that might call for quite new thinking. Can they adapt to the new circumstances, the absolute primacy of getting first place in Division Two in order to escape the likely spiral of mediocrity in an expanded division in 2017 and thereafter, with imbalance and unpredictability implicit from the fixtures?

Very interesting that at the AGM both the new captain and coach admitted that standards of fitness and application had fallen in recent years. But why? Who is responsible? Board too close to management, so don't ask hard questions? Probably yes.