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Haileybury to the AFL? Lloyd urged to follow coaching path
Jaiden Sciberras • June 3rd, 2025 3:45 pm
Could we see Essendon legend Matthew Lloyd enter the coaching business?
The dominant Bomber key forward recently noted his future interest in taking over at the senior level following a number of years leading the line at Haileybury College in Melbourne’s southeast.
Lloyd has played a major role in producing elite AFL talent out of the APS college, leading the likes of Josh Battle, Luke Davies-Uniacke and Andrew Brayshaw while mentoring key forwards in Ben and Max King and most recently Richmond’s Harry Armstrong.
Speaking on Nine’s Footy Show late last week, Lloyd didn’t rule out the potential of joining the AFL ranks.
“I do love coaching,” Lloyd said.
“I love the balance that I've got currently - but I do love to coach.
“It would just depend on who it was with and all those sorts of things. But it's no at this point in time but I'm still young enough, you never know.
“You never say never. I do really enjoy it.”
With evident ability to manage elite talent, SEN Breakfast cohosts Garry Lyon and Tim Watson weighed up the potential of seeing the 47-year-old enter the fray at AFL level.
“There’s a push going on out there,” Watson said.
“I don’t know where it started, apparently Matthew Lloyd leaked something on the Nine’s Footy Show. Maybe he spoke to somebody before the show and said listen, if you wouldn’t mind, just ask me a question about coaching’.”
“I think he would be a great coach,” Lyon agreed.
“He has got insatiable appetite for footy, he clearly coaches it really well with his boys at Haileybury College. His knowledge is as good as anyone’s that I’ve worked with.
“I don’t think he walks straight in, and nor would he expect himself to walk straight in.”
Having only coached at APS level, Lloyd may need to take on a gig within the AFL coaching ranks before considering a senior role.
“He’s 47, let’s not be ageist about this,” Watson continued.
“At what stage would he need to throw his hat into the AFL ring for him to be considered?
“I know ‘Fages’ (Chris Fagan) didn’t get his first appointment until much later, but he’d been in the system for a long time.”
“He said himself, he doubts very much whether he’d want to do it,” Lyon continued.
“He’s got a heap of time, he’s stayed in touch with the modern game, to his work at the elite private school area.
“He commentates the game every single day, talks about it, which holds him in great stead, not to walk into a senior coaching job, but holds him in great stead.
“If he was to turn around at the end of this year and say, ‘I now want to prepare myself to be a senior coach’, a club would snap him up in a heartbeat and away he’d go.
“He’d be in a great position. What he has demonstrated is the capacity to coach modern footy at this elite junior level and deal with young men which are a big part of what coaching is, and then they’d see how he’d go in the senior environment.”
The SEN Sportsday team also pondered the topic, debating as to why Lloyd has yet to step into the ranks at senior level.
Gerard Healy, Brad Johnson and Matt White went back and forth on Lloyd’s potential future, with Johnson considering the former Bomber the best junior coach in Australia.
Healy: “Why haven’t we got Matthew Lloyd in the coaching business?
“I’m talking about at the elite level.”
Johnson: “I was thinking about this the other day. You’ve got the under 18 competitions, and you’ve got Lloyd whose part of Haileybury and does a fantastic job, Adam Cooney is at Geelong College.
“Is Matthew Lloyd the number one junior coach in the country? I nominate him as the number one.”
White: “He’s disciplined, he sets very high standards and has high expectations on them.
“I think with Lloydy, as a captain of Essendon he set very high demands on his teammates around standards and expectations.
“He’s doing that with his players; it’s almost an old school way of doing it.
“The passion that he as for (coaching) is extraordinary, and I think it’s getting stronger.
“I think you’ll find at some point, he’ll dip his toe in the water into AFL coaching.
“He would never say never, but I think even now he’s starting to sacrifice some of his media career to commit more time to footy.”
