25/07/2008 1:35:51 PM
Collingwood coach Mick Malthouse has welcomed reports of interest from the Gold Coast consortium in his right-hand man Guy McKenna, but warned that no prospective coach for the AFL's 17th club should sign on for any less than three years.
The Gold Coast is set to enter a team in the TAC Cup next season and the VFL the following year before graduating to the AFL in 2011.
Malthouse believes whoever coaches the club through the two lead-up years should be given first crack at the job in the Gold Coast's inaugural AFL season.
"Be very, very cautious of signing a two-year contract," Malthouse said at the Lexus Centre on Friday.
"If it’s good enough for Michael Voss to be offered three, if it's good enough for an untried coach to be offered three, surely it's good enough for a proven assistant coach to be offered three."
"And I mean three, meaning the third year he's the senior coach."
"It's a lot of punt work by blokes unless they get offered that three years - you don’t want to be setting it up for someone else and 'see you later'."
Malthouse described McKenna, who has been at Collingwood since 2004 following stints as an assistant at West Coast and at Claremont where he was the senior coach, as 'very, very good at what he does'.
He said he would endorse any of his assistants 'going forward'.