Like his former Hawthorn teammate Terry Wallace, has forged a highly successful coaching career after a long, instructive apprenticeship, with the result that he is widely regarded as one of the shrewdest tactical coaches around, his all-round knowledge of his own and opposing teams highly respected. No single coaching performance of the 1990s, in this list's opinion, surpassed that of Wallace with the newly named Western Bulldogs in 1997, which rose from 15th to just two points shy of a grand final. While Melbourne and Brisbane have since reached the same stage from bottom, both had more scope for improvement, coming off injury-crippled seasons. The Dogs turned it around with close to the same personnel, implementing a completely different, running gameplan, featuring a reliance on an unprecedented number of rotating midfielders. Just how the Dogs squandered a golden grand final opportunity in that infamous preliminary final against the Crows remains the cause of much angst, as do the Bulldogs' two subsequent failed finals campaigns, but Wallace's win-loss percentage for the '90s still sits equal third alongside Kevin Sheedy.
Simple figures say it was undeserved.
That dog of a year was the only time in six attempts in the '90s a Joyce-led side failed to make the finals. Common belief is his record is flattered by good Hawthorn sides. Likewise, the Bulldog sides that made the finals consecutively in 1994-95 were hardly Rolls Royce outfits. His style might have seemed dated by the end, and perhaps more in keeping with the previous decade, but Joyce's '90s record still surpassed that of many supposedly more progressive rivals. Like the man above him here, an inglorious final year with Brisbane, in which he was similarly sacked mid-season, has cost Northey too many of the credits he had racked up previously.