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West Coast forward Josh Kennedy says he has 100 per cent faith in Scott Lycett to fill the ruck void created by Nic Naitanuis absence.Kennedy said he and his teammates were shattered to hear the news of Naitanuis AFL season-ending knee injury.Naitanui is set to spend up to a year on the sidelines after rupturing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee during Friday nights 25-point win over Hawthorn.The setback has severely dented West Coasts premiership chances for both this season and next.Sixth-placed West Coast need to beat the high-flying Crows in Adelaide on Friday night to secure a home final.If they lose they are likely to slip to seventh, consigning them to an away elimination final.Lycett will be thrust into the No.1 ruck role while Naitanui is sidelined.Jonathan Giles, Mitch Brown, Jeremy McGovern, Jack Darling and Fraser McInnes will be back-up options.The Eagles won five of their six games when Naitanui was sidelined with achilles tendon issues earlier this year and Kennedy said the group was confident Lycett can lead the way again.Hes taken a lot of steps forward this year and grown as a person and as a player, Kennedy said.Nic is such a valuable player for our team, but we can win without him.Weve just got to make sure we play as a unit. Its not about one player. Its about the other 22 on the field.Kennedy said Naitanui was devastated.The injury came just six days after Naitanui kicked the match-winning goal against Greater Western Sydney.Its pretty shattering for him, Kennedy said.As a close mate, and a great bloke around the club, to see it happen is pretty devastating.You have your extreme highs and your extreme lows (in footy), and hes probably had them both in the matter of seven days.Were feeling for him. Hell put the right foot forward, get it all sorted and come back bigger and stronger.Kennedy moved eight clear in the Coleman medal race following his five-goal haul against the Hawks.With one round remaining, Kennedy leads the way on 75 goals with Sydneys Lance Franklin (67), Eddie Betts (65) and Tom Lynch (65) needing something special to overtake him.But Kennedy, who also won the Coleman medal last year, is far more interested in West Coasts premiership plight, rather than an individual award.Its the furthest thing from my mind at the moment, Kennedy said. Mike Bantom Jersey . The International Olympic Committee released the official list of bid cities on Friday after the deadline for applications had passed. The candidates -- all previously announced in their own countries -- are: Almaty, Kazakhstan; Beijing; Krakow, Poland; Lviv, Ukraine; Oslo, Norway; and Stockholm. Jalen Lecque Jersey . 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Sacked coaches deserve second chanceAFLCA AFL Coaches Association boss Mark Brayshaw has slammed the industrys failure to give sacked senior coaches another shot.Brayshaw says these dumped men, often consigned to the football scrapheap and black-listed from future senior positions, are undoubtedly better prepared for the gruelling demands of leading a team than untried coaches.Its madness to not give them a second chance. It doesnt happen in major sport in the US or Europe; they are happy to target people who have fallen over and dusted themselves off and made mistakes on someone elses payroll, Brayshaw told ESPN.The principle of doing it for a second or third time is not yet well established here and I think were poorer for it.Brayshaw expects experienced senior coaches, such as Brett Ratten and Matthew Knights who are both being touted for Brisbanes vacant post, to be better prepared for the position since their sackings at Carlton and Essendon respectively.Ratten has been an assistant coach at Hawthorn for four years, while in the same time Knights has been at Geelong and coached its VFL club to premiership success.Theres no question the learning experience coaches have from the first time round are being squandered by not giving them another chance, Brayshaw said. You learn and realise what you will and wont do again. Its a very difficult position and they do a lot of self-reflecting.Brayshaw acknowledges there has been a dramatic shift in the way clubs hire new coaches. He says the days of appointing retired champions to helm their former clubs almost immediately after retirement is a thing of the past, as clubs opt to poach strategists who might have a lower profile but have been in charge of their own teams.It (the champion-player-turned-coach) is a failed model because there are just too many carcasses on the side of the road for that to be ignored, he said.I remember talking to Mick Malthouse and he estimated five per cent of the value of a coach was how good a player he was.Leigh Matthews is an obvious exception to the rule, as is Malcolm Blight ....Clarko breaking new recordsThe fingerprints of Alastair Clarkson will be all over this finals series, and not just at Hawthorn. ESPN has crunched the numbers and studied the dusty pages of history and we have yet to find a finals series where the coach of one club has a direct relationship with the coaches of five of the other clubs in the finals as is the case with Clarkson in 2016.Three of the other finals coaches worked under Clarkson at the Hawks - Leon Cameron (GWS), Adam Simpson (West Coast) and Luke Beveridge (Western Bulldogs). Taking that a step further, Geelong coach Chris Scott was an assistant coach to Clarkson in the past two International Rules series when Clarkson took charge of the Australian team.Then theres Swans coach John Longmire, a teammate of Clarkson at North Melbourne and a close friend to this day.So by our reckoning, the only two finals coaches Clarkson doesnt have a close relationship with are Adelaides Don Pyke and North Melbournes Brad Scott, further proof of his standing as a giant of the modern game.New role for Brendon Gale?Say what you like about Richmond CEO Brendon Gale, but hes not one for shirking an issue. The embattled Tigers boss, whose excellent work in reviving the clubs off-field fortunes has been undermined by consistent under-performance on the field, has endured a tough season in which his Tiges not only missed the finals but also became the target of a messy, half-baked boardroom coup.Having extended coach Damien Hardwicks contract at the start of the season for a further two years - a move that now appears misguided in the extreme - Gale and his board cant wait for 2016 to end.You might imagine if an escape hatch was to mysteriously appear, the former ruckman might quickly like to disappear down it.But not so. For Gale was recently approached to apply for the CEOs position at the Melbourne Cricket Club, a role currently filled by the soon-to-retire Stephen Gough.Its a job that mightnt carry the remuneration of an AFL club CEO but it would sure be a whole lot less stressful.Gales response to that seemingly attractive offer? Thanks, but no thanks, I want to stay at Richmond and finish the job that Ive started.AFL media rightsThe Seven Network, News Limited and Telstra last year committed more than $2.5 billion between them to buy the AFLs media rights from 2017 to 2022. On Saturday afternoon at ANZ Stadium, steps will be taken by those three media companies to start recouping some of that expense.ESPN understands that a whos who of Sydneys media and marketing industries will be attending the Sydney Swans-GWS qualifying final as guests of the AFL and its media partners. Sydney is the media capital of Australia, home to most of the nations major advertisers and advertising agencies.Some of them are familiar with the game, but many of them are not, so the AFL is taking full advantage of that final being the only game in town for the day (there is no major rugby union or league) to put on a show, sell the virtues of the indigenous game and hope they might direct some advertising dollars to the Leagues media partners next year.ddddddddddddA smattering of the AFL executive and the commission will be in Adelaide that night for the Crows-North elimination final, but we suspect the big dogs of the League will be in Sydney, hoping like hell the Swans and the Giants play as good a game as many of us expect.New Sydney Swans sponsorAnd while were on the subject of the Sydney market, sponsors and the like, we note the recent announcement by the Swans of a sponsorship agreement with Qatar Airways.Well done to the Swans for tapping into such a lucrative deal. But it does raise the question of hypocrisy when on the one hand the club was all in for taking part in the Pride Game against St Kilda last month, only to accept a few days later sponsorship from the national airline of a country where homosexuality is illegal and punishable by going to prison.We wait to see whether the Saints will nominate a different opponent for the fixture next year. Lets hope they do.Managers lining up to secure female talentWomens football is a golden nest egg waiting to hatch following the commercial success of the exhibition match last weekend, according to player agent Anthony McConville.The Melbourne-Western Bulldogs clash at the Whitten Oval attracted an average audience of 387,000 - the best Saturday night figure for the season.And with female football participation rates exceeding 400,000 - about a quarter of total registered players nationally - tapping into the potentially lucrative market of womens football is high on the agenda for leading player managers.The television ratings from Saturday night suggest that theres a lot of interest in female, male and junior, McConville told ESPN.Obviously its a new frontier the AFL is embarking on and theres a huge participation rate that is increasing by the week, by the year.In terms of marketability, in terms of fresh opportunities for product placement, people out there looking to align their companies with a female audience, I think there will be a lot of opportunities businesses looking to align their trade with a female audience.McConville, who already manages Melbourne recruit Melissa Hickey, expects the average salary - roughly $5000 - to increase, along with the marquee pay packet of $25,000, following the inaugural season in 2017.It will be interesting in the next couple of years to see what their salary cap might look like, he said.Future broadcast rights and big money agreements like that could give us a better indication of what theyre able to learn and then quite possibly that would open the door for a negotiation outside of the marquee players.AFL Players Association boss Paul Marsh, whos already locked in a long-running player payment impasse with the league, says the proposed womens deal falls short of the associations expectations.We are still negotiation with the standard playing contract with the AFL and at this point we are some distance apart, Marsh said.These athletes have worked incredibly hard to get to this level and we strongly believe they should be provided with the same opportunities in this game as the men.Crocmedia set to be big winner in radio rights dealThe radio rights saga has been drawn-out because of threats made by prominent AFL broadcaster SEN to withdraw its offer, as the lucrative contract is expected to be awarded to content provider Crocmedia.The Craig Hutchison-owned outlet is likely to be announced as the big winner of a new multi-year deal, which will commence from next season.ESPN understands Crocmedia, a radio and TV distribution company, will have majority control of the rights and will sub-license the coverage of matches through its partners across the country.Not everyone is delighted by the new arrangement. It certainly seems to have caused some angst between Caroline Wilson (a 3AW regular) and Hutchison, co-panellists on Channel 9s Footy Classified, over the past month.Under the deal, Crocmedia will have the capacity to on-sell matches to rivals 3AW, Triple M and SEN, in a radical radio shake-up.The ABC will continue as the games national broadcaster.SEN, which has an established partnership with Crocmedia by broadcasting its shows like the Saturday morning program Off the Bench, is believed to have threatened to walk away from negotiations should the AFL honour Crocmedias bold bid.This would have been detrimental to Crocmedias audacious proposal, leaving it in a financial black hole.But the dummy spit is believed to have been resolved, with all radio parties involved in lengthy discussions with the AFL over the finer details of the new deal. An announcement is imminent. ' ' '