Damien McMahon’s lengthy tenure as coach of Newtown & Chilwell will end following next week’s final-round clash with Leopold at Elderslie Reserve.
After eight years in charge, McMahon made the call last week that his position was “untenable” after the Eagles opened up applications for the role.
McMahon says he “would have loved to have continued” in the role he’s held since replacing Damien Christensen in late 2016.
“This is my 18th season, and I always saw myself as coach of Newtown for a ten-year period, and I told the players that last (Tuesday) night,” he said.
“My number one goal was to win a premiership. And I thought that Newtown being my local junior club and the love club that I love, and I moved from WA to coach, I never saw it as a short-term thing.
“I saw it as something I’d do as long I felt like the club was moving forward and we were getting the results we needed to get.
“At the moment, I felt we weren’t in that position, and it was probably the right time to depart.”
Newtown & Chilwell has posted just six victories in 2024, with losses to Grovedale and the lowly St Albans turning the spotlight on the club, which has not won a premiership since 1986.
“It’s been a challenging year for us; a disappointing season for us,” McMahon said. “The expectation on the club was probably higher than reality at the beginning of the season.
“We lost a lot of players – we lost half our team, really, from the year before, and it was going to be a bit of a changing of the guard for our personnel, playing-wise.
“Then, we’ve had a pretty horror run of injury and availability throughout the season, which has led to a pretty poor win-loss ratio, which puts any coach under pressure.”
A Newtown & Chilwell junior, McMahon earned his coaching stripes in Western Australia, where he spent nearly four years in charge of WAFL club Perth.
While at Elderslie Reserve, he has overseen the Eagles’ most successful period since the 1980s, in which the club won its three GFNL premierships.
Newtown & Chilwell made the finals in 2019, 2022, and 2023, and McMahon has posted a 69-3-51 record from 123 games in charge.
Their best finish was a preliminary final in 2022, with a controversial 50m penalty and a goal after the siren by Leopold star Connor Giddings robbing the Eagles of just their first grand final berth since 2015.
“It’s a gut-wrenching moment I’ll never get out of my head, I think,” he said. “To lose that game was heartbreaking, and it was hard to come back from, to be honest.
“No one’s got a crystal ball that says what happens in a grand final, but I felt like it was the best team we’d put together in my time – it was the most complete – and we couldn’t get the job done.
“It was always going to be hard to go back to the well and play as well as we did through that time.”
McMahon hasn’t ruled out putting his hand up for one of the many vacant positions across the region.
“I’m open to anything, really; I’ve worn a number of hats in my time,” he said.
“I feel like I’ve got lots to offer.
“Wherever I’ve gone, I’ve had long tenures, and I always see it as a long-term thing, not a short-term thing.
“I’ll certainly look at what’s out there… it is probably finding something I’m a good fit for.”
Newtown & Chilwell will join Colac, Lara, Leopold, and St Albans in hunting for a new coach for 2025
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