\n Port Adelaide’s new head of coaching, Andy Collins, can see plenty of parallels between Josh Carr and Sam Mitchell\n <\/p>\n
Josh Carr during Port Adelaide’s clash with Carlton in round 20, 2024. Picture: AFL Photos<\/p>\n
THE SIMILARITIES between Josh Carr and Sam Mitchell have already struck Port Adelaide’s new director of coaching.<\/p>\n
Andy Collins has departed his beloved Hawthorn and Mitchell, joining Carr on a new journey at Port Adelaide.<\/p>\n
And Collins didn’t take long to notice common threads between Hawk coach Mitchell and the Power’s new coach Carr.<\/p>\n
“One of the cool things about Josh and Sam, they’re highly competitive young men,” Collins told reporters on Monday.<\/p>\n
“I’d like to see them on the footy field together again – and that’s the way I remember Josh, highly competitive.<\/p>\n
“One of the reasons I wanted to come here, he has got a really strong drive.”<\/p>\n
Collins said both Mitchell, 43, and Carr, 45, had clear plans for their respective clubs.<\/p>\n
“One of the things that has impressed me with Josh and Sam, they’ve got a plan – and a plan to win a premiership,” he said.<\/p>\n
“And that’s really important.<\/p>\n
“I think people talk about finals – you know, young coaches that are coming in with plans to win premierships, that’s exciting.<\/p>\n
“You can see Hawthorn’s build. I’d like to think that Port Adelaide is going to accelerate past that very quickly.”<\/p>\n
Collins was Hawthorn’s head of development for the past four years – returning at the same time as Mitchell’s first season in charge – after coaching in the VFL and SANFL, as well as past stints as an assistant coach at Richmond, the Hawks and St Kilda.<\/p>\n
Andy Collins addresses players during the VFL Preliminary Final between Footscray and Box Hill at Mission Whitten Oval, September 13th, 2025. Picture: AFL Photos<\/p>\n
A triple Hawthorn premiership player, he said it was a difficult decision to leave the club.<\/p>\n
“Love Hawthorn,” he said.<\/p>\n
“Born and bred a Hawthorn supporter, played with Hawthorn, had two coaching stints there – love it, it’s hard to leave.<\/p>\n
“But this is the industry that we’re in.<\/p>\n
“And to come to Port Adelaide to have this exciting challenge to help support a new coaching team – wow.”<\/p>\n
Collins said Carr would face similar challenges to Mitchell when he took over as Hawthorn’s coach ahead of the 2022 season.<\/p>\n
Josh Carr and Ken Hinkley during the Round 24 match between Port Adelaide and Richmond at Adelaide Oval, August 27, 2023. Picture: AFL Photos<\/p>\n
“Sam had inherited a lot of a playing list and you can see that Hawthorn turned over a playing list in four or five years,” he said.<\/p>\n
“So Josh will still have that challenge of player list management, around player expectation.<\/p>\n
“And then the enormity of coaching a football club, how do you prepare a young man for that role?<\/p>\n
“Sam is now four years, going into five years (as head coach) and Josh now is the leader of our football club, a very big figurehead.<\/p>\n
“Now, we have our presidents and our CEOs. But have no doubt, one of the most public figures now is Josh – he’s more than equipped to handle it.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Port Adelaide’s new head of coaching, Andy Collins, can see plenty of parallels between Josh Carr and Sam…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,83,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-290677","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-text","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}