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(Sports) Australian football coach breaks 66-year record with his 715th game in charge

Xinhua, May 1, 2015 Adjust font size:

Australian rules football coach Mick Malthouse is set to break the all-time record for games coached in the Australian Football League (AFL), surpassing the record of 714 matches held for 66 years by Collingwood legend McHale.

Malthouse, 61, will make his 715th appearance as an AFL coach when his Carlton Blues take to the field on Friday night against a team which Malthouse coached previously, the Collingwood Magpies, in a match expected to be seen by more than 80,000 people at the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

His coaching career spans more than 30 years, from humble beginnings leading Footscray at just 31 years old in 1984, Malthouse has since coached three premiership-winning sides and made eight Grand Final appearances.

His first Grand Final win came at the Perth-based West Coast Eagles after two years in charge in 1992. He would go on to coach another winning Eagles side in 1994 before being poached by Collingwood, the league's powerhouse club, in 2000.

At the Magpies, he resurrected a hapless team in just two years, culminating in two unlikely Grand Final appearances in 2002 and 2003.

He took over the club after it finished the 16th and last on the AFL ladder in 1999. By the end of the 2000 season, they had moved up one place, before climbing to ninth the season after. In 2002, his Collingwood team fell short of a Premiership win by just 9 points.

He would go on to rebuild the team's list in the mid-2000s; consequently he successfully coached a premiership-winning side at Collingwood in 2010, before he decided to quit the Magpies at the end of 2011, after the team lost another Grand Final.

Malthouse began his league journey in 1972. He played 174 games with Richmond and St Kilda before retiring from playing to begin coaching in 1983. Endi