There is a romanticism to Andrew Collins’ return to the brown and gold ahead of the 2021 season.

Earlier this month, the Box Hill Hawks announced Collins had accepted the role of senior assistant coach, working alongside the newly-appointed head coach Sam Mitchell.

A 212-game, three-time premiership player with Hawthorn over 10 seasons between 1987 and 1996, Collins returns to the Hawks fold after seven seasons with Williamstown in the VFL.

The 1990 Peter Crimmins Medallist said he was excited to be back working with the club he has loved his entire life. 

“There is a really nice comfort being back in the brown and gold,” Collins said.

“I have really high motivation levels to help where I can.  

“I was brought up in Box Hill and barracked for Hawthorn and Box Hill all my life, so it’s a really nice thing to be able to work for an organisation that you’ve supported all your life.”

As well as both donning the number five jumper throughout stellar Hawks careers, there is further symmetry in the path which both Collins and his new coaching box colleague Sam Mitchell followed on their way to Hawthorn.

The pair both did their ‘apprenticeship’ with Box Hill before being drafted, or in Collins’ case zoned, to the Hawks.  

Collins didn’t arrive at Hawthorn until the age of 22, while Mitchell famously spent a year in the VFL before getting his call-up to the elite level.

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“It’s a great role to be able to support who we all know is going to be a great, young coach in Sam,” Collins said. 

“My role is to support him and all of the other coaches at the Box Hill Footy Club.

“There’s some really exciting times ahead.”

The story of how Collins got into coaching is a familiar one to many Hawthorn fans.

A teacher by trade, Collins has worked in the education sector for the majority of his life since finishing with the Hawks in 1996.

Given his later entry into his playing career, Collins had already completed his teaching degree before pulling on a Hawthorn jumper.

Like Alastair Clarkson and many other current AFL coaches, Collins identified that he could combine his loves of teaching and football with a foray into coaching.

“As soon as I finished my playing career, I was teaching but then I went into coaching then back into teaching.

“So, I’ve been in and out of teaching on three occasions now, which has been really nice to have been able to utilise both those parts of my life.

“As a schoolteacher with a love for footy, it is the perfect role - impart some knowledge from your own experiences but then to also motivate and stimulate some really thoughtful conversations around coaching and coaching methodologies as well.

Collins has a passion for the art of teaching.

Working at Forest Hill College in the city’s eastern suburbs, he splits his time between working with the school’s sports academy and teaching mathematics in the school’s deaf facility with students profoundly deaf or hard of hearing.

He says his coaching style is very much a reflection of his occupation.

“I think I’m a teacher and so, with that, I think I will really focus on the individual and try to develop the individual to be the best that they can be both as a person and as a player.

“To me, coaching is like a football curriculum.

“You really ultimately want to design a curriculum in which you’re teaching individuals to move through the ranks.”

A life member of the VFL on the back of his 245 games coached with Sandringham, Coburg and Box Hill back in 2004 and 2005, Collins understands what it takes to be successful at state-league level.

“There’s three integral parts of coaching in the VFL and I think we can achieve all three with Box Hill.

“For one, we can be a really competitive team under the leadership of Sam, who already drives incredibly strong standards.

“Secondly, I think we can have players drafted out of Box Hill – David Mirra was the most recent one – but I think we can have really long-term players in the mould of Kane Lambert types.

“So, I think that is going to be a real advantage for the Hawthorn Footy Club is having a group of players down at Box Hill who are really draftable in their program.

“And then the third element which is really, really important is that we are providing ways for our Box Hill community to thrive as well."