IIRC he was coaching a team with a lot of injuries at the time and an under resourced club that had no money in the cap to improve. With what he had at his disposal he did have the team playing decent footy. He had his players performing for him weekly. His sample size in first grade games in comparison to the other available coaches with first grade experience in Flanagan, Green or Toovey, is small but its still first grade experience. I don’t believe the concerns that were around him at the time were in relation to his actual coaching but rather the sharks were concerned he may not be able to attract big signings.
After those experienced coaches the other option is taking a punt on assistant coaches looking for a step up. Usual suspects in Ciraldo, Ryles, Bretnall.
Is Morris the answer for us? He shouldn’t be ruled out of consideration. He doesn’t have the baggage of say Flanno and you can say he’s a lesser risk than all the assistants looking for a gig because he has some first grade experience and the time he had in the job would need to be marked as relatively successful. Barrett is lucky that there isn’t a quality experienced coach available or else he would have already been marched.