First comes the shock. Then a wave of guilt, followed by relief. Before you know it, you’re back on the training track preparing for another game.

I would never compare the sacking of a football coach to any of life’s real tragedies, but I know from experience that there is a grieving process players go through when the axe falls on their coach.

Zach Tuohy (main) was a player at Carlton when both Brett Ratten (2012), bottom right, and Mick Malthouse (2015), top right, lost their jobs as coach.Credit: The Age

I witnessed two coach sackings in my time at Carlton. Brett Ratten was fired with a game to go in 2012 and Mick Malthouse got the bullet after just one win from the first eight games of 2015. That sense of guilt is my over-riding memory both times.

Ratts went at the end of my second year as a senior player. I was young and still feeling my way in the game and the team, but he was good to me and I was sad to lose him.

But there was also relief because our club had been engulfed in speculation about the coaching role for months. As a youngster, I didn’t get hassled by the TV crews and journalists door-stopping players for comments in the club park, but I was certainly aware that they........

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