Meet Coach Developer Jack Rolfe

An experienced new recruit has joined Subi for the 2025 season, but unlike many of our other new Lions, he won’t be making a direct impact on the field of play. Jack Rolfe (pictured above), our new Coach Developer, enters the pride with a very specific mission in mind.

“I am here to help coaches to help players. We want the most adaptive and skillful players ready to play AFL, and you can’t have that without skillful and adaptive coaches,” Jack says. “I will help them with the “how” to coach, but they own the “what” to coach.”

Rolfe comes with an extensive catalogue of experience in the coach’s box; he spent the majority of the 2010s coaching junior hockey at schools in the UK before joining Hockey WA as a Coach Educator; experience that is still influencing his methods in the present.

“You take a lot from working with youth players. I would say, in youth sport, every player is an individual project. Yes, you want the team to develop, but you also want the same for each individual, so having an appreciation for the age and stage of people stays with me,” Jack elaborates. “I still spend a lot of time with Premier League Football academies in the UK. Those clubs are the world leaders in youth development and taking the best of those environments and sharing that with the Subi coaches has been brilliant.”

Is Jack worried about diving headfirst into a new sport?

“I confess I don’t know everything about footy, I leave that to the coaches!” he admits. “Fundamentally all team sports are the same, protect one end and score down the other end, but how you get there is the magic and where all sports are slightly different.”

Rolfe is firm that his past experience still directly applies to Australia’s game.

“There is so much value in cross-code. Last week I invited Western Force down to speak to the Colts Coaches; a great opportunity to connect the dots and collaborate on how we coach the tackle and move the ball to space. I ask the coaches, ‘What are we coaching that others aren’t?’”

“What I really hope I can do to the coaches is give them high challenge and high support, open their eyes to how we can create environments that accelerate player learning and get the most out of themselves as coaches.”

The 2025 season is setting up to be an exciting one, with Rolfe already psyched at the early positive signs.

“I want to work with people who want to get better. It is so encouraging to work with a club and group of coaches who value their development, they ask me more questions than I ask them sometimes, which says a lot,” he revealed.

“Whenever you talk footy and WAFL in Perth, Subi’s name is mentioned, so I know the scale and respect people have for the club.”

“Since I’ve arrived everyone has been so welcoming and trust me, not everywhere is like that.”