Team Current coach First season First signed Last signed Expires Adelaide Don Pyke 2016 2015 N/A 2018 Brisbane Justin Leppitsch 2014 2013 N/A 2016 Carlton Brendon Bolton 2016 2015 N/A 2018 Collingwood Nathan Buckley 2012 2010 2014 2016 Essendon John Worsfold 2016 2015 N/A 2018 Fremantle Ross Lyon 2012 2011 2014 2017 Geelong Chris Scott 2011 2010 2014 2017 Gold Coast Rodney Eade 2015 2014 N/A 2017 GWS Leon Cameron 2014 2012 N/A 2016 Hawthorn Alistair Clarkson 2005 2004 2014 2016 Melbourne Paul Roos 2014 2013 N/A 2016 North Brad Scott 2010 2009 2015 2018 Port Adelaide Ken Hinkley 2013 2012 2015 2018 Richmond Damien Hardwick 2010 2009 2013 2016 St Kilda Alan Richardson 2014 2013 2015 2018 Sydney John Longmire 2011 2010 2014 2017 West Coast Adam Simpson 2014 2013 2015 2019 Western Bulldogs Luke Beveridge 2015 2014 N/A 2017

I say five, because while Roos’ contract is technically up at the end of the year, that is by mutual agreement. His three-year stint at Melbourne, which is coming along swimmingly (number one draft picks withstanding), ends on November 30, 2016, at which time Simon ‘I got out of Essendon just in time’ Goodwin takes over.

Goodwin’s takeover is the last of the league’s handover contracts to turn over, following a strange period at the start of the decade where they were all the rage (Buckley, Cameron and John Longmire rose to power under similar circumstances).

But which of those remaining five coaches would expect to enter the 2016 season without another deal, stretching at least one more year, on the table?

Clarkson will almost certainly remain Hawthorn’s head coach, unless he decides that this AFL thing is a little too easy after winning a fourth straight flag in 2016. Are there any vacant coaching gigs in the NRL?

Cameron looked set to be the first new wave expansion side coach to steward his team into the finals, before injury wrecked the Giants’ 2015 season. He will most certainly receive a contract extension before March, and is an outside chance to be extended out to the end of 2019, much like West Coast’s Adam Simpson recently was.

Buckley is about halfway through his job at Collingwood, and the calls to remove him as coach coming from segments of the fan-base ring as hollow as the Pies’ bank vault (or the opposite of that). He would also be a candidate for a three-year extension, which would take him to 2019 and smack bang in the middle of Collingwood’s premiership run. The noises out of the Westpac Centre have been nothing but positive.

That leaves Richmond’s Hardwick and Brisbane’s Leppitsch. According to the footy tabloids, there is “a lot of media scrutiny” on these two gentlemen heading into 2016 (the irony must be lost on this mob).

Hardwick is the second longest current tenured coach in the AFL, behind Clarkson at Hawthorn, having taken the reins from Terry Wallace in 2009. He, like Buckley, can claim that his job is only half finished.

Everyone points to the three straight finals campaigns that resulted in three straight-sets exits when it comes to analysing where the Tigers are at. This ignores both where the Tigers have come from – a thoroughly Terry Wallace’d list – but also where Hardwick has taken the yellow and black.

Excluding the 2014 season, when the Tigers limped out of the gates only to find their feet with nine rounds remaining, Hardwick’s team has seen an increase in its percentage every year during his tenure.

Last year, the Tigers were a win away from making it into the top four, after a season which saw them emerge as the most likely defensive unit to pinch the miser crown from Fremantle in the years ahead. Sure, there were points of frustration, but by the end of Round 23 some statistics (Pythagorean expected wins) had Richmond as the fourth best team in the league (ahead of Fremantle, who had fallen to fifth).

Richmond aren’t an old team, either. Their 45-man roster is the 11th oldest (or eighth youngest, if you’d like) in the AFL, behind Collingwood, West Coast and Carlton. They sit eighth in terms of games played, too.

There’ll be many more words written (and spoken) between now and March 24, but from this far out, it’s clear Richmond are by no means at their peak. A more mature regime off the field will surely look to sign Hardwick for at least another year past the 2016 season, if not two, so he is given the chance to see out his vision. Indeed, that is what has been reported in recent days.

A reasonably tough draw, which includes double-ups against Hawthorn, Sydney, Port Adelaide, Collingwood and Essendon, and two trips to the west – although it also includes 14 games at the MCG – may make the road to a double chance in 2016 difficult. But the Tigers are in with a chance, which will see Hardwick through another year or two.

Then there is Leppitsch – and this is where the no-coaches-moved-on situation could get a little hairy in 2016.

Two years into an initial three-year deal, Leppitsch (44 games) is the third longest tenured coach in the history of the Brisbane Lions, behind Leigh Matthews (219) and Michael Voss (107). His winning record of 25 per cent is the lowest of the three, and is worse than the 37 per cent winning record of the four other guys who have led the Lions in their time north of the border.

It’s been as tough a start as any head coach in recent memory – excluding the two expansion sides.

Precious few Ws, a player exodus and reported disharmony off the field belie a list that is chock full of quality talent through the middle of the ground. Brisbane are a proof point for why key position players get paid lots of money: it doesn’t matter how good your midfield is, if there aren’t tall people to kick the ball to inside the stripe (and to stop the opposite from happening down the other end) it can all amount to naught.

There have been injuries, too. Tom Rockliff (16 games played), Dayne Beams (16) and Pearce Hanley (11) missed big chunks of the 2015 season, while Daniel Rich and departees Jack Redden and Matthew Leuenberger were absent for much of 2014.

In an interview on Melbourne radio earlier this week, chief executive Greg Swan said 25 players have left the club since Leppitsch took over, which is more than half a full list.

That’s a lot to deal with, but it doesn’t end there. Off-field, the Lions have seemingly sorted their stuff out for now, but that comes after a year or two of covert war among powerbrokers, and with League HQ. The club lost $3.5 million in the 2014 football year, marking the club’s sixth seven-digit loss in the prior seven years.

All of this is to say Leppitsch hasn’t set the world on fire, but that is in no small part because the world was already smouldering around him.

Swan’s interview revealed that Leppitsch’s future had been discussed at board level, and it would not be put off until his contract expires at the end of the coming season. He would not be subject to arbitrary win KPIs, and stressed that what the club needs now is a period of stability. It’s pointing to an imminent re-signing, but Swan has also been careful in his language – this is the guy that brokered the Malthouse-Buckley apprenticeship contract, so he knows what he’s doing.

For what it’s worth, I’m taking Swan’s words, and the parlous state of the administration Leppitsch has overseen, at face value. It may not happen this side of Christmas, but I expect Leppitsch to be re-signed as coach of the Brisbane Lions for at least one more year, and possibly two.

But there are strong, overwhelming even, arguments to let Leppitsch coach out his current deal and move on. Indeed, this is the vibe surrounding the chief of the Lions.

Like the Tigers, the Lions have a deceptively young list: just seven players have played 100 games, and a mere seven of their 44 players were born in the 1980s (oh yes). The pedigree of the playing list is less than ideal: after the exodus of recent years, Brisbane have just four first-round draft picks signed on, and two of them were drafted a fortnight ago.

As above (and as per earlier this year), the talent Brisbane have assembled is strong, and deep.

There is no Patrick Dangerfield ‘Batman’ necessarily (although Rockliff, Beams, Hanley and Rich is a strong core four), but there are many ‘Robins’. But they are evidently a few moves away from building a team with deep talent at the top of the list. If recent history is anything to go by, Josh Schache and Daniel McStay have a few years worth of development ahead of them.

The lingering question for Brisbane’s administration is whether Leppitsch is the coach to take the team through its current phase, and help mount a charge up the ladder in, say, three or four years’ time. Regardless, an answer will be found in the 2016 season, and under the new, Greg Swan-led regime, Leppitsch will be given the time and space of 22 games to mount his case.

Either that or the recent trend of premature separation will continue and Leppitsch will be removed in the second half of the year. I don’t see this as the base case, but a very poor start to the year (say, two wins from 12 games, which is feasible given the Lions’ draw) may force Brisbane’s hand.

There is, after all, “a lot of media scrutiny” on the men in charge in the AFL.