‘I’m a bit of a non-conformist’: Why this AFL coach lives in a van

‘I’m a bit of a non-conformist’: Why this AFL coach lives in a van

It’s hard to know where to start with Craig Jennings. The best place might be his place, which is also his primary mode of transport, his refuge from the daily grind of the AFL industry, and a family bonding tool.

Jennings lives in a van. A navy blue Ford Transit, to be precise, which was recommended to him by former Hawthorn great Jordan Lewis. In selecting his vehicle, Jennings sacrificed interior comfort for drivability; inside, there’s a mattress, an esky and a battery pack, and not much else, but that’s all he needs.

GWS Giants assistant coach Craig Jennings, at home.Credit: Louise Kennerley

At around 6-7pm on a typical weekday, when he’s finished up his duties as the GWS Giants’ offence coach, he jumps in the van and drives north from the club’s Olympic Park base, to one of his secret spots along Sydney’s northern beaches. That’s where he’ll settle for the night. Usually, he’s alone; if not, there’ll be a fellow van-lifer there from somewhere around the world to chew the fat with.

If the weather’s kind enough, he’ll leave the back of the van open and fall asleep to the sounds of waves lapping 20 metres away.

By around 6am the next morning, he’s back at the club.

It works for him. All his meals are eaten at the club, served by the Giants’ in-house chef. He takes his showers at the club. He’s there most hours of most days anyway, and many weekends, he’s interstate with the team. And if he really needs to, for whatever reason, he can always spend a night in a hotel.

“I don’t even want to go back to a house. That’s genuine,” Jennings tells this masthead.

“If I could get away with it – which I can’t – but if I could, I’d just live in the van forever. I like freedom. I’m a bit of a non-conformist. I don’t really follow the crowd. People always describe me as dancing to the beat of my own drum or whatever, but I feel what I’m doing is just normal, because I’m doing what I enjoy. Like, ‘I think you’re weird doing what everyone else does.’”

It’s worth noting that this is a lifestyle choice, and not a consequence of Sydney’s high cost of living – which is a real thing for assistant coaches in the AFL’s so-called ‘northern markets’ – and why Jennings (like fellow Giants assistants Brett Montgomery and Ben Hart) live away from their families, who are based in other states, during the seven-month season.

Advertisement

But that’s where the van comes in handy. The Giants play in Melbourne practically every other weekend; that’s where Jennings’ partner and two sons, aged 14 and 12, are based. He’ll often drive down early before a game with the club’s permission, spend time with the family, and then hit the road back to Sydney with the boys, who spend a week with him before flying home.

“Kingers [Giants coach Adam Kingsley] is that good with them,” Jennings says. “When they come up, they’re in training, drills and all sorts of things, playing indoor cricket … it’s just a great experience for my boys, which is a big part of it. Having kids around a footy club in Melbourne is pretty common, but here, it’s a bit of a holiday for them.

“The other part is it’s just such a good club, my favourite that I’ve worked at. You don’t want to leave, and so family-wise, you need to be able to make that part work. At the moment, it’s working really well. I’m probably more present with them now than when [I lived] there.”

GWS Giants assistant coach Craig Jennings at training on Friday.Credit: Ryan Jones/GWS Giants

Unless you’re an AFL obsessive, or a Victorian, you probably haven’t heard of Jennings, but he is regarded within the industry as one of the game’s sharpest minds – and, clearly, someone who doesn’t fit the typical footy mould.

Selected with pick 45 by North Melbourne at the 1990 AFL draft, Jennings never played a game at the highest level, but was recalled to the club later in the decade by Denis Pagan, the coach who drafted him, to help run some fitness training, and thus his career in coaching began. He also worked under Kevin Sheedy and Mark Thompson during a 10-year apprenticeship at Essendon, spent a year as Luke Beveridge’s opposition analyst at the Western Bulldogs, and then joined Simon Goodwin at Melbourne for four years, steering the Demons to their highly memorable 2018 AFLX crown.

SEN Radio listeners will also recall his regular morning segment with Gerard Whateley, in which he decoded the complicated tactics and strategy behind AFL games with a level of clarity few others in media have demonstrated.

“From the [earliest] time I can remember, after school, I put my footy jumper on, I’m kicking a footy, I felt like I just watched more footy than anybody, and I never got tired of it,” he says. “And then part of it is the psychology. It’s a redemption thing: get drafted, you don’t play a senior game, you don’t want to fail as a coach.”

Craig Jennings (left) with Melbourne’s 2018 AFLX-winning outfit.Credit: Getty

Jennings, now 50, had opportunities to work at other Melbourne clubs, and harbours ambitions to become a senior coach in his own right one day, but jumped at an offer from the Giants in 2022 for a few different reasons.

One was his natural affinity to Sydney. He was raised in Traralgon, in regional Victoria, but was actually born at North Shore Hospital; his parents happened to be passing through. He was interested in working in a non-traditional market, a prospect made more attractive by the presence of Jason McCartney, the Giants’ head of football, and his old state footy teammate from his teenage years.

And it was also a perfect excuse to cross van life off his bucket list.

“I’m happy in my own company,” he says.

“I love spending time with people, but I’m also comfortable just being on my own, which not everybody is. I don’t need entertainment like other people. At this point in life, I’m not going out socialising or anything. I’m living a pretty quiet lifestyle. I’m happy in that van and sending it in a direction up north, and just driving until I feel like stopping.”

If the term ‘different cat’ was in the dictionary, Jennings’ picture might be there.

Speaking of. One night after work late last year, as Jennings was walking back to his van, he spotted a stray, malnourished cat in the bushes of the Giants’ club carpark. Its head was trapped in a plastic Tupperware container lid.

“I’d see these cats running around,” he says. “So I set up cameras, and started filming them, and then I learnt a bit about how to rescue them through local animal rescuers, and started feeding them so they’d come in. And then over the course of the last nine months, I’ve been catching them where you can.”

Jennings had always hoped football would give him a big enough profile to cross out another bucket-list item: running an animal sanctuary on a big property near Traralgon. He can’t do that right now, but he’s set up a mini-sanctuary out of his house in Melbourne, where eight of the stray cats found in the Giants’ carpark have been transported. Players including Toby Greene and Sam Taylor have donated personal memorabilia to be auctioned off to help pay for vet bills. At the Giants, it’s become a whole thing.

“It’s a passion of mine anyway. It’s not about cats, it’s just animals in general. I can’t handle animals suffering,” Jennings says.

That’s not his only side project, by the way. Jennings also runs a rare book business. As you do. We’re talking books and manuscripts from the 1400s or earlier. That kind of rare.

“They’re all pursuits that are very, I guess, kind of solitary. Maybe they’re a little bit intellectual pursuits,” he says. “It’s not easy running an animal sanctuary, I’ll tell you that. And the rare book business, there’s not too many billionaire rare book dealers. The pursuit of finding a book that’s 500 years old and finding it at the right price, and being able to put it through auction or find a buyer for it … but it’s also that it’s a beautiful object, isn’t it? It’s 500 years old. I always think about who owned it. It’s survived all these wars and famines. If you buy a 500-year-old work of art, it’s probably $30 million, but this, you might get one for $500, but you’ve still got this beautiful object in your hand.”

Jennings is now two years into van life, and has one year remaining on his contract with the Giants, but there could be changes afoot. He’s told himself that if they win the premiership, he will live in a boat. And they’re a better than good chance: most bookmakers have them as second favourites, behind only the Swans, and if they beat the Bulldogs on Sunday in their final home-and-away fixture, they could finish as high as second on the ladder.

It’s been a strange season for the Giants. They won their first five games, and then only three of their next 10, but are now rolling on the back of a seven-game winning streak, making them arguably the form team of the competition.

“Kingers always sets up his season to be playing your best footy now,” Jennings says. “But everybody internally will say, well, we haven’t done anything yet. All we’ve done is qualify for top four, and while that’s an achievement, unless you win the big one, no one really cares.”

So in an ideal world, come the end of September, Jennings will be on the move.

“I’ve done the van life, but I’d love to just be in one of the marinas around here somewhere, and I’ll just live in a boat for a year,” he says. “I just like those sorts of things.”

News, results and expert analysis from the weekend of sport sent every Monday. Sign up for our Sport newsletter.

Most Viewed in Sport