It doesn’t matter if you’ve captained the country’s largest Australian Rules football club, when your old man asks you to give him a hand – you do it.
He has 265 AFL games under his belt and a burgeoning coaching career that’s placed him as one of the Adelaide Crows’ leading voices, but Scott Burns still has time for his Adelaide Hills roots.
Within the non-stop, high-octane football industry, one rarely has time to stop and smell the roses.
For Scott, the chance to travel up from Adelaide to his parents’ farm at Cromer is a welcomed reprieve.
You’ll often find him chopping wood, fixing fences or herding cattle at the roughly 100-acre property.
Or if you head to Birdwood Oval, you might see him donning the whites and filling in for the local cricket team, the Bulls.
Prior to plying his trade for the Magpies in front of 100,000 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Scott played for the Birdwood Football Club and completed his schooling in the town. After finishing up at Birdwood High and deferring his first year at university, he took on a medley of odd jobs as he “worked it all out”.
“I had some friends who had a potato farm, so I’d go out and help them, another friend had a little bit of a daffodil thing going on too – he was actually a teacher at Birdwood High,” he says.
“So, I did that for a year, just finding my feet and working out what I wanted to do.
“I didn’t go back to uni, I was keen to get involved in the family business, which is down at Holden Hill with ceilings and plasterboard insulation.
“Then obviously footy came along.”
Scott’s footballing talent was first noticed by the Norwood Football Club, when he was scouted at Under 15 level.
He played 63 games for the ‘Redlegs’ before he was drafted to the Magpies in 1995 at Pick 90.
In 2025, he reflects on his playing career with gratitude, exhibiting a certain
level of stoicism.
“I think I’m generally rational and pragmatic, where no matter what footy club I was playing at, I’d put the footy bag on my shoulder, walk in, train hard and go home,” he says.
Distinguished Collingwood coaching great Mick Malthouse once regarded him as someone you look to when things got tough.
“I never got caught up with too many things,” Scott says.
Despite an appreciation for his hometown, Scott was never allured by the prospect of signing for an SA club and forgoing the famous black and white stripes.
Good old Collingwood forever.
“I didn’t realise how big it was, truly, until I left,” he says.
“My first year in 1995 was the first-ever Anzac Day game, that was my fourth game of AFL, with 95,000 people – that was my introduction into how big Collingwood was.
“You’d call me spoiled as a footballer, (other teams) would play at the MCG and there would be 35,000 people, and I’d look around going, why isn’t there anyone here today?
“That’s why I never even contemplated moving.”
Becoming a coach was not an off-the-cuff, post-retirement decision.
It was years in the making.
Scott planted the seeds of his coaching career as a 23-year-old, enrolling in coaching courses and obtaining licenses while he was still a young, burgeoning AFL footballer.
“I’d sit there for two or three hours on a half a day off, going through opposition stoppages and taking notes and leaving it with our midfield coach at the time,” he says.
“And we’d go through it the next day when we all got back – it’s something that’s always appealed to me.”
If you want to look at growth, to me, percentage has always been an indicator of that
After stints as an assistant coach at West Coast, Collingwood and Hawthorn, Scott returned to SA for the first time in his AFL career, becoming the senior assistant coach of the Crows in 2020.
Last season the young Crows outfit announced itself as a premiership contender, rising from 15th the previous year to a minor premiership.
But for Scott, the “quick” success that was seen last year was not quick at all.
In fact, it took multiple seasons, many failures and countless lessons for the group to get where it needed to be.
“Everyone looks at the year just gone as massive improvement,” he says.
“To me, 2023 was the massive improvement and no one reflects on that, we had the fourth best percentage in the competition.
“If you want to look at growth, to me, percentage has always been an indicator of that.”
With a minor premiership under their belt, recruits that have ingratiated themselves into the club and more games being put into the young list, “it’s an exciting time, but there’s still growth to come”.
