Coaching in the AFL is a chalice that can be poisoned or make you immortal.
That's the deal made when someone agrees to become a head coach of an AFL club 99.9 per cent of the time: If you win a premiership, you are a success; anything less and you have failed. It's as ruthless a business as any.
The pressure internally and externally, the media scrutiny, would become all-encompassing. Just look at what Carlton coach Michael Voss is experiencing right now as people list the best person to become the Blues coach while he is still at the helm.
But for all its flaws, it is so heavily desired by the competitive few who seek eternal glory and have a deep burning desire to become a premiership-winning coach.
Having been born in the first year of the 21st century, that is where this ranking list shall begin. The work of coaches from 2000 to the present will be the main source of argument, but the ability to look further back in time at their exploits can be used as a form of tie-breaker.
To enter the top 10, a coach must have won a premiership, so St Kilda's Ross Lyon, despite leading two of the league's "smaller teams" to a total of three (four if you count the draw) grand finals, is omitted from the pool.
4. Chris Fagan - Brisbane, 2024, 2025
What Chris Fagan has done at Brisbane has been nothing short of astonishing.
Yes, the Lions have been helped by Academy and father-son loopholes, but nothing should detract from how Fagan helped turn the club around from being a basket case in a rugby-obsessed state, to a two-time - and possibly three-time - reigning premier with sell-out crowds week on week.
The other incredible part of the story is that Fagan never played at the level himself, thus demonstrating that even without the lived experience of playing in the V/AFL, his football mind was still capable of producing a powerhouse.
Fagan took over the club in 2016 when the Lions hadn't played finals for eight seasons and had finished 17th for the previous two years. Brisbane would win the wooden spoon the following year before leaping to a second-placed finish in 2019.
Doubts were cast over whether Fagan could be the man to take the Lions back to the promised land as the club choked and spluttered its way through the next three finals campaigns.
Fagan and his troops were then handed a heartbreaking loss to Collingwood by less than a goal in 2023, before rebounding like not many grand final losers before them to dominate the next two deciders against Sydney and Geelong by 60 and 47 points, respectively.
