Matthew Richard Primus (born 12 January 1975) is a former coach of the

Port Adelaide Football Club Port Adelaide Football Club is a professional Australian rules football club based in Alberton, South Australia, Alberton, South Australia. The club's senior men's team plays in the Australian Football League (AFL), where they are nicknamed ...

and

Australian rules football Australian football, also called Australian rules football or Aussie rules, or more simply football or footy, is a contact sport played between two teams of 18 players on an oval field, often a modified cricket ground. Points are scored by k ...

er, captain and

All-Australian The All-Australian team is an all-star team of Australian rules footballers, selected by a panel at the end of each season. It represents a complete team, including an interchange bench, of the best-performed players during the season, led by ...

ruckman. He was also previously an assistant coach at the

Gold Coast Football Club The Gold Coast Suns is a professional Australian rules football club that competes in the Australian Football League (AFL). The club is based on Queensland's Gold Coast in the suburb of Carrara. The club has been playing in the AFL since the ...

AFL career

Fitzroy career

Early career (1996)

Primus began his career with the

Fitzroy Football Club The Fitzroy Football Club is an Australian rules football club currently competing in the Victorian Amateur Football Association (VAFA). Formed in 1883 to represent the inner-Melbourne municipality of Fitzroy, the club was a member of the V ...

in what was to be their final season in the

AFL AFL may refer to: Sports * American Football League (AFL), a name shared by several separate and unrelated professional American football leagues: ** American Football League (1926) (a.k.a. "AFL I"), first rival of the National Football Leagu ...

. At the end of the season, he had played 20 games and kicked five goals, becoming one of their key players. Primus signed with the

as an uncontracted zone player during their

establishment in

1996 File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 800, causing the plane to crash and killing everyone o ...

Port Adelaide career

Career high (1997–2002)

After finishing second in Fitzroy’s 1996

best and fairest In Australian sport, the best and fairest award recognises the player(s) adjudged to have had the best performance in a game or over a season for a given sporting club or competition. The awards are sometimes dependent on not receiving a suspensi ...

and in the same position in Port Adelaide's 1997

, Primus had established himself as one of the game's top ruckmen, but his close losses in the best and fairest counts would be a pointer to the bad luck he would face later in his career.

1999 File:1999 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The funeral procession of King Hussein of Jordan in Amman; the 1999 İzmit earthquake kills over 17,000 people in Turkey; the Columbine High School massacre, one of the first major school shoot ...

saw Primus play only two games before a serious knee injury ruled him out for the year, yet the Power managed to improve on their combined record of 19-23-2 to reach seventh position. As his star rose as a player, Primus was also getting noticed off the field, being voted

Cleo Cleo may refer to: Entertainment * ''Cleo'' (magazine), an Australian magazine established in 1972, now active in Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand * Cleo (group), a South Korean girl group formed in 1999 * ''Cleo'' (play), by Lawren ...

Magazine's ”Most Eligible Bachelor" in 1998. After the Power had a disappointing season in 2000, Primus was promoted to captain of the club in 2001, and led the team to a minor premiership in 2002 with only two losses in their last twenty home-and-away games before lack of finals experience told.

Injuries (2003–2004)

In 2003 Primus was hampered by

hamstring In human anatomy, a hamstring () is any one of the three posterior thigh muscles in between the hip and the knee (from medial to lateral: semimembranosus, semitendinosus and biceps femoris). The hamstrings are susceptible to injury. In quadrupe ...

and knee injuries, and only played nine games. The worst was yet to come, however, and 2004 would be the ultimate heartbreak for Primus. In his return game in Round 3, he suffered an ACL rupture after his left knee bent the wrong way, requiring a

knee reconstruction Anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction (ACL reconstruction) is a surgical tissue graft replacement of the anterior cruciate ligament, located in the knee, to restore its function after an injury. The torn ligament can either be removed from ...

and putting him out of the game for the rest of the 2004 season.

Warren Tredrea Warren Gary Tredrea (born 24 December 1978) is a former Australian Rules Footballer with the Port Adelaide Football Club in the Australian Football League (AFL) and former Weekday Sports Presenter on ''Nine News Adelaide''. Since his retiremen ...

took over the captaincy, and after plenty of near-misses in the finals, Port Adelaide would go on to win the premiership that year, with Primus missing out.

Final season (2005)

In 2005, Primus made another return to the AFL. His form was not indicative of the Primus of old, however, and it seemed Port were playing Primus out of respect that he was the captain. Not only that, but Port Adelaide were not the same strong side they were just a year earlier. While they eventually had a few results go their way and managed to scrape into the finals, Primus injured his knee again in the final round of the home-and-away season. He was expected to miss only the finals series at first, but later scans revealed that he would require a third knee reconstruction. The likelihood that he would not be able to play until 2007 meant Primus announced his retirement from the AFL at the age of 30.

Statistics

: , - style="background-color: #EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

, , 12 , , 20 , , 5 , , 7 , , 163 , , 137 , , 300 , , 61 , , 41 , , 339 , , 0.3 , , 0.4 , , 8.2 , , 6.9 , , 15.0 , , 3.1 , , 2.1 , , 17.0 , , 2 , - ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

1997 File:1997 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The movie set of ''Titanic'', the highest-grossing movie in history at the time; '' Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone'', is published; Comet Hale-Bopp passes by Earth and becomes one of ...

, , 2 , , 22 , , 6 , , 1 , , 179 , , 89 , , 268 , , 74 , , 38 , , 255 , , 0.3 , , 0.0 , , 8.1 , , 4.0 , , 12.2 , , 3.4 , , 1.7 , , 11.6 , , 9 , - style="background-color: #EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently s ...

, , 2 , , 18 , , 4 , , 2 , , 105 , , 128 , , 233 , , 55 , , 34 , , 289 , , 0.2 , , 0.1 , , 5.8 , , 7.1 , , 12.9 , , 3.1 , , 1.9 , , 16.1 , , 4 , - ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

, , 2 , , 2 , , 1 , , 0 , , 9 , , 5 , , 14 , , 4 , , 1 , , 28 , , 0.5 , , 0.0 , , 4.5 , , 2.5 , , 7.0 , , 2.0 , , 0.5 , , 14.0 , , 0 , - style="background-color: #EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from S ...

, , 2 , , 21 , , 12 , , 8 , , 124 , , 163 , , 287 , , 79 , , 45 , , 315 , , 0.6 , , 0.4 , , 5.9 , , 7.8 , , 13.7 , , 3.8 , , 2.1 , , 15.0 , , 5 , - ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2001 The September 11 attacks against the United States by Al-Qaeda, which killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror, were a defining event of 2001. The United States led a multi-national coalition in an invasion of Afghanist ...

, , 1 , , 22 , , 9 , , 5 , , 137 , , 156 , , 293 , , 85 , , 60 , , 488 , , 0.4 , , 0.2 , , 6.2 , , 7.1 , , 13.3 , , 3.9 , , 2.7 , , 22.2 , , 10 , - style="background-color: #EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2002 File:2002 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 2002 Winter Olympics are held in Salt Lake City; Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother and her daughter Princess Margaret, Countess of Snowdon die; East Timor gains East Timor independence, indepe ...

, , 1 , , 24 , , 23 , , 8 , , 140 , , 180 , , 320 , , 91 , , 75 , , 490 , , 1.0 , , 0.3 , , 5.8 , , 7.5 , , 13.3 , , 3.8 , , 3.1 , , 20.4 , , 9 , - ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2003 File:2003 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The crew of STS-107 perished when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during reentry into Earth's atmosphere; SARS became an epidemic in China, and was a precursor to SARS-CoV-2; A ...

, , 1 , , 9 , , 5 , , 1 , , 34 , , 27 , , 61 , , 22 , , 15 , , 111 , , 0.6 , , 0.1 , , 3.8 , , 3.0 , , 6.8 , , 2.4 , , 1.7 , , 12.3 , , 0 , - style="background-color: #EAEAEA" ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2004 2004 was designated as an International Year of Rice by the United Nations, and the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle Against Slavery and its Abolition (by UNESCO). Events January * January 3 – Flash Airlines Flight ...

, , 1 , , 1 , , 4 , , 1 , , 7 , , 5 , , 12 , , 5 , , 5 , , 11 , , 4.0 , , 1.0 , , 7.0 , , 5.0 , , 12.0 , , 5.0 , , 5.0 , , 11.0 , , 0 , - ! scope="row" style="text-align:center" ,

2005 File:2005 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf of Mexico; the Funeral of Pope John Paul II is held in Vatican City; " Me at the zoo", the first video ever to be uploaded to YouTube; Eris was discover ...

, , 1 , , 18 , , 12 , , 10 , , 87 , , 87 , , 174 , , 50 , , 35 , , 289 , , 0.7 , , 0.6 , , 4.8 , , 4.8 , , 9.7 , , 2.8 , , 1.9 , , 16.1 , , 2 , - class="sortbottom" ! colspan=3, Career ! 157 ! 81 ! 43 ! 985 ! 977 ! 1962 ! 526 ! 349 ! 2615 ! 0.5 ! 0.3 ! 6.3 ! 6.2 ! 12.5 ! 3.4 ! 2.2 ! 16.7 ! 41

Coaching career

Port Adelaide (2006–2012)

Primus was an assistant coach at

under senior coach Mark Williams from December 2005 to July 2010. Just over midway through the 2010 season, with the Power’s record getting worse week by week, Williams stepped down as senior coach after Round 15, and Primus was appointed the caretaker senior coach for the remainder of the 2010 season. As caretaker senior coach, Primus won five of his seven games in charge, with two of them against in-form teams and , and earned numerous praises from players, staff and supporters for the job in 2011. The club administration had started the search for a new coach and it was believed that the Power would appoint someone who had never been associated with the club before. Nevertheless, Primus was appointed as the senior coach of the club for three years. In the 2011 season in Primus' first full season as the full-time Port Adelaide senior coach, the side won only three games, finishing second-last, narrowly avoiding the wooden spoon with a win in the final round of the season against , at the expense of in their inaugural season. He finished the 2011 season with a 3-19 win–loss record. In the 2012 season, he coached the team to a 5–13 record after nineteen rounds, but after the team's 34-point loss to struggling expansion team in Round 19, Primus was informed that his contract would be terminated one year early at the end of the season; he opted to step down as senior coach immediately, on 6 August 2012, rather than coach out the remaining four matches, and he was replaced by Port Adelaide assistant coach Garry Hocking as caretaker senior coach for the remainder of the 2012 season. He left Port Adelaide with a winning percentage of just 27.7%.

Gold Coast Suns (2013–2018)

On 25 September 2013, Primus was announced as an assistant coach of the

Gold Coast Suns The Gold Coast Suns is a professional Australian rules football club that competes in the Australian Football League (AFL). The club is based on Queensland's Gold Coast in the suburb of Carrara. The club has been playing in the AFL since th ...

. At the end of the 2018 season, Primus left the Gold Coast Suns after he was told that his contract would not be renewed as assistant coach as part of a clean-out at the club.

Personal life

Primus married Melissa Tucker in January 2007. They have three daughters together, Skye (born April 2006), Holly (born July 2007) and Georgia (born August 2008). He is also the grandson of former Geelong Football Club player, captain and coach

Reg Hickey Reginald Joseph Hickey (27 March 1906 – 13 December 1973) was an Australian rules footballer who was a player, the captain, the captain-coach, and the non-playing coach for the Geelong Football Club in the Victorian Football League (VFL) ...

Honours and achievements

''Team:'' *

Port Adelaide Port Adelaide is a port-side region of Adelaide, approximately northwest of the Adelaide CBD. It is also the namesake of the City of Port Adelaide Enfield council, a suburb, a federal and state electoral division and is the main port for the ...

Pre Season Premiership 2001, 2002 ''Individual:'' *

All Australian The All-Australian team is an all-star team of Australian rules footballers, selected by a panel at the end of each season. It represents a complete team, including an interchange bench, of the best-performed players during the season, led by ...

2001, 2002 *

second

1997 *

Fitzroy Fitzroy or FitzRoy may refer to: People As a given name *Several members of the Somerset family (Dukes of Beaufort) have this as a middle-name: **FitzRoy Somerset, 1st Baron Raglan (1788–1855) ** Henry Charles FitzRoy Somerset, 8th Duke of Beau ...

second

1996 *

2002 *

best team man 2000, 2001 *

captain 2001–2005 *

coach 2010–2012 *

International Rules International rules football ( ga, Peil na rialacha idirnáisiunta; also known as international rules in Australia and compromise rules or Aussie rules in Ireland) is a team sport consisting of a hybrid of football codes, which was developed ...

Series 2002

References

External links

Port Adelaide Football Club
{{DEFAULTSORT:Primus, Matthew Port Adelaide Football Club coaches Norwood Football Club players Fitzroy Football Club players Port Adelaide Football Club players Port Adelaide Football Club players (all competitions) 1975 births Living people All-Australians (AFL) John Cahill Medal winners Australian rules footballers from Geelong Australian rules footballers from Victoria (Australia) South Australian Football Hall of Fame inductees Geelong Falcons players Australia international rules football team players