Richmond Football Club made many mistakes after it won its 10th and most recent premiership in 1980. But few people have known until recently what might have been one of the costliest.

It was the end of 1983, and the Tigers had just dispensed with the services of Francis Bourke as coach after a year of expectation had turned pear-shaped.

Mick Malthouse, the man Bourke had famously put through the mother of all fitness tests on the eve of the 1982 grand final, Malthouse missing the premiership playoff as a result, had just retired after 174 games with St Kilda and the Tigers.

Keen to coach, he'd had job interviews with Wangaratta Rovers and SANFL club Central District. Then, out of the blue, Richmond general manager Kevin Dixon called Malthouse in to Punt Road and offered the shocked back-pocket player the Tigers' senior coaching gig.

"I was hardly thinking I was going to get a senior job in the VFL straight away," Malthouse recalls. But barely had he time to ponder his good fortune when the situation changed just as suddenly.

"They called me back a couple of days later and said: 'We can't give it to you. It hasn't worked out with Francis, and people are worried about another player coming straight in as coach."

Malthouse shrugged off his disappointment and a couple of weeks later was instead offered Richmond's reserves coaching job. "I said: 'Yeah, that's fantastic'. Then they called me back again a day later and said: 'No, we can't give it to you because we think you're probably going to be a bit too ambitious'. This time, he wasn't quite as phlegmatic. "I said: 'I'm not a backstabber. Never have been, never will be'."

Richmond would eventually appoint another former player, Mike Patterson, to the senior post. After a year, he was replaced by another former Tiger, Paul Sproule, who in turn was replaced after a year by yet another former Richmond player, Tony Jewell, for a second coaching stint. And after two years by another in Kevin Bartlett. And so on.

The Tigers would end up with nine different coaches over a 17-season period from 1984 to 2000. And by the turn of the millennium, Malthouse, just starting at Collingwood, had already been coaching with success for 17 years at Footscray and West Coast.

He'd ended up making his VFL coaching debut with the Bulldogs, appointed only on January 16, 1984,  after Ian "Bluey" Hampshire had pulled the pin at the start of the new football year. Thirty-one years, 714 games, four clubs, seven grand finals and three premierships later, he's still doing it. And it's been some ride.

To give Malthouse's breaking of the all-time games coaching record on Friday night some historical context, when Tony Lockett booted his 1300th career goal at the SCG in 1999, he was breaking a record held by Gordon Coventry for 62 years. Malthouse's 715th game as coach, against one of his former teams, will surpass a title held by coaching great Jock McHale for nearly 70.

He's coached against all manner of backdrops. From one of little money or facilities at Footscray, to the building of a state empire with the Eagles, to a traditional powerhouse in Collingwood attempting to re-establish itself as an elite club, and to a similarly fallen AFL giant in Carlton.

But far more than the triumphs, the landing of the first premiership to be won outside Victoria in 1992 and a repeat success for West Coast two years later, and Collingwood's first flag for 20 years in 2010, the real joy has been in the whole experience.

In an extensive interview with Fairfax Media on the eve of this record-breaking 31st season, Malthouse reflected on three decades worth of coaching experiences, the moments of which he is fondest more evidence that for him it's been as much about the journey as the destination.

"Still being part of it is a highlight to me, because I get encouraged by people," he says. "I'm not really a people person, quite frankly, but I'm inspired by people who just jump up and that keeps me going.

"I'm inspired by people like [former Footscray champion] Douggie Hawkins, when I see him play the football he did. When I see [former West Coast premiership rover] Tony Evans, the 'little piglet', virtually turn a grand final [1992] on its head in the space of 15 minutes of the most courageous football you'll see.

"To stand there and see Collingwood people get something that they'd waited so long for, and that they still remind me in the street about. To just seeing how a champion like Chris Judd goes about his job … it's never just one thing or moment."

Ask Malthouse to name the single favourite year of his coaching career and the answer isn't the premierships of 1992, 1994 or 2010, nor 1991 when his West Coast side dropped just three home and away games en route to a first grand final appearance. In fact, it's not even a year when his side reached the finals.

"It wasn't my favourite year at the time under any circumstances. But my dead-set favourite year now is 1987," he says.

"By that stage, the financial problems had really hit Footscray. Brad Hardie had gone, [former captain] Jim Edmond had gone, Andrew Purser was going, Simon Beasley was talking about retiring. I was pleading for these blokes to stay, but the club couldn't afford them. We were broke.

"So we were introducing kids from the under-19s into the seniors. We got beaten by 42 goals in the first three games, and we were playing the reigning premiers [Hawthorn] in round four. I remember saying to Tony McGuinness: 'Have you ever tagged?' and he didn't know what I meant. I said: 'You've got John Platten this week'.

"You think, how tough is this going to be, and then we went out and bowled them over. We ended up missing out on the finals by half-a-game. It was an extraordinary effort by a club under massive pressure, but more importantly, an extraordinary effort by the playing group."

Indeed, performance in the face of adversity seems to be the common thread through most of Malthouse's happiest reminiscences. Of which you don't get a lot more than West Coast faced in his first season with the club in 1990, the Eagles surviving six consecutive weeks on the road to reach a preliminary final.

The Eagles played on the Gold Coast, in Geelong and then for four successive weeks at VFL Park, somehow defying all sorts of odds to come within one win of a grand final.

"It was the best core period of six games I've ever been involved in," he reflects. "We went to Brisbane, which in those days meant Melbourne then to Brisbane. Then it was Geelong, which meant a flight and a long bus ride. We went to Waverley and drew [against Collingwood in the qualifying final], went back and got smashed in the replay. Then we went back again and won."

That unexpected win over a heavily favoured Melbourne put the Eagles into a preliminary final. And then the story took another unexpected twist. "Then we had the airline strike. So we caught a plane to Kalgoorlie, then Mildura, then Melbourne. So we travelled back and forth across the Nullarbor six weeks in a row."

These days, Malthouse ponders, a club, rather than criss-cross the country continually back and forth for a month, would probably just set up camp away. Things, however, were a lot more rudimentary in a competition which had only that same year changed in name from VFL to AFL.

"The West Australian Football Commission was deeply in debt, so we couldn't afford to stay in Melbourne. We had part-time players, remember, we had blokes injured and we were trying to keep them up. People won't understand just how difficult it was."

The inevitable toll was taken in a heavy preliminary final defeat at the hands of Essendon. But if Malthouse and the still-fledgling club had any lingering doubts they were capable of becoming the first non-Victorian premiership side, the episode certainly erased them.

"The gun was certainly loaded with ammunition in regards to our expectations for the next year," he says. "No side in the history of sport could have done what we had to do, and I don't care whether you were playing for Vladivostok and going to Moscow, they couldn't have. We just knew that nothing that would happen could test us any better than that did."

West Coast would win its first 12 games the following season, playing a brand of football so powerful and miserly that at its best it was light years ahead of its rivals.

The loss of a first home final to Hawthorn would derail that premiership assault, the Eagles losing the grand final, again to the Hawks. But the ice was broken, and Malthouse's coaching legacy assured in 1992, when they took the premiership cup outside Victoria for the first time. And again two years later.

Malthouse's West Coast would end up participating in finals in each of his 10 seasons in charge before he departed, heading to a Collingwood which had just landed a wooden spoon for only the second time in the Magpies' history.

And those who'd insisted that the resource and talent-rich WA club simply had to run out to achieve the ultimate rather than be coached to it would be a lot shorter on explanations for Malthouse's continued success within only a couple of seasons at the Magpies.

In 2002, a Collingwood team which pure talent dictated had no right to even be on the same arena on the game's biggest day came within nine points of causing one of the biggest boilovers in grand final history against the might of Brisbane. Twelve months on, the Magpies lost to the Lions again.

That left Malthouse 2-3 in grand finals. It would be seven years before Collingwood would reach another. But after a nail-biting draw with St Kilda, the Pies evened the coach's ledger in premiership playoffs. And even after another loss in 2011 to Geelong, Malthouse's finals record remains significant.

As feted as is the record of McHale at Collingwood, eight premierships delivered in his 38-season rein, he won 47.46 per cent of the 59 finals he coached. Malthouse has coached in 52 finals for 27 wins and two draws, a strike rate of 53.85 per cent.

Of the game's seven-most-experienced coaches – McHale, Malthouse, Kevin Sheedy, Allan Jeans, Tom Hafey, David Parkin and Ron Barassi – only Hafey has a more consistent record in September.

An unusually high percentage of players who have been coached by him over the three decades continue to swear by him, almost inevitably remarking on the different man they see to the crusty and intemperate curmudgeon the bulk of the football world views through the prism of the post-match media conference.

It's a relationship which certainly appears to transcend generations, the age gap now between the now 61-year-old Carlton coach and his players in some cases more than 40 years.

"At Footscray, I was coaching blokes who were the same age as me. By the time I got to West Coast, I was more like an older brother. When I got to Collingwood, I was probably their father's age. Now I'm their grandfather's age," he laughs. But, he insists, finding a suitable connection is never an issue.

"I don't have to practise being something," he shrugs. "I am what I am. And there's time, even in football, to talk about other issues that are happening. Every player's got his own story. It might be what are they studying, what they do in their spare time, what their partner is doing."

Malthouse has, however, drawn the line with contemporary music. "I used to think I wasn't too bad with it," he chuckles. "At least at Footscray and West Coast they'd heard of the Beatles. "By Collingwood, I was starting to think: 'This stuff they're listening to is pretty weird'. And now, well, I know it's bloody weird!"

But a consistent marker of the coaching stints at four clubs, and a key to those strong relationships, has been his capacity to extract the best from players not necessarily the most gifted.

"I'm a great believer that no matter who you are or what you are, everyone's got an X factor," he says. "Everyone has something that's of strength, and I'm prepared to see it mature, no matter what it is. I suppose that gives them confidence.

"In Australia, we tend to want everyone to be, if they're a cricketer, Mitch Johnson, or if it's football Wayne Carey, or Tim Cahill in soccer. I've spoken to numerous schools, and whether I've hit the mark or not with teachers, I know I have with the students by saying to them that every one of them has that x-factor, and not to forget it, to play to it. It makes them feel good about themselves."

As he attempts to do with his coaching staff. "I've never, ever thought that I'm better than anyone else at a club," he says. "I let the medicos be medicos. I let the conditioning coach be a conditioning coach. I let my assistants be assistants. I'm as hard as the next bloke on them but they seem to adjust, we get over things quickly and we don't hold grudges."

The only time that dichotomy changes is on match day. "There can only be one boss for two hours. I will be reasonably democratic for most of my time at a club. But for two hours, we haven't got time to debate. You either jump on with what I want or you say nothing."

This special week, however, there's a long line of those former pupils and colleagues who want to say plenty. And on the eve of this significant milestone, Malthouse, after some initial misgivings, has simply accepted the enormity of the achievement.

"I'm treating it with respect out of respect for a famous figure in Jock McHale," he says. "I was looking at it the wrong way, worrying about everyone's expectations of what it would be, and it wasn't sitting well. It really wore me down for about a month. But then I woke up one morning and remembered I've lived my whole life by my own expectations, not anyone else's."

It's that mantra which spurred him on when his own club Richmond offered, then withdrew not one but two coaching jobs on spurious assumptions. And more than three decades later, it's pretty apparent how far off the mark they were.

MICK'S TOP FIVE

FOOTSCRAY v HAWTHORN (1987, round 4, Western Oval) 

A young Footscray, having lost Brownlow medallist Brad Hardie to Brisbane, had been pummelled by a total of 42 goals in their first three games. Facing reigning premiers Hawthorn in round four, Malthouse tagged John Platten with Tony McGuinness, and convinced his troops they were in the hunt. Brian Cordy starred, Brian Royal kicked six goals, and the Dogs romped home by 41 points.

MELBOURNE v WEST COAST (1990 first semi-final, Waverley) 

The Eagles had become the AFL's Leyland Brothers, travelling to Carrara and Geelong for their last two games, then to Waverley for a qualifying final draw and replay against Collingwood. After a month on the road, a tired and injured outfit was somehow inspired to perform again against hot favourites Melbourne, regular defender Chris Waterman bobbing up with six goals, West Coast beating the Demons by 30 points.

WEST COAST v GEELONG (1992 grand final, MCG) 

For the first time, the premiership cup left Victoria, Malthouse's Eagles making history. After having lost the year before to Hawthorn, things looked shaky with West Coast trailing by four goals shortly before half-time. But Malthouse kept his head, a low-profile favourite in Tony Evans was inspirational, as was star wingman Peter Matera with five goals, and West Coast won going away by 28 points.

WESTERN BULLDOGS v WEST COAST (1999 qualifying final, MCG) 

West Coast limped into September having won just one of their previous eight games and were rank outsiders against the fourth-placed Bulldogs. But on a windswept Friday night, Malthouse convinced his players the Dogs' edge in class would be negated. A big second term saw the Eagles take a lead they then clung to grimly, prevailing by just five points despite kicking only two goals after half-time.

PORT ADELAIDE v COLLINGWOOD (2002 qualifying final, AAMI Stadium) 

The unfancied Magpies had struggled over the last month of the season and faced a red-hot Power, who had finished a game clear on top, five games clear of Collingwood. The Pies would also be without injured skipper Nathan Buckley. But Malthouse won the mind games with coaching rival Mark Williams in the lead-up. As did his team, Paul Licuria shutting down Josh Francou and racking up 40 possessions himself.