Denis Leslie Pagan (born 24 September 1947) is a former Australian rules football coach and player in the VFL/AFL.
Pagan is a dual AFL premiership coach, and he also won the prestigious Victoria derby in 2020 as a trainer and owner of the horse “Johnny Get Angry.” This victory made him the first Australian sports figure to win an AFL premiership as a coach and train a group 1 horse race winner.
Pagan played 120 games for the North Melbourne Football Club between 1967 and 1974, kicking 5 goals, mainly due to his permanent spot as a hard-nosed defender in the back pocket.
[1] Pagan then moved to South Melbourne for two seasons from 1975 until 1976, playing 23 games and kicking 0 goals.
However, these events did not deter Pagan from his dedication to the North Melbourne football club, despite Barassi's authoritative coaching style.
[2][1] Pagan's coaching career began when he took the role of captain-coach of the Yarraville Football Club in the VFA second division in 1979.
Pagan also led North Melbourne to the 1998 AFL Grand Final but fell short and lost to Adelaide.
[1][6] He was known for pioneering a successful tactic which was termed "Pagan's Paddock", based around his key forward Wayne Carey.
[7] The coaching strategy involved moving all forwards out of the 50-metre arc and midfielders bombing the ball into empty space.
[12] Employing a recycled player policy in an attempt to rebuild the team for the 2004 season where Pagan led Carlton to eleventh on the ladder with ten wins and twelve losses, which was Carlton's highest placing under Pagan, and carried this into a pre-season premiership in the 2005 Wizard Cup.
[15][16] Carlton under Pagan did not improve much in the 2007 season, sitting at fourteenth on the ladder after Round 16, 2007 with four wins and twelve losses.
Years later in 2014, Pagan later stated in the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper that coaching Carlton was "a very difficult assignment", also taking into consideration the fact that the club had lost valuable draft picks in the wake of the salary cap breaches.
[22] In 2021, Pagan in a radio interview with SEN described his tenure as senior coach of Carlton as a “snake pit” because of "Divisions and disunity" at the club that he experienced.