MICHAEL Voss has taken 12 months to decide the first step of his coaching path and, in doing so, he has booted the AFL well and truly in the guts.

Voss and his young family this week spent four days of soul-searching at Port Douglas in far-north Queensland before arriving at the decision that most senior coaches would applaud and his most respected mentors advised. Certainly, after last year's apparent backflip, he needed to make a decision.

And yet, in choosing to oversee West Coast's depleted midfield and gain experience at one of the AFL's — in pure football terms — most professional outfits, he has become, symbolically, another key player to snub the competition's Gold Coast dream.

Having been sensationally rejected by the Kangaroos, still working feverishly to create a decent and profitable home ground for the fledgling team and no longer guaranteed the State Government support initially banked upon, the AFL has now lost the master conductor who would have lured some of the best on and off-field players in the land.

And now there appears genuine doubt over whether Brian Cook will leave Geelong to run the new club from October this year.

Still, Voss has made it more than clear that the AFL had its chance and, in a sense, rejected the commitment he felt he deserved.

Voss was to have been the marketing coup, the focal point in the creation of the new club over the next two years. But he wanted a five-year deal and the Gold Coast committee — GC 17 — chaired by the AFL's David Matthews was not prepared to take that risk.

Interestingly, the AFL has shown more faith in Cook than it was prepared to afford Voss. The Cats' CEO is the league's first choice to run the new club and Cook is understood to have been offered a lucrative five-year contract, which would see him the top money-earner among the club chiefs in the competition. The deal was put to Cook late last month and today he is expected to receive the counter-offer Geelong president Frank Costa revealed to The Age several weeks ago. Costa said then he was quietly confident of retaining Cook, who has also been approached by a third AFL club, and should that happen, it would prove another kick in the guts to the embryonic club.

Cook's decision is expected to come within a fortnight and would seem to boil down to whether the respected chief executive is prepared to climb the professional mountain one more time. Family considerations, some less painstaking challenges at Skilled Stadium, the prospect of three or four more years of the Cats' on-field success, not to mention Costa's persuasive powers have combined to pose a genuine doubt over whether Cook will go.

The initial two-year deal put to Voss was worth an estimated $600,000 and would have had him overseeing a teenaged group probably competing in the TAC under-18 competition. Were Voss not prepared to coach the group, he would still have been the key development mentor not to mention master salesman in the creation of the club to make its debut in 2011.

But Voss wanted a greater commitment and the GC 17 group was only prepared to offer him an extra year — effectively a one-year coaching deal granted two years out with a decent earner to help create and mould the team until then. The AFL wanted an answer this week.

"We were confident enough to extend the agreement to include 2011," explained Gold Coast committeeman and Voss's former chairman at Brisbane Graeme Downie last night, "but to extend it any further … well … I wouldn't say it was too big a risk but it would not have been good governance.

"I'd be telling lies if I didn't say I was disappointed but the good thing to come out of this is that we can now search for a very good development coach, which we will start to do immediately and, by the time 2011 comes around, who knows who will be available."

David Matthews said that now the Voss path had been exhausted the AFL would revert to plan B. Former North Melbourne recruiting boss Neville Stibbard will oversee the analysis at the forthcoming under 16 championships and, once assessed, the league will finalise the playing list rules and draft concessions by mid-August.

Voss's three-time premiership coach Leigh Matthews was strangely uncommunicative regarding Voss's decision saying only: "I haven't really got a comment. I don't think it would be savoury to continue to run a commentary on it."

West Coast coach John Worsfold confirmed he had approached both Voss and Nathan Buckley but the latter was not prepared to abandon his media contracts, which end at the conclusion of 2009. "Michael was the biggest part of the jigsaw puzzle in rebuilding our coaching structure and we're rapt he's come on board."