Following his retirement from playing at the end of 1969, Kerley moved full-time into coaching from 1970, continuing on with Glenelg. He took the Tigers to the 1970 Grand Final where again they lost to Sturt who won their fifth premiership in a row under the coaching of Kerley's former West Adelaide mentor Jack Oatey. The Tigers finished sixth and missed the finals in both 1971 and 1972 but bounced back with a vengeance in 1973, finishing the 21-game minor round with a club best ever 20—1 record, their only loss to reigning premier (and 1972 Champions of Australia) North Adelaide in Round 8 at the Roosters’ home ground, Prospect Oval. Kerley coached the club to just its second premiership (and first since 1934) when they defeated North Adelaide by seven points in front of 56,525 fans in what would be the last Grand Final played at the Adelaide Oval, as the league’s new headquarters, Football Park in the western Adelaide suburb of West Lakes opened in 1974. Kerley coached Glenelg to both the 1974 and 1975 SANFL Grand Finals where they lost both times to Sturt in '74 and Norwood in '75. His last season as coach of Glenelg in 1976 saw The Bays finish in 3rd place. To this day, despite four separate stints at West Adelaide, Kerley says he felt more at home at Glenelg citing the lack of fighting with the club's board, his success there as a player and coach as well as the general atmosphere at the club as reasons. Kerley signed on as coach of perennial under-performers West Torrens in 1977 and fans of the club were called upon to "Join the King’s Eagle Revival in 1977" with T-shirts printed up stating just that. He took them from bottom (tenth) with losses in each of the last sixteen matches in 1976 to sixth in 1977 and fifth in 1978. The club slumped to eighth in 1979 before Kerley again lifted them and took the Eagles to their last ever finals series by finishing fifth in 1980. In 1981 Kerley was enticed back to West Adelaide by their President Bob Lee and his 1961 premiership winning teammate, General Manager Doug Thomas, who had replaced Kerley as Captain-Coach of the Bloods in 1963. Kerley and Thomas had remained friends as Kerley’s beef from 1962 was with the then board of the club and not Thomas who only agreed to the coaching role in a bid to bring stability to the club.