Confronting comments detail hardships of coaching

JOHN Barker has declared he will never return to coaching, such is the hardships of the industry.

Barker started his coaching career at St Kilda before moving to Hawthorn and then spent 10 years at Carlton, most noticeably featuring as the club’s interim coach following the sacking of Mick Malthouse.

He won three of his 14 games in charge and was at Ikon Park for one of Carlton’s most scrutinised periods.

Speaking to Saturdays in SA, Barker revealed his true feelings about the job.

“I miss certain aspects but one thing I can categorically guarantee is I will never coach again,” he began.

“There’s bits you really love, the coaching and interaction with your players, I love that connection piece and the ability to extract high performance out of individuals, there’s a real buzz that comes out of that. So I do miss elements of that.

“But in the overall scheme of things, it’s not a job I would ever want to do again.”

Barker’s comments come in the midst of a new wave of concern for senior coaches and their assistants following Alastair Clarkson stepping away from the Roos and Damien Hardwick resigning from Richmond.

Reports have indicated there is significant dissatisfaction among the coaching ranks and Barker highlighted the workload from a decrease in the soft cap as a primary reason.

“I think you’ll find it continues to happen, they don’t work out the best way to balance the actual lifestyle of a coach,” he said.

“I think there’s a few variables at play. One is when you reduce the soft cap, obviously you reduce the money involved. If you want good people, you have to pay for good people, it’s as simple as that.

“The smarter people are going to go into fields that they love and want to do, but go into fields that earn more so they can look after their families to a better extent.

“The time that’s allocated towards coaching is significant and once the soft cap is reduced and there were less numbers, it meant there was a bigger workload… when you’re coaching, your weekend will be working on a Saturday, a sponsorship function on Saturday night, on a Sunday you’ll go watch the

reserves play which is three hours, six or seven hours of editing… there were some Sunday nights I’d be writing reports at 11pm, 12pm, at night. Then you kick off again on a Monday.”

Barker also detailed the impacts on family, both in being able to spend less time with loved ones as well as the secondary pressure on them.

“If you lose games of footy, the drama around you being a really poor coach or really poor outfit… it changes within a couple of weeks or a month,” he said.

“The roller coaster of the scrutiny is significant too. It’s not necessarily just on the coaches and how they feel about it, a lot of it is about their families.

“When they see their families feel a lot of that, that’s when it affects the coaches I think.”

SEN’s Tom Morris reported earlier this month there had been a 37 per cent drop off in money for coaches since COVID, and that’s only just starting to return.

Barker left the Carlton Football Club in 2021, the same week as the club launched an external review of its operations.

– BY SEB MOTTRAM/ SEN