Brenton Sanderson
Early in my tenure as senior coach at Adelaide in 2012, players would move freely about my office, sprawl across the couches, throw darts at the dartboard I had set up, and chat to me about what was happening in their day. About footy, about life, about whatever was floating through their minds.
I loved the opportunity to debrief with them about the game at the weekend, and relished the chance to get to know them more as people. The players trusted the space they were in and they trusted me.
But as my time at the Crows went on and the losses piled up โ as I searched, foolishly, alone for answers to solve the problems the team was facing โ the office visits became less frequent and the buoyant nature of those conversations became increasingly strained.
Before long, players had to knock to enter my office. I had closed the door on them, figuratively and literally, without even realising. Reflecting on that now, 12 years after I was relieved as the coach of the Crows, it was the clearest possible sign that the pressure and expectation that comes with the role of being a senior coach was getting the better of me.
I was shutting the people out who were trying to help me. I just couldnโt see it at the time. Thatโs the reality of emotional instability in coaching. It doesnโt announce itself. It sneaks up on you. You become agitated with people. Your tolerance dissipates, and your patience fades.
You become less enjoyable to be around and the positivity that you once exuded becomes something you have to generate consciously.
When I got sacked by Adelaide, my sister Michelle said to me that she was relieved. Not that Iโd lost my job, but that Iโd been forced to hit the brakes on how I was approaching my job and my life. โI could tell you were getting really sick,โ she said. She didnโt mean physically. She meant emotionally. And she was right.
Donโt get me wrong, coaching is the greatest job in the world. The opportunity to lead a group of young men or women searching for the common goal of winning a premiership is what we are all striving to achieve.
To harness talent and see the constant development of your players, instilling belief in them and watching them fulfil their potential, is an addictive feeling. The hunt for success and winning is something we crave, and we do everything in our power to chase. The feedback for coaches is now instantaneous. Win, lose, draw โ the commentary surrounding the game is intense. Social media, podcasts, talkback radio, former players delivering their opinions; it all amounts to an environment where our teamโs performances, and our coaching careers, are analysed daily.
Fans have more access to coaches than ever and the game has become draped in a 24/7 news cycle as the coach, more often than not, is the headline of the lead story.
Itโs also hard to escape the emotional toll that coaching can have on your family. They are on the journey just as much as you are, and arenโt immune to some of the snide comments on social media, the off-hand remark made to you at the local supermarket or the undercurrent of booing directed at you by fans if the team isnโt performing well.
You try to protect them as best you can, but sometimes that isnโt always possible. This relentlessness is one of the defining challenges of modern coaching. A senior coach never really gets the chance to clock off. Leading selection meetings, driving cultural standards in the club, managing player welfare, meeting sponsors and speaking in press conferences โ the senior coach is asked to do far more than fulfil the basic functions of his job description.
Players need quality time with the coach, which means 40 hours a week disappears before that essential football work has begun. Instead of relaxing at home with your family after a full-on day at the football club, youโre watching opposition clips, preparing for meetings and answering phone calls at different hours of the night.
And when the final siren sounds on your season, youโre straight into exit meetings, having trade and list management discussions and preparing for the draft to try to improve your list so you can perform better than you did the year before.
The successful coaches are the best at compartmentalising and finding little opportunities to hit pause and have a genuine reset. They take a proper break during December and January. I found myself running on empty, after grinding myself into the ground. There were warning signs, but I chose to bury myself in my work, shy away from help and that approach was never going to end well for me.
When things went pear-shaped for me at Adelaide, I stopped delegating. I stopped leaning on my assistant coaches. I stopped bouncing ideas off the leadership group. I tried to handle everything โ telling people that weโd be doing it my way. There was little wonder that approach didnโt resonate with those around me, and it eventually brought about my undoing.
The value of having people you trust in your football department to let you know when you might be โred-liningโ and for them to have the progressiveness to say, โWhy donโt you come into the club at midday rather than 7am?โ is paramount. But that openness is built upon a strong organisational culture where those conversations are actively encouraged and requires a coach who is prepared to listen and act upon advice.
Too often, this concept is challenged. As a football industry, we need to do a better job of looking after our coaches. The emotional toll on coaches, and senior coaches in particular, is accumulating rapidly. If we donโt get ahead of it, weโre going to be forced to pick up the pieces after a serious incident.
In my role as chairman of the AFL Coaches Association, I believe that coaching is a critical part of the future of the AFL and AFLW. We need to ensure coaches have access to education opportunities, including professional development, a uniform approach to termination clauses and genuine pathways for coaches to be identified and developed.
The AFL industry has the opportunity to work together to optimise the environment for coaches, ensuring we continue to attract the best people into the profession. This is vital for the game, now and in the future.
My AFL coaching door was once open. Then it closed. I want to make sure the existing group of coaches and the new crop coming through arenโt blindly throwing their darts at the dartboard, without adequate support around them.
Brenton Sanderson was the senior coach of Adelaide between 2012 and 2014. He is chairman of the AFL Coaches Association.
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