The public scrutiny over former AFL coaches’ mental health is wrong, and was not the done thing in years gone by
Last week, former Adelaide coach Don Pyke had his mental wellbeing speculated on publicly by the AFL Coaches Association. It’s something that should not have happened, writes Graham Cornes.
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The record says Ron Barassi was a great coach.
And you can’t argue with the record.
Four VFL premierships at two different clubs (as well as the six he played in) cement his place in the annals of the game.
But like all great coaches he eventually was sacked.
They recalled him in 1993 to try and resurrect the fortunes of a faltering Sydney, but it ended in failure.
The Swans won only 13 of the 59 games of which he was in charge.
In a frank discussion several years later, he admitted he had to give the game away when he couldn’t recall the details of some of those games in which he had been in charge.
Despite rumours to the contrary, we got on well and often shared philosophical observations of the game.
His memory’s not quite so good now.
Some legends age better than others and while he looks fantastic for a man who is about to turn 84, our days of philosophical discourse are over.
No one ever discussed the state of Ron Barassi’s mental health when his coaching days came to an end.
No one really discusses it now.
None of the other great coaches have had their mental state of mind analysed and discussed publicly.
The not-so-great sacked coaches, whose records could never withstand the comparisons with the legends, who had every reason to be angry and depressed at their treatment, didn’t have to withstand the further ignominy of public exposure of their mental state of mind either.
But Don Pyke now has.
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So too, last season, did sacked Carlton coach Brendon Bolton have to endure public discussion about how depressed he had become after his dismissal as the Blues coach.
They were but two of five coaches who parted company with their teams.
AFL Coaches Association chief executive Mark Brayshaw ventured into sensitive, personal territory when he expressed concern over Pyke’s state of mind and criticised the system which “chewed him up and spat him out”.
Isn’t that further complicating the issue?
Shouldn’t those problems, if they really do exist, remain personal and confidential?
Crows chief executive Andrew Fagan further fuelled the discussion when he said that he thought that Pyke had found it tough at times in the fishbowl that was the Adelaide football environment: “as we all do at times”, he added.
Well yes, Andrew, that’s the job.
You know when you sign on that every move is going to be analysed, criticised and subject to constant scrutiny.
There’s no point complaining.
That’s the job.
Pyke went out with his head held high, and even a hint of defiance in his eye.
Like every other Crows coach, except for Malcolm Blight, he succumbed to the pressure of high expectation.
There should be no shame.
He took them to a grand final, although that is part of the problem.
Second place is not good enough, so anything less than a premiership would be deemed a failure.
So he resigned.
Whether he was pushed or not is still unclear, but the infamous review exposed problems within the club for which he had to be ultimately responsible.
It was an honourable exit.
Some coaches have been treated appallingly in past years.
Ron Alexander was in charge of the West Coast Eagles in the club’s first AFL season.
The team won 11 games in that first year and finished one game out of what was then the top 5.
In a disgraceful display of football megalomania, he was sacked.
No one queried his mental health after that.
The case of the late Dean Bailey when he was senior coach at Melbourne is both heartbreaking and unjust.
Having been instructed to play his less than strongest team and effectively to tank to ensure early draft picks, he was abandoned by the Melbourne Football Club, then sacked, after his team was thrashed by 30 goals at that football slaughterhouse, Kardinia Park.
In a putrid, scandalous verdict handed down by the AFL, the club was cleared of any wrongdoing, but Bailey was fined and suspended for 16 weeks, by which time he was an assistant coach at the Crows.
No one offered to help with his mental demons when he needed it most.
Where was the coaches’ association then?
No one, particularly alpha male AFL coaches, wants to contemplate failure.
However, the reality is that one day they all get sacked.
Whether you’re Ron Alexander after one season or Mick Malthouse after 31, you will be sacked.
If a coach is not prepared for that eventuality, he should not put his hand up in the first place. That’s not a defeatist attitude, it’s simply a risk that has to be factored in and worked around. If you’re not mentally tough enough to handle that eventuality or risk factor then don’t apply in the first place.
The record says Ron Barassi was a great coach.
Of course that’s a Victorian-centric perspective.
In reality, he was no better than our great South Australian coaches – Cahill, Oatey, Williams or Kerley – or latter-day maestros Blight and Laird.
However, whereas Barassi verbally and psychologically bludgeoned his players, Kerley (and I suspect Cahill, Oatey and Williams also) had a compassionate quality that Barassi lacked.
The psyches of all those great coaches were shaped by their parents’ hardships of a great depression and a World War.
Barassi and Neil Kerley were both Legacy wards and faced life without their father.
Whatever demons plagued them, they never showed it.
The world expected them to be tough, physically and mentally, and they were.
They would sneer at the suggestion the state of their mental health could be a point of public discussion.
I never knew Don Pyke well, but I suspect that is the last thing he would discuss publicly.
There is an old saying: “Coaches are hired to be fired”.
Yes, there’s plenty of room in between the hiring and the firing for them to be successful, but when the axe eventually falls they don’t need public debate and speculation of their mental health.
Besides, if they can’t handle the firing part they should give the hiring a miss.
Originally published as The public scrutiny over former AFL coaches’ mental health is wrong, and was not the done thing in years gone by