Booed, under-paid and over-scrutinised: Who’d be an AFL coach?

Ken Hinkley’s voice cracked as he fought for composure. Searching for the right words to explain exactly why a two-point victory on a miserable Melbourne afternoon over an unfancied opponent meant so much, he could only look towards his players and utter at first: “The boys.”

But it was what Hinkley said shortly afterwards in his emotional post-game interview with Sarah Jones that articulated his position when he stated unequivocally: “I want the job.”

Port coach Ken Hinkley with skipper Connor Rozee after the team’s win last weekend.Credit: Getty Images

Hinkley had endured a horrible week leading into the round 16 clash with St Kilda. Booed and heckled during and after his team’s thrashing by the Brisbane Lions at Adelaide Oval, he was then left figuratively hanging following a vicious radio talkback call where Port Adelaide’s new football director and premiership captain Warren Tredrea said “good call” in response to a caller’s attack on Hinkley. Tredrea later said he was just acknowledging the caller, rather than agreeing with everything that was said.

Hinkley’s assistant Josh Carr is the unofficial coaching heir apparent, but still no certainty to get the job should the senior coach be forced to depart one year before his contract dictates.

Hinkley’s team sits half a game outside the top four, but he is coaching in a sometimes-intolerable environment. Even his vanquished coaching opponent Ross Lyon sent him a message of support after last Sunday’s game. There are few coaches in the AFL system as well-liked as Hinkley.

So it might have seemed harsh to question Hinkley’s demonstrative outbursts after wins this year, but the truth is that, while his passion is understandable, it is also unsustainable. If this sounds tough, given what he has endured, he needs – for the sake of his team – to rise above the emotional rollercoaster and lead his talented young midfield towards September.

And the AFL – for all of the noise it has made about mental health and respect for the increasing demands upon the 18 frontmen who face the music more than any other football figures – must end the conversation about improving the lot of coaches, and act. Watching Hinkley after last Sunday’s game should have proved another wake-up call for the AFL.

The competition has dragged its feet on improving the lot of coaches. Ignoring or avoiding accusations from senior coaches that they have carried the burden of club debts by sacrificing wages during COVID, the AFL now accepts that assistant coaches are worse-off financially than they were a decade ago and senior coaches’ wages have remained relatively stagnant, while players and club and AFL executives have all rebounded financially.

Last year, the AFL’s then CEO-elect Andrew Dillon – who has demonstrated more respect for the coaching fraternity than his predecessor Gillon McLachlan – held a series of talks with John Longmire, Brendon Bolton, Bec Goddard, Laura Kane and the game’s mental health lieutenant Kate Hall, searching for solutions to the coaching workload and lifestyle. Nothing eventuated.

While the AFL Players’ Association has become increasingly influential, the AFL Coaches Association, formed at the start of the 21st century by Neale Daniher, who described the media’s treatment of senior coaches as “a blood sport”, has no real influence at head office or among the coaches.

But the penny appears to have dropped. In what could prove a real step forward, the AFL looks determined to make changes and move to significantly improve the lives of coaches. The 18 senior coaches, who believe they no longer hold the position of respect in the game they did previously, have been summoned to talks with AFL bosses starting next week.

An AFL document sent to coaches this week by the league’s new coaching boss Daniel Richardson, and seen by this masthead, states that the AFL will look at “opportunities to improve coach remuneration, job design, job security and conditions in general”.

League chiefs Dillon, Kane and Dave Grossman are expected to outline soft-cap increases and look at improving coaches’ working conditions, job security and also address the media scrutiny on coaches. Among forecast improvements are longer holidays, increased mid-season breaks, and a bid to examine mechanisms to cope with media pressure.

While coaches’ wages are only one part of the issue, the AFL is also looking to lift restrictions upon marketing and commercial opportunities for coaches.

I spoke to two coaches during their recent brief breaks over their clubs’ bye rounds. One holidayed interstate, but was unable to ignore or escape the media noise questioning his future, while another drove to and from the country moving furniture, seeking refuge in non-football podcasts to block out the noise.

Longmire, the competition’s respected coaching leader, last year questioned why Luke Hodge and Joel Selwood, two of the game’s most respected premiership captains, had chosen to work in the media rather than coach. Trent Cotchin, another three-time premiership captain, has also shunned coaching. As has Shaun Burgoyne at a time when the game is desperately searching for diversity in its coaching ranks and specifically Indigenous coaches. Burgoyne, too, has chosen the media, along with a part-time welfare role at Port Adelaide.

Former Adelaide Crows coach Don Pyke (now the West Coast CEO) stepped out of coaching altogether.Credit: Getty Images

This problem is not new. Historically, Gerard Healy, Jason Dunstall and Dermott Brereton all shunned coaching but potential coach-in-waiting Scott Pendlebury told 3AW in May that part of the problem was increasingly financial: “I’ve found myself asking why these great players don’t go into coaching,” said Pendlebury. “... I’m not sure why we want to cap having great people in our game and putting limits on how great our teams can get.

“Why is there so many great players sitting up there doing the commentary work instead of being at clubland, where they could be a valuable asset?”

Nor is it new to witness coaches and former coaches suffering from significant mental health challenges. The difference is that the game is equipped with experts to handle such problems but coaches – perhaps in their determination to demonstrate resilience – appear to have been largely overlooked.

When he resigned from Adelaide in 2019, Don Pyke sounded a warning to the game, describing the AFL landscape as “more challenging than ever for players, administrators, boards, coaches and this is leading to a wide range of issues around contentment”.

Former AFL commissioner Sam Mostyn is now Australia’s governor-general.Credit: James Brickwood

He added: “I hope in the future we can find a better balance in how we view the game, regardless of the result, otherwise I do fear for the people’s genuine love of the game.”

Pyke’s words were dismissed by his critics at the time due to the burdens his administration imposed on the Crows players at their pre-season camp in 2018 – an event that divided the club and from which Pyke’s senior coaching career never recovered. But the AFL is re-examining them.

Almost a decade earlier, then AFL commissioner Sam Mostyn questioned whether the brutal and unforgiving win-loss environment was a sustainable working model for the majority and whether the competition’s governors could work to mitigate the game’s punishing narrative.

Mostyn’s views were philosophically cast aside, notably by AFL Commission chairman Mike Fitzpatrick, who remained wedded to the view that the game’s competitive ruthlessness was the whole point.

The view of six senior coaches contacted this week is that the new regime at head office must examine the fine line between those two philosophies in a bid to improve the lives of both them and their players and therefore make their clubs better places.

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