Modern football coaches are hung out to dry in pandemic era
Paul Roos has labelled criticism of coaches and players this season as “embarrassing” and “ridiculous.”
The pressure on modern-day coaches is “ridiculous” says AFL premiership coach Paul Roos.
The Australian Football Hall of Famer slammed the constant “slaughtering” of the AFL competition for producing low-quality matches and said that “embarrassing” criticism was not taking into account the COVID-19 conditions players and coaches are working in.
Over the last few months Roos has watched the heat being furiously turned up on AFL coaches – including the Crows’ Matthew Nicks and Hawthorn’s Alastair Clarkson – without any slack cut due to the pandemic.
“I think the pressure on coaches is far too great,” Roos said. “Having stepped away from the game and the media in the last 12 months … from where I stand the expectations are just unrealistic. You have 18 teams in the AFL. It doesn’t matter if the best coach is coaching all 18 teams one is going to finish on the bottom, that’s the reality of the competition.”
“The expectations of a coach have gone through the roof. It’s just ridiculous.”
Roos has observed the same hyped-up criticism in the NRL. Three coaches have already departed this season, with Stephen Kearney (Warriors), Dean Pay (Bulldogs) and Paul Green (Cowboys) already shown the door while Anthony Seibold’s job at the Broncos is under enormous pressure.
Legendary league coach Warren Ryan, who guided Canterbury to two premierships, agrees with Roos.
“He is right, in my view the pressure on them is ridiculous,” Ryan said.
“The safety valve (for clubs) is to get rid of one person. It’s actually quite ludicrous to focus on one person for the outcome of so many people involved, from the top of the club right down.
“It seems to be over simplistic to pick one bloke out and sack him.”
Former South Sydney general manager Shane Richardson says the NRL coaches are dealing with difficult circumstances. “It’s very hard to judge a coach in this environment – it’s never happened before in the history of the game,” Richardson said. “Never in the history of the game have players been locked down and can’t visit their families. Then you have other players who can’t stand being at home.
“You have to deal with a myriad of issues.”
While there was compassion for those in everyday industries when COVID-19 hit, Roos has been taken aback by the unrelenting criticism directed at coaches and teams coping with derailed preparations.
At one AFL club, players can only do contact training in groups of three, out of a maximum of nine, due to injuries.
Some clubs have injury lists in the double figures. To stay in the bubble players have to just “get in and get out of the club”. That’s not the only welfare issue. Several players have parents dealing with late stage cancer and living interstate while in the case of Geelong’s Gary Ablett’s, a child sick with a degenerative condition.
“You throw in players not being able to have a full pre-season, players not being able to train together, players getting injured because they are just not fit enough, players staying home because of family reasons,” Roos said.
“The whole thing is an embarrassment for the industry as a whole. We can’t just put the brakes on and say; ‘let’s just enjoy rugby league for what it is. Let’s just enjoy the AFL for what it is.’ This is such a unique situation, which we have acknowledged publicly, but we haven’t held our sports people to the same standards we’ve held business people and families.”
“We’ve maintained expectations on sporting people as we did pre-COVID.”
While the NRL has enjoyed plaudits for its rules changes, the AFL this season has been slammed as “boring”, Clarkson himself described Hawthorn’s game against North Melbourne as a “terrible spectacle”.
Fans have echoed the sentiment.
“The way we are slaughtering the game of AFL – it’s an embarrassment to the industry really,” Roos said. “What we are saying is that pre-season training doesn’t matter. Then why do we do it? Those things matter. I feel for the guys, the coaches, assistant coaches, it is an embarrassment at the moment the way we are subjecting the sports people to this criticism.”
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