The Best Coaches Are…
- Wednesday, December 06 2017 @ 10:45 pm ACDT
- Contributed by: Wesley Hull
- Views: 3,157
My first brush with a coach, apart from what I saw on television, was a bloke called Barry Burke. He played for Clayton, then in the Federal League, in suburban Melbourne. My Dad sometimes took me out to the quarter-time or half time breaks to “have a listen” to the coach. Apart from a requisite amount of swearing to motivate his team (stunning repartee was not one of his strengths), one catch-cry stuck. He would yell, “Do as I say, not as I do!” It was sound advice because he never set the world on fire on the field, but he did manage to yell a lot, and that seemed to work.
My own Dad was my next coaching experience. He took on the Under 11 B team, which I was in. There was no such thing as a free ride with Dad. If I played and trained well enough, I was in the 20. If I didn’t, I ran the boundary or water. For five years, Dad was my own John Kennedy or Ron Barassi. Later, he would become good friends with Tommy Hafey…but more on that later.