Podcast transcript

The AFL coaching lifestyle

Audio

You can also listen to the interview [MP3 21.2MB].

iTunes

Visit this channel at La Trobe on iTunesU.

Transcript

Russell Hoye

Welcome to Sport Unpacked, a regular podcast that explores issues in sport and the views of researchers at La Trobe University. I'm Professor Russell Hoye, Director of La Trobe Sport, your host, and my guests today are Dr Mandy Ruddock-Hudson, a lecturer in the School of Public Health and Mr Michael Malthouse, Senior Coach of the Carlton Football Club and the Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow here at La Trobe University. Our topic today is the AFL coaching lifestyle and we are going to explore questions such as what is life like as a professional coach, how do people become senior or assistant coaches in the AFL, how do coaches deal with the stress associated with the job and how can we conduct effective studies of coaches in such a high pressure environment?

Mandy, the world of professional coaching in the AFL seems very tough. A high turnover rate, limited senior roles to aspire to and a ton of media and public scrutiny. Can you paint a picture for us of life as an AFL coach?

Mandy Ruddock-Hudson

I'd probably just describe it as long hours, a roller-coaster of emotions, a challenging environment which is outcome based, the pursuit of excellence in a competitive environment, and the love of the game.

Russell Hoye

So, Mick, you’ve been a coach for twenty-eight years and you’ve started a new role as a coach. What is your sort of perception of life as an AFL coach?

Mick Malthouse

Well, Russell, the lifestyle of a football coach has changed dramatically since I started, and the journey was as a player, and then having a taste in the early 20s, in my early 20s, of thinking, I've now had two of the great coaches, and now I've had another two or three coaches that have all been premiership players or high profile players that end up coaching a premiership. So I've been spoilt but I always question it. And I've got to say, I don’t know whether it was right or wrong, I never questioned them to their face but I always went home and thought, would I have done something different.

Mid 20s, so I guess I had a leaning towards, at the end of my football career, getting into coaching. Never thought for one moment I'd ... I always talk about goal-setting and having the opinion that you should always have a raised ceiling so you can actually strive for something. Mine was limited to thinking I could be a reserve coach or a country coach or a VFA coach, or maybe going interstate. And not in my wildest dreams towards the end of my playing career did I really think that I'd coach a senior side, and that came about very ... and it’s probably for another time.

But the perception was of hard work, yes, loving the game, getting the best out of people, being organised, and that didn’t disappoint. All those things, and as time went on, I reckon it was probably into my ninth or tenth season, rather, six seasons at Western Bulldogs, and into my fourth-odd season at West Coast, I realised that things had to be done differently, to actually survive it.

Russell Hoye

Now of all of those sort of things that you did differently or determined that had to be different, to actually survive in that role?

Mick Malthouse

Right, well the game went from amateur, basically amateur, you were getting paid but it was amateur hours, to semi-professional to fully professional. The demands of a coach, media-wise, club-wise, and I'm talking club here from membership, sponsorship and coteries and so forth, and then the fact that players had so much time on their hands, you couldn’t be dismissive of them, so you had to really put some time into them. Now to put time into them you really have to have some good solid staff, who understand your MO if you like, and also uphold it. So therefore you were teaching staff and you were teaching players and you were teaching the club. You didn’t realise you were teaching the club, but at the end of the day, you were establishing a culture. And Mandy said about a pursuit of excellence, yes, that is number one. I think that, fair and square though, by the rule book, by establishing a culture that you can live by and also your players come out of it.

So, I had a chance to travel and I went to the States and Europe and I came away thinking, I'm not a football coach. I'm actually a person-manager and I've got my coaches under me and I've kept that system now for over half of my football coaching, is that I manage the team, manage the coaches and the coaches get down and get dirty if you like. Get some mud on them.

Russell Hoye

So you certainly painted a picture of a very complex environment compared to say, twenty years ago. Mandy, you’ve recently completed a study of AFL coaches. What was the interest in conducting such a study?

Mandy Ruddock-Hudson

Well, interestingly, my initial involvement with AFL didn’t commence through the love of the game. I sort of fell into the industry ten years ago when I was researching in the area for my PhD, and since then I've become actively involved with the AFL Coaches’ Association as their organisation continues to grow. And this research was really ignited by the media coverage of Mark Bomber Thompson, who was a senior coach of the Geelong Football Club at the time and it was revealed that he was potentially burnt out due to occupational demands and stresses involved in the AFL coaching environment.

Health and wellbeing of workers and stress in the workplace has been studied throughout human history, so this isn’t new information, but stress has become one of the most serious health issues of the 21st century and chronic job stress has been associated with a range of physical, psychological, social and behavioural health problems. To date, there has been extensive research that has examined occupational stress in the workplace and the environment, such as education and healthcare, but there was limited information in relation to the occupation of sports coaching.

Now we know that sports coaches are exposed to complex, ever-changing environments as Mick’s just mentioned. Not only do the coaches take on that specific coaching role, but they also guide their athletes in physical, mental and tactical skills as well as facilitating the personal development of the athletes. The number of paid coaches has also increased worldwide and the evolution of coaching has now become a recognisable occupation that is fast advancing towards professionalisation. So for coaches who operate within the elite sport as Mick does here, the pressure typically intensifies with a results-orientated culture that requires considerable investment and time and resources in the search of the competitive edge.

Unfortunately in many sports, and AFL is no different, the period of employment of coaches can be short and positions are highly sought-after. With no concrete data that represents the roles and responsibilities of AFL coaches, we felt that this research was warranted. Although this is a relatively small population, from an industry perspective and also a public health perspective, we felt that we had a duty of care for this population and in addition, it is a population that due to increased work demands and scrutiny, places them at a risk of occupational stress associated with the work life balance. So therefore, we started to investigate.

Russell Hoye

And that sort of background you’ve painted, illustrates the complexity of the coaching world and working in that space. How did you go about designing your study and actually carrying it out?

Mandy Ruddock-Hudson

Well, the aim of the research was to obtain some preliminary information that would identify the life satisfaction, general health and wellbeing of AFL assistant coaches. The study was designed in two stages – the first stage, we established a semi-structured interview, which was obviously exploratory in nature, and we had one assistant coach representative from each of the seventeen AFL clubs at the time, in the national competition. They were invited to take part in the interview process.

So, once all the interview data was analysed, we then constructed a questionnaire that was distributed to all assistant coaches in the competition. The questionnaire package contained measures related to general health, social support, job stress, tension and burn-out, and effective reactions.

Russell Hoye

That’s a pretty complex study. So what were your main findings? What were the main demands that assistant coaches perceived they faced when coaching in the AFL?

Mandy Ruddock-Hudson

I think there were some really interesting findings that emerged from the data. Coaches actually worked an average of 69 hours per week, and this was not including time away from the club, when they were actually planning and thinking about game preparation and/or training. So we were looking at a hundred plus hours per week. Interestingly, only 54% of assistant coaches reported that they had a designated day off during the week, so a number of them were working 7 and 14 days straight. And the results also indicated that 98% of assistant coaches reported generally high psychological distress during the football season.

Also the results indicated that more than one third of assistant coaches reported a moderate level of emotional exhaustion during the season, indicating that they actually felt emotionally over-extended and exhausted by their work.

So when we asked them what they perceived to be the main demands that they were faced with within this particular industry, the first one was time restraints. That was the number one factor. The second one was time away from their family. The third was an unbalanced lifestyle and fourthly was the workload.

Russell Hoye

Wow, you’ve painted a fantastic picture of working as an AFL assistant coach. Mick, in your experience, does that sort of reflect what you’ve seen in dealing with coaches over the last 28 years? Your various teams you’ve worked with.

Mick Malthouse

Well, to a degree Russell. I would like to think that if there’s 17 coaches being interviewed and it was done last year, that’s fine. I wasn’t part of the scene but if it had have been done the year before, I'd be very disappointed that one, the assistant coach that was interviewed didn’t say he did know the day off, I'm very aware of family commitments, I'm very aware of the pressures. I understand about win loss ratio but nonetheless I also press my coaches not to worry about that, and look at the process. Their goal is to ... they want to stay in that role, they want to advance in that role. Most want to advance. The older ones tend to say, I think I've gone past that, I just want to stay in this type of role, as an assistant. And then there’s the ones that are assistants that are very, very hungry for success in the next level, and I believe we have an attraction, if you like, to youth, this is Boards, and I'm not a hundred per cent sure that is the way to go, purposely and particularly, put names out there to get jobs. And indeed I think you’ll find this year there is six club coaches that have been either my player or assistant coach. Were they all ready? Probably not. But was I at thirty? No. So there is ... I've got to be very careful about saying that they’re too young to do it. But I think in today’s football, you need to have an establishment of an assistant role to know what all these pitfalls are and either jump out, or understand them and stay in. And each league coach, I have no doubt, is different in make-up, like game structures, similar to he has make-up differences in hours expected, time wanted, and some are family first and others are family very much second or third.

So, there’s no doubt, even though there’s only 18 league clubs and 18 league senior coaches, there would be a great range of people who have a different idea of what they expect from their assistant coach, and how much time they’re going to give him off. And make his life a bit more meaningful, if you like.

Russell Hoye

Now, there’s clearly, Mandy, there’s a lot of media scrutiny around the profession of sports coaching. We generally hear that people remain in the industry for the love of the game. Therefore what are the factors that motivate assistant coaches to keep working those long hours and to buy into that equation, particularly in their early years perhaps, when they are starting in the coaching role?

Mandy Ruddock-Hudson

Obviously it probably seems that I've painted a pretty grim picture of the assistant coach role but the really lovely thing to report was that although coaches did identify that it was a tough industry with many challenges, they loved the game, and that is what motivated them. Also as well, to support that, the number one reason why coaches do work the long hours, the most important thing for them was actually developing and teaching players. I thought it was really interesting that the number one factor that motivated them was not actually winning and the team success but it was developing the players. Winning and team success was obviously up there, along with the passion and love of the game and also the team environment and the industry in which they worked. So there are some really important positive messages that came out of the research too.

Russell Hoye

And from Mick’s perspective, do you think there’s a place, or can AFL clubs provide a more balanced approach to managing their assistant coaches? Because you painted a picture where you were much more in tune with the human dimension of your coaches you employ. Do you think most clubs have a way to go in getting to that point?

Mick Malthouse

Well, that’s ... I'm not a hundred per cent sure, even though I've been to a lot of clubs. I should say that I think what you end up doing is, as you mature as a person yourself, and then as a coach, secondly, you have a little bit more faith in your own abilities. I half suspect that anyone under seven years has a ... loves the job, but has a fear of how long it will last for, because we know the average years of a senior coach is not many, five and a bit years I think it is. Five and a half years. So when I see my assistant coaches go out, they say what’s a word of advice? I say to them, am yourself and do everything in your first couple of years. Peel the oranges, be the doorman, be the statistician, be everything so you have a thorough understanding. Then when you’ve got your confidence you can back off. And I think ... you asked the question about how I see it. Well, I'm a lot more relaxed, believe it or not, now, because I had the comfort of thinking well, I think I know a fair bit about the game, I know there’s still a lot of things to learn, but I'm no longer worried about, will I have my job, because you just say, if you haven’t got your job, you haven’t got your job. Simply at my age. But I don’t fear that someone’s going to outcoach me and therefore they’re going to go ... I will be outcoached, certainly at some stage, because different teams have different balances, but I don’t go to sleep at night, or go to bed at night thinking, my biggest worry tonight is, will I hold my job? Whereas some young coaches to, therefore they put enormous pressure on their staff to get it right and get a win. But you’ll find, and they will find, if they last in the game, you can afford to think, the old adage the harder you work, the better you get, or the luckier you get. I say, the harder you work, and the smarter you work, the luckier you get. So to me, smartness is having a fresh mind and having a family life where you can work out the door, early in the morning, and go – I'm happy, my wife’s happy, my children are happy. I know tomorrow I'll have the day off, or I'll get my work done later in the afternoon or early in the morning and I'll be home for dinner. And know that they are not putting pressure on you because who come to work with pressure on them never perform at the best, and that’s when you get this hostility within the group, that you want to get away, or the player wants to get away, or the coach wants to get away, it puts massive pressure on that unit. And that’s where I think things come undone.

Russell Hoye

Now, you’ve obviously gone through a number of seasons where you’ve seen AFL coaching staff sort of get under pressure when perhaps the team is on a losing streak, or things aren’t going as well, a high injury rate. Do you consciously manage that sort of balance about how, not just your playing group is working, but how your coaching staffs is operating as a group?

Mick Malthouse

This is the Monday facade. You walk in with a ten goal win, you can’t afford to walk in as if you’ve thrown the biggest party of all time. If you’ve been belted, you can’t walk in with your shoulders down, or your head down, and make out that it’s the end of the earth, because you’ve got to always look at next week as the most important week. So what’s happened in the past has happened, so I instruct my coaches – if I have to walk in like that, I want them to walk in like that. So straight away you say, you look forward as opposed to back. So I try ... and we do, we do have five or six or seven weeks in a row where you’ve lost games and you think there’s going to be no end to losing. But it’s all behind. So the simple is I try to say, well, next week, a new week, you’ve got to have an optimism about you because if you don’t the players have got no hope of winning. The senior job alone is a stand-alone. There’s no question, when you get multiple losses, you feel isolated, and that is just a fact of life. That will never change. Even to the point where you don’t want your deputies around you, because you don’t want to have them feel the same pressure. So you’re better off having this isolation, but give them as much positive feedback as you can. And let them live their life without having the same burden as the senior coach.

So, I think it’s your job as a senior coach to make sure that you get the most out of your assistant coach by not letting him be dragged down by the pressures of the senior coach. Now, if that makes sense.

Russell Hoye

Now Mandy, you conducted your study with the imprimatur of the AFL Coaches’ Association. What’s been some of the responses to your study from that group, or the wider sort of coaching industry in the AFL?

Mandy Ruddock-Hudson

The project was originally funded by the AFL Research Board so it was identified as a research priority area. The data is currently being used to guide and also inform the design of educational and health programs with the AFL Coaches’ Association, so that’s a really positive step within the industry. And also in 2013, the Health Initiative for the AFL Coaches’ Association is actually mental health, and the organisation is aiming to set up, to upfill coaches in this particular area, so we feel that this research project actually set up the foundation for that project.

Russell Hoye

And Mick, this year the study is going to be extended to senior coaches, not just the assistant coach pool. Do you expect there to be much difference in the findings in the study of the senior coach? Because you mentioned before, it’s a very isolating role at times.

Mick Malthouse

Yeah, I think Mandy will find, with all due respect to the assistant coaches, I've never been one so I've got to be careful here. But assistant coaches never put their hand up and say, we lost. But if there’s a good win and it’s the forward line or backline, or midfield, and they’re very happy to have the praise. Whereas a senior coach has got to take it on. The buck must stop with you. And if that’s not the case, and you want to load up some other direction, all you’re doing is passing the loss on to someone else. That is so irresponsible.

One of the things about senior coaching is, wins will last five minutes. A loss will last a whole week. And if you lose the last game, it can last a lifetime, because you never forget it. But that’s something you’ve got to wear. And I always say to people, I don’t have to do this job. Don’t ever feel sorry for me. I do the job because I love the job. So this is part and parcel of it. That little edge of adrenalin that rushes through your body just before the ball bounces, you wouldn’t be without that, and that’s part of being a senior coach. Can you change the course of the game? Can you change the course of the year, because of what you’ve done previous, through October through to March? Can you set a new standard? A new PB?

So I think assistant coaches are very good, and thoroughly needed, but the senior coach has got to take all that on board and be responsible. You cannot afford to forget responsibility in this job. And the more wins, the more pressure. The more losses, clearly the pressure comes back through to the Board. The Board will always be the ones that say, we put you one, you’re not doing the job, you’re gone. And you’ve got to always remember, you’re a servant of the Board. So I always take these things on. One, a servant of the Board, two is, take the responsibility, and the responsibility is basically going to be for a loss. Three is, what can you do about it? And how can you change the culture? Or, how do you change the systems within the organisation to make it a better organisation?

So if you occupy your mind with that sort of stuff, then outside influences are really only outside influences, as much as you take on. And getting back to ... the family gets affected, more so. So it’s the protection of the family that’s most important. Because you’ll find the senior coach, I would say, of all the things he’ll say, is what effect it has on the family.

Russell Hoye

All right, now, given Mandy’s outcomes from her study, do you think that, looking at the ability of an assistant coach, potentially all those pressures, is it one of the job requirements you look for, or the traits in a potential assistant coach? Do you take that into consideration when you look at them, not just their ability to be a skills coach or a defence coach, but the ability to cope with the world of being an assistant coach?

Mick Malthouse

Yeah, I don’t take on assistant coach, and looking at him, is he going to be a senior coach? You take him on, can he do a part ... I know this might sound a little bit vain, but I select people on my panel to be better than me, so in other words, if I take the Director of Science on, the only thing I'll do to him, is I'll say, I will challenge you. I won’t tell you what to do. Because he’s trained up in it. He’s probably done more years at doing that job. I always say if I want a player of 85 kilos, can you give him 85 kilos? That’s the question. If I can get this kid quicker, I don’t tell him how to get him quicker. Doctors, I won’t interfere with the doctors. Doctors tell me what’s wrong. Football Operations Manager, he draws up the contracts. He set down the rules and so forth. But assistant coaches, you’ve got a right to know that you’ve got to be better than them, because you’ve got to teach them.

Now, if one of them slides past you and he goes ahead, draw on that, because some of them have got an innate ability just to know more about certain people or certain divisions, so okay, draw on it. But when I put those people on, I don’t put them on as senior coaches. But as the years go on and they look like they’ve got senior qualities, yes, he could be a good coach. But I'll say this, when you sit in the passenger’s side, you’re still in the front seat but you’re not actually steering it, or putting the foot on the brake or accelerator. No one will know that until you actually have to sit in the driver’s seat, and know when to go and know when to stop.

Russell Hoye

All right, thanks Mick. Mandy, where to next for the research? Where do you think this is going to go?

Mandy Ruddock-Hudson

Well, as previously discussed, we’re going to look at the senior coaching role and specifically we’re going to look further into occupational stress as well as examine the role of social support, so Mick’s just spoken about the family influence here, so this is potentially something that we will be examining with this particular cohort. So we look forward to building the partnership.

Russell Hoye

All right. That’s it for today. My thanks to Dr Mandy Ruddock-Hudson, a lecturer from the School of Public Health, and Mr Michael Malthouse, senior coach of the Carlton Football Club and a Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow here at La Trobe University. Thanks also to Matt Smith from the Digital Media team for his stellar production. You can also follow us on Twitter @RussHoye. You can also find the podcast on the La Trobe University website under the news tab, and also at www.latrobe.edu.au/cssi.

Bulletin, news, knowledge, life

Ideas and Society

• Opinions
• Media releases
• Videocasts
• Podcasts
• Search media archive

• Twitter
• Facebook
• YouTube
• Flickr
• LinkedIn
• iTunesU

• Contacts
• Site map
• Accessibility
• Privacy
• Copyright and disclaimer
• 

© Copyright 2013 La Trobe University. All rights reserved.CRICOS Provider Code: VIC 00115M, NSW 02218K