As speculation mounts over the future of Wanderers coach Carl Robinson, Phil Moss offers unique insight into the pressure of being a coach at the heart of a gathering storm
It’s the phone calls you don’t expect that hit home the hardest when you’re a coach in the spotlight at the helm of a struggling team.
A call from the owner of the club, or the CEO, is one thing. But when you call your son or daughter – as a father rather than as a coach – and they are in tears because they’ve seen personal comments on social media about you, that’s the sort of reaction that punches you in the solar plexus.
The judgments in the court of public opinion are a very public form of trial, and it’s those around you as a coach who often bear the brunt. Partners, children, parents are all naturally protective and get hurt and angry on your behalf, even if you can (mostly) brush it off. This isn’t the stuff you think about when you work towards becoming a head coach, but it’s what happens to many when they get there.
I’m not arguing that coaches should be immune to scrutiny, or criticism, or even ridicule. Fans are the lifeblood of a club, and usually speak from the heart. But when you, and your team, are struggling, that’s when you need the hide of a rhino and the sixth sense of a fox to navigate internal and external challenges.
In November 2012, I took over from Graham Arnold at the Mariners. The rest of that first season went well – we finished third, reached the semifinals and came within 19 minutes of the Asian Champions League knockout rounds. The club owner offered me a new deal, and we started planning for the long term.
But the next season was much harder, partly in the wake of a number of player sales. I was the first to admit that results weren’t good enough, though initially I felt that the performances weren’t being reflected in a series of draws and losses. But confidence can vanish pretty fast in a struggling team, and losing can quickly become a habit.
As a coach you have to believe in your processes, but others may lose faith. In my case, a series of external events made me realise that I was having to navigate challenges that no one could have seen coming. First was the appointment of a consultant who I was promised was there to examine the club’s off-field operations, but quickly was taking a keen interest in my tactics, selections and training.
Then a technical director was appointed with whom I didn’t see eye to eye. That sort of tension quickly swirls around a dressing room, and the players get dragged into it. Lines of communication get muddied, and quickly the idea of everyone working in unison starts to unravel. The very culture that turned the Mariners into the “little club that could” was being quickly eroded.
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By that stage I had already felt a distancing from the owner, and then in January 2015 a story appeared on a well-known football website – with no quotes, but apparently well-sourced – detailing that I was on borrowed time. A few weeks later, I was out of a job.
Its impact was much quicker though, in some ways. Someone had sent me the story the day it appeared, and you know the players have seen it too. Any coach who tells you they don’t read the papers, or are not at least being appraised of what’s in them, is perhaps not being honest. Being across what is being fed to the players via the media is part of your job in managing a playing squad, and it’s why I’ve always felt that crisis management isn’t remotely tackled strongly enough in coaching courses.
Players aren’t stupid, and a small minority may choose to anticipate the fact you could be moving on. In my case, I felt like I had strong support across the board when I first stepped up from assistant to head coach, but near the end I started to sense it waning in some quarters – in some instances to fuel personal agendas.
In some ways it’s hard to blame them, when the cacophony of noise from fans and commentators is now so constant thanks to social media. The chair, the board, the CEO all see and hear that relentless commentary, and need ice in their veins not to react and to stay the course.
All the while you’re going into a workplace each day where you know some staff have read the stories about you and are watching to see how you will react, and then you’re taking that stuff home to your family, however hard you try not to.
That’s the thing – you do try harder and harder every day to change things. When the squad is mostly one of your choosing, when the players are those you have hand-picked, you feel responsible when they don’t play well, because you’re not getting the best out of them.
Some combinations you might have bet on aren’t gelling. A key player might be out of form, or living through a crisis off the pitch. A foreign signing might not adapt to our conditions. Injuries occur, like Marcos Flores doing his ACL in my second season at the Mariners. But the fans just want results, and double down on making their feelings known. Those peripheral to the coaching staff and dressing room think they know better.
At some point you will probably learn a lot about yourself as a character, as directives and suggestions swirl around you. You can go in a direction you don’t believe in for the sake of expediency, or stand up for what you believe in, knowing that might cost you your job. I chose the latter and have no regrets.
In the end, of course, almost every coach gets sacked. In a football economy like ours, with so few jobs available at the top level, naturally you will hang on and try to change things while you still believe you have a chance to on your terms.
But the person at the heart of it each time this story unfolds is a human being. My youngest kids were in their early teens when I went through it – all of them football lovers – and they shouldn’t have had to see the ugly side of the game at that age. All of a sudden it was staring them in the face.
My own personal experience is at the very heart of the decision I made to step away from coaching for a while to help set up Football Coaches Australia. Having that collective support around coaches is critical to the development of the profession here in Australia.
