Two Coaches & a Coffee

Season 2, Episode 17

• Darren Burgess & Jason Weber • Season 2 • Episode 17

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What happens when the high-performance manager of an AFL team faces the relentless pressures of a turbulent season? Join us on this gripping episode of Two Coaches and a Coffee as we sit down with Darren Burgess from Adelaide Crows. Darren, with his wealth of experience from top EPL clubs like Liverpool and Arsenal, opens up about navigating the stressful landscape of media scrutiny, critical injuries, and the departure of key staff members. He shares his strategies for maintaining team morale, celebrating small victories, and ensuring that stress doesn’t trickle down to the players. This conversation is a masterclass in resilience and leadership under fire.

In another engaging segment, we dive into the art of communication within leadership roles. Darren reflects on the challenges of approaching a head coach who might be deviating from established processes, especially during crucial points in the season. Drawing from his own journey, including taking an uncomfortable conversations course, Darren highlights the importance of empathy, timely feedback, and understanding the coach’s perspective. We also discuss the critical role of experienced professionals in conducting meaningful internal and external reviews. Tune in for an episode brimming with insights on improving communication, providing support under pressure, and the nuances of sports management.

SpeedSig Intro

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Jason Weber:

G'day and welcome to Two Coaches and a Coffee. Darren Burgess back in town. Jason Weber here as well. Burgess, how are you mate? A couple of tough weeks in South Australia. Yes, yes, welcome and good to see you again, my friend. For context, the club that I work for, Adelaide Crows, is a two team town of sport mad and AFL. Mad people and the Crows are probably a bit more popular than Port Adelaide, the other team here. Port Adelaide, are doing quite well and have done for the last few seasons. Crows have been through a rebuilding phase and last year we missed the finals sort of controversially, which I've spoken about before. So there was anticipation, if not expectation, that we'd go further up the ladder. At the moment we sit in 14th or 15th out of 18 at around about the halfway mark.

Darren Burgess:

So we've been on the front and back page of the local paper for five days straight. They even had a vote in the local paper. They put the assistant coaches, senior coach, the president and maybe one other, the head of recruitment or list manager, and the fans could vote on their grade for the season online, um, on saturday or sunday. So it did become quite personal and um, so yeah, it's been a rough. M You can imagine there's cameras outside the car park trying to catch someone out, cameras all at training last night, yeah, yeah, so there's been a bit going on, so it's an interesting environment at the moment and, yeah, there's been a couple of new meetings added to the calendar to check in on people and make sure everyone's doing okay, because it is hard to come into work each day with cameras around and you know that even if you don't read the paper or listen to talk back or watch the news, it's happening If you're in London and the team's not going so well. There's still six other teams, seven other teams in London to report on, plus the other, you know, manchester and Liverpool teams and things like that. But it feels like, as you well know, being exposed to.

Jason Weber:

You've got two horse down as well.

Darren Burgess:

Yeah, it feels like in Adelaide the newspapers don't care about Melbourne teams and yet in Melbourne they're now starting to report on the crisis at Adelaide, because it is literally five days in a row of front and back paid. So, yeah, it's been interesting. There are some reasons why we've probably not performed as well, which I won't get into now. Like in terms of you know, there's been some injuries to key players and not many injuries, but the ones that we have broken hand, broken fracture phase all to it.

Jason Weber:

Really, we've done the injury crisis to death. I tell you what's a good question for you is you've provided a good context and you've been experienced across other domains, like you know in domains, like you know in EPL, you know Liverpool and Arsenal. What happens when these changes occur and let's say they occur let's use the example you've got there's an external stimulus that's gone. There's noise on the outside and there's noise in the EPL. There's lots of chirp in the papers. What happens when you see reaction side and there's noise in the EPL? There's lots of chirp in the papers. What happens when you see reaction? Like you've seen coaches change. I've got similar stories about what happens when there's expectation and we go from. I was in a team that finished the league number one and then we couldn't find a goal in the finals and went out in straight sets. You know what happens. What happens when your coach changes? Let's not say coach, but the leadership changes. They change not their personnel, but their personalities, their manners, how they're. What do you think? Yeah, I guess so at Liverpool.

Darren Burgess:

we had three coach changes at Arsenal. Arsene Wenger left and Unai Emery came in. He'd been there 23 years, so that was a massive change. I haven't experienced it in AFL as yet, but certainly in my Premier League time. Just everything changed, obviously, when Arsene left. Unai came in. He brought in a whole Spanish model and so people who had only been employed under Arsene Wenger were just losing their mind and the stress about what's going to happen now and what's going to happen to my job.

Darren Burgess:

So in the current situation, all I can do as, let's say, a team leader or department leader, is stay pretty calm, stay pretty positive about our area, as in. What can we do to help the team win? How can we celebrate little wins? We're having players who've come back from long-term knee injuries, long-term Achilles injuries, rehabbed a hamstring injury in pretty good time. How can we celebrate those wins in an environment where team wins are pretty hard to come by? On top of that, jason, I've lost two staff members in two weeks to have gone on to bigger and better jobs, which is great. One gone to SACA in Jared Wallace and one, sam Dodge, is a head of performance at Ulster Rugby Great position, you know, fantastic, and so they go with my blessing, even though some others might have said no, we'd need them for the end of the season. I've spoken many times to you about how development of staff is something.

Darren Burgess:

I take pride in as development and players, so I'm so happy for those staff. So you can imagine. Then there's pressure with less staff and two crucial senior members of staff that have gone. So it's an interesting environment. Stay calm. What can you change about it? I can't change the fact that there's 10 cameras out in front of training. You can't change the fact that the team's under a fair bit of pressure. All you can make sure is that your processes are good. Everyone's calm. One thing I did learn, though, Jason I might have spoken about this before in the Arsenal times and even the Liverpool times is you can't be reflected to the players. Sometimes, if I'm a bit cranky, I'll make sure I stay in my office and not go around the players. You make sure you put front-facing, player-facing people.

Jason Weber:

Why is Darren in his office all the time?

Darren Burgess:

It's because you can't kick.

Jason Weber:

No no.

Darren Burgess:

So you've got to use your resources wisely and make sure you put the always happy, always upbeat stuff in front of the players at times like this when you know they might be a little bit down, a little bit worried about their place in the team, their careers, all that sort of stuff. I've had meetings with coaches who are all under threat because we all are in this environment and I try and be as positive as I possibly can to make sure that you know there's something in the room that's positive and certainly the coaches have been great in that space but there's no doubt.

Darren Burgess:

There's some doubt there, so I've spoken a lot. What about you in those situations? What can you control my area? What about you in those situations? What can?

Jason Weber:

you control my area 100%. I would say that in the heaviest of times, you know, my environment's been fine, like I've always had good people around me, good staff, everyone's pretty calm, all okay. What I do think is, if I reflected on what could I do better, I wonder if at times I could have been better at approaching the coach, the senior coach, to say listen, I'm not having a shot at you, but I need to let you know you've drifted from the path, from our path, from what we were doing earlier. Now, sometimes that got done because of confrontation that I didn't initiate but I certainly defended let's put it that way, so you put the point across incorrectly.

Jason Weber:

So I think if you've got that relationship, that ability to say to the coach hey, listen, there's some really practical things from what we're doing on the field. That's where the big impact comes. When the field changes, and particularly when you said before you've you've said numerous times, stick to what we do, stick to our processes. When you've had a process for all of pre-season, all of season, then you come to a point a couple of weeks out from finals, where it all starts to change and you're going hang on. The data's telling us we're changing, why we don't need to change, we're on a good path. So I definitely think I would hope, if I ever did it again, to be a little bit better at getting that message to the coach in a manner that he understood and didn't find confrontational. Not that I tried to be confrontational, but you've got to be very careful when people get defensive, and one of the things I did have a great experience. I've done this multiple times. You may have too.

Jason Weber:

I've been involved in psych profiling of staff, yeah, and we shared some around, and so for one of our staff I certainly saw that when they got stressed, they got super defensive and they can only solve the problem. They can't get other help. No one can help them. And we had that information, yet we were not in a position to action it to make the situation better when the person involved had to listen to others. The person involved had to listen to others, and so it's one of those frustrating things where you go well, we kind of had the answer, but we didn't.

Jason Weber:

There was no way to implement it, and I think when you're looking at head coaches like that, it's difficult because they're running the show. I'm not suggesting I want to be in charge, but at the end of the day, you know, that sergeant at arms type guy like which is what we end up being. We rally the troops, we get around people. You've got to be able to say hey, we've been around a long while here. You know you're like that gnarly old sergeant in you know one of the old army movies. You know, go and tell the young lieutenant hey, come on, don't do that Heartbreak Ridge, something like that. But that's the story, right. You've got to be able to convey experience and I will say, as you would probably say, we're now at that stage of our careers where we've seen a lot and done a lot, and often more than the coach.

Darren Burgess:

Yeah, I think that's important to understand, if not acknowledge, because you are the right-hand man or right-hand woman in that sort of role. But I think you do have to tread carefully. I actually put myself through an uncomfortable conversations course about I don't know, maybe 18 months ago, because maybe I wasn't handling some of those situations as well as possible, just always to learn new things. And so you learn the art of having those conversations, getting your point across without providing you know offence or because Give me your top three.

Jason Weber:

What's your top three learnings from that course? Because maybe I should go and do it. I can be uncomfortable, but it's not. I need to be more helpful.

Darren Burgess:

Well, I think, when you go into a and when you go out I want to give you some examples, but I won't, because there are people that people know and coaches that people know- no, don't do that you immediately put yourself in the other person's shoes and you're immediately saying, okay, why are they acting this way?

Darren Burgess:

If I was in their position, how am I seeing this conversation and you know they're being played out in your head and how can I put my point across with empathy and understanding of that person's situation and listen to what they're trying to say? And that's what I took from it. Obviously broad brush, but what the people under pressure in an organisation need is support and know that you've got their back and that's it and that's all that. I think that's our job is to do that, but I think it also is to see it, say it. So you know, I think that's really important is to not because if things did go even more pear-shaped and suddenly coach or the football director or the recruiter or yourself or whatever is out of a job and you think, oh, I wish I had have said something, then it becomes a little bit, then you don't live without regret.

Jason Weber:

But that's that whole review process. Oh, we'll do it in the review. Well, the review is too late. The time is now to say hey, this is where we're at.

Darren Burgess:

There's every chance that we I don't know what's going to say hey, this is where we're at. There's every chance that we I don't know what's going to happen, but there's every chance that there'll be some external review done if our performance keep dropping. You know how people get in those situations.

Jason Weber:

It's interesting, mate, when you and I have both been part of external reviews, like we've conducted them and had them done. But it's interesting when you get to our age and experience to be able to say, well, who's coming in to review? Because I've seen some reviews done in the recent times where I'm thinking, hmm, I'm not entirely sure that person should be doing that review, because I don't think they have that level of experience to do it Well.

Darren Burgess:

I think that's a whole other viewpoint and it is just staggering, particularly in some other environments not necessarily the AFL, because the money isn't as free-flowing in the AFL as it is in other environments where people are coming in to review doctors, physios, performance people, coaches, without the necessary you know skill set to do it. So it's been interesting but, like I said, the other part of the puzzle at the LA Crows anyway is this loss of staff. So everybody else is having to pitch in which, unless you have a cohesive, trusting and I don't know collaborative team, me sitting down saying listen, head of strength and power has gone off to live his dream in rugby In all stuff.

Darren Burgess:

Can you just come in and add an extra set of responsibilities to your plate for the next 10 hours? And I'll give you a really good example At Melbourne, when the Dees won the flag 2021, dave Watts, who's one of the best strength coaches that I've worked with, absolute star. He got a great, fantastic role in Queensland, so he left halfway through the season. Dave Regan, who's now at Brooklyn Nets. Can you add the strength responsibilities to your sports science responsibilities? When do I start? And you know we win a flag. It's fantastic for everyone and you know it doesn't interrupt, so I couldn't be more pleased for those guys.

Jason Weber:

But I think that's a really great test of your team right to see how they react. I mean, again, with 12 years under my belt and one team and staff coming through, we had a number of occasions like the one that you get. Often someone gets sick, you know someone's sick and they can't be there. Right, and you go, right, let's cover off who can do this. But I think that comes back to the system. We've talked before about this, that educating the system, getting people in place and not having them siloed so much that they can't see what the other group are doing. I mean we at times would have physios cross over because we had people of that calibre, you know that you could move across.

Jason Weber:

Never sent an S&C coach to treat anybody, but they go the other way quite comfortably at times.

Darren Burgess:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly um yeah, so anyway, I'm glad we've spent this podcast talking about the woes of the crows, as if I haven't heard enough about it.

Darren Burgess:

But um, yeah, yeah simplified context and at the end of the day, um, like I said, yet, um, it's not in a case at all of making sure your own department is fine and, you know, worrying about the other department. But I think you've just got to keep things in context and if you're continually reviewing and continually auditing your own team as I don't know head of performance or director of, you know, vice president of health and whatever your title is here or overseas, then I think you're okay, because you're ready to answer questions at any time, because they'll come. They'll absolutely come already.

Jason Weber:

I'll change tact on you with answering questions. I, given what I do with SpeedSig, we're talking to teams all the time. I was on a meeting last night with an EPL team and I won't say the people involved, but I do want to sort of give them a shout out, if they listen, that some of the questions I got were awesome, and the reason I point this out is because I get quite a few questions on LinkedIn and certain stuff about what I write, about being a sports scientist and saying, hey, we need to up our game and be a bit better at what we are and what we do. But I had some great questions about just simple things validity, reliability.

Jason Weber:

So, rather than just accept the show, because everyone you put a show on when you, you pitch to people, you're going to say, hey, here's the thing, I got a cool picture, I got a graph, I got this. But, um, I would say again to the sports science people out there who are wearing that badge, I think you've got to be better than just getting on the bandwagon. I think, as I said, to, without naming them, to give people a bit of kudos for some really cool questions, really insightful, but from the point of view of bringing a technology into a team, just digging into the nuts and bolts a bit, which I have like I interview or I pitch to a lot of teams. So you kind of see the question. Some people just go, yeah, yeah, this is all good, let, this is all good, let's just do it.

Jason Weber:

And that's nice like, yeah, your beauty from a business perspective, but that's kind of not what I want to see. I want to see I really get quite well, I do get very engaged by the people who want to ask questions and want to dig in, and particularly in newer technologies.

Darren Burgess:

Yeah, no.

Jason Weber:

I just know that when I look back at some of the technology that you and I have seen evolve over the last certainly 15 years, there's ones that I could name where people just go yep, we're FOMO, we're in. Anyone who doesn't have teenage children FOMO, fear of missing out All right, and that's a big thing. You get people who go. Well, this team over here, team X, has got that technology I wanted as well.

Darren Burgess:

Or I've got X amount in my budget to spend. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I need to do this, otherwise I'm going to lose my budget.

Jason Weber:

Yeah, yeah. So I think again that perspective that if you're going to wear the sports science hat and I was on a conversation with, uh, two guys who would consider themselves sports scientists one was a strength conditioning coach, one was a physio the strength and conditioning coach asked some good questions but didn't hammer in. He was, it wasn't quite his area, but the two sports science guys had really good questions and the questions were like I I said what I would expect. I thought, right, I'm getting grilled by a guy, somebody who understands science here. I like it. So I really would continue to encourage people who are out there. It's a legitimate career path, but I think you've got to really earn it. You've got to.

Jason Weber:

We've said before you know, if you're on a Darren Burgess' new sports scientist next year, you should be knocking his door down saying, hey, we're mapping these things, we've got these trends, this is what we're seeing. You know we're five games in. This is what we see the league doing, this is what we're doing, all that type of stuff. Yeah, so just Absolutely, if those guys who are on that call happen to be listening. Kudos, gentlemen, that's a good lesson Very well done.

Darren Burgess:

We're going to wrap it up because of our time, self-imposed time constraints, but I think gone are the days where sports science. Here's the report. There you go, I've done my job. It needs to be, yeah, far more detailed and nuanced than that, for sure.

Jason Weber:

Correct, correct. Well, you're right. We have the clock on the clubhouse wall has donged and we're out of here. So, mate, it's a pleasure as always, and we'll catch up again real soon with something. We've got all sorts of things happening, I suppose, over the coming weeks EPL's on their break and starting to go to international games, euros start and basketball's just about to finish, with the Celtics probably getting up, so plenty to talk about. Yeah, yeah, all right, mate. Well, you have a good weekend and all the best to the Crows this weekend.

Darren Burgess:

Thanks, mate, we'll see you next time. Thank you.