This is the third extract.
Read Part 1 | Read Part 2 | Read Part 3 | Read Part 4
In the wake of his appointment in September 1980, Parkin was afforded cart blanche in the management of what he readily admits was a prodigiously gifted group of footballers.
“I pulled some shocking tricks, like dropping senior players who had been there for a while and doing what Ross Lyon did two and a half years in with Dal Santo who’s now killing them. I think I dropped Robbert Klomp in the first week . . . ” Parkin recalled.
“I don’t think I bought a soul with me. I tried to get Ken [Herbert] because Ken was my svengali, but that was impossible because the Lofts mafia was well and truly entrenched. So it took some time for me to get in and feel like it was home. The place was run so differently. There wasn’t much democracy in the Carlton Football Club at that stage . . .
“They were a very good side, but I did a couple of strong things with personnel and if you look at the players dropped for the first few games of the 1981 season there were a few big names in the place who thought they had a right forever. And we were lucky at the same time to get Hunter and Bosustow in.
O’Sullivan said that Parkin was also a stickler for gaining opposition training intelligence - not so much about who trained, but how they trained - and he always endeavoured to implement new ideas of his own or employ from elsewhere if he thought they would afford his team the necessary edge.
He is also of the view that Parkin introduced a new coaching methodology to Carlton, and was truly ahead of his time in terms of his game plan and his preparation.
“Every Tuesday in the footy season the players would take part in some sort of practice match, and the good thing was that he [Parkin] would always pull things up if they were wrong, then rework them so they were right. In other words, he taught on the spot,” O’Sullivan said.
“I look back, and I know it sounds a silly thing, but during the pre-season he was the first coach I actually saw allow the players a drink of water because he knew it was good for them, whereas coaches in the past would argue that having a drink was soft.
“When Peter Schokman took them up and down the hills in Banyule, there’d be a container of drink at each end. That was unheard of back then, but now it’s a given and they’re taking water in every second.”
Parkin agrees that he took the helm at Carlton at a time when the game itself was on the cusp of change. They say that in football timing is everything, and for the forward-thinking coach and his trusted fitness advisor Peter Schokman, the timing could not have been better.
“The late 70s/early 80s was the turning point, and I think we had a head start on most others,” Parkin observed.
“I came out of a sports science background, so you’d think you’d have some knowledge, and this was Peter Schokman’s area of expertise, so we started to do things nutritionally and in rehydration which most clubs were just thinking about. We started to do things which have become the norm now, in what was still a semi-professional environment.”
On his arrival at Princes Park, Parkin also pushed the cause for which he ultimately championed - that footballers balanced their on-field responsibilities with some other form of employment elsewhere.
Back in the semi-professional days of the 1980s, he was particularly hot on it, “and we had a fair bit of success with it”.
“We had a bloke like [Mark] Maclure forcing the issue, and he’s gone on to become the state manager of Valvoline,” Parkin said. “I was really proud of what he and all those other blokes did beyond their footy, because I was constantly making the demand that unless you were going to hold a job and do something constructive I wouldn’t play ya.
“And there was no doubt that during their playing days they were better balanced and that the disciplines they gleaned from their footy helped them enormously in the transition to significantly different parts of their lives. People like Justin Madden, Val Perovic, Alex Marcou and Andrew McKay have all done extremely well in their pursuits after footy, and these are the things which, in my old age, give me a great deal of pleasure.”
Crucially, the coach struck up an immediate rapport with his first group of larrikins who just happened to play footy a bit - men like Buckley, Maclure and Perovic - who were generally answerable to no-one but were nevertheless stimulated by Parkin’s renowned skills as an orator.
As O’Sullivan noted: “Personally, I couldn’t wait for every Saturday to come around to hear him [Parkin] talk, and I can honestly say that in every one of Parko’s games that I was involved with I never heard him swear. The same with Denis Pagan, and as heated as both men could get, I never heard them utter the ‘F’ word in front of the players”.
O’Sullivan also trotted out two anecdotes that have remained etched in his memory since those fledgling days. Both relate to a practice match involving Richmond at Bendigo in the lead-in to the 81 home and aways.
“I remember the club’s psychologist Laurie Hayden - ‘Hayden Hayden’ they used to call him - coming up to David before the game and saying ‘Do you want me to talk to the players?’. David looked at him and said ‘No, no. I’m the coach, I’ll talk’, and I had to tell David that Laurie used to talk to the players a bit when Perc was coach,” O’Sullivan said.
“The other thing that sticks in my mind from that game is walking off the ground after getting smashed by Richmond. It wasn’t that our boys didn’t try - it was just that they weren’t switched on for practice matches.
Read Part 1 | Read Part 2 | Read Part 3 | Read Part 4
