AIS has $5m to stop coach poachers

by Nicole Jeffery, The Australian on 1 Jun 2006 The Australian Institute of Sport will spend almost $5million over the next four years to fend off international poachers intent on cherry-picking Australia's best coaches.

AIS director Peter Fricker has drawn a line in the sand after seeing a significant number of high-quality coaches lured to rival nations in recent years.
Fricker is concerned the leak of expertise could become a flood in a highly competitive international market if the AIS does not improve the salaries and conditions of its most precious coaching assets.

He said Australia's best coaches were under-paid compared with those in other leading sporting nations and he was determined to address the imbalance.

'We are well under some of the salaries we see being offered to coaches to go overseas,' Fricker said.

'They are being under-paid by up to $50,000 a year in some sports.'

That situation has made the Australian sporting system vulnerable to big-spending nations aggressively trying to improve their performance.

Britain has been the chief culprit in the past decade. With London due to host the Olympic Games in 2012, Fricker is expecting those raids to intensify.

The British Olympic Committee has announced its goal to finish fourth on the medal tally in 2012, the position Australia has occupied for the past two Games.

Fricker is also wary of the oil-rich gulf states - Qatar, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates - which are 'recruiting like mad'. Canada, China and New Zealand are other countries who have taken Australian experts.

'I am aware that a number of our coaches get requests all the time,' Fricker said. 'We know for a fact that our major competitors are targeting our people. We have seen a stream of coaches going overseas.'

They include swimming coaches Bill Sweetenham (Britain), Mark Regan (Denmark) and Pierre LaFontaine (Canada), rowing coaches Paul Thompson and Marty Aitken (Britain), diving coach Steve Foley (Britain), squash coach Geoff Hunt (Qatar) and basketball coach Tom Maher (China).

Sweetenham in turn recruited three of Australia's leading sports scientists - Bob Treffene, Tim Kerrison and Jodi Cossor - to work with him. He credits them for much of the improved performance that led the British men to dominate the pool during the Commonwealth Games in March.

He is also using former Australian head coach Don Talbot as a consultant.

Fricker is determined to prevent other sports and countries from using Australian know-how.

'We have put aside an amount to target the 10 best coaches in our AIS programs and pay them enough to make it attractive enough for them to stay,' he said.

Fricker said the AIS would be pro-active in boosting coaching salaries but would also have a budget to ward off international offers.

'If we know a coach is being head-hunted we will be able to make them a counter-offer,' he said.

Another objective of the scheme is to beef up the institute's coach development and expand its coaching scholarship program.

'We need to create a path for coaches that offers them more in personal, professional and technical development,' Fricker said.

'We also want to cultivate a bit of coach succession.'

The new approach has been noticed in Britain where one commentator accused Australia of 'pulling up the drawbridge'.

Fricker is unrepentant. 'They are a little bit put out but they will get over it - and I don't really care if they don't,' he said.

For full story see: www.theaustralian.news.com.au/printpage/0,5942,19266535,00.html