David Leggat: Coaches need tough hide to operate at the top

Any number of sports coaches can lay claim to the old line about there being only two types of coaches - those about to be sacked and those that have been.

Tony Kemp is just the latest to have left one category and joined the other with his departure from the Warriors this week.

The announcement was preceded by a heap of to-ing and fro-ing from the pro- and anti-Kemp camps. But the bottom line was whether the Warriors board considered an 11th-place finish in a 15-team competition good enough to justify rehiring him.

And in these days when coaches are expected to produce instant success, that wasn't going to be good enough.

The days when coaches got bedding-in time, an opportunity to build a successful operation, are gone.

Its culinary equivalent is standing in line at the fast-food counter.

The customer wants instant gratification.

There was also the bizarre phone call Kemp made during their final home game against Newcastle to referees' boss Robert Finch in Sydney to grizzle about decisions unfolding before his eyes.

You'd have thought he had more important things to worry about than that, but it went directly to the pressure he was feeling.

So Ivan Cleary becomes the Warriors' sixth coach since they joined the National Rugby League in 1995. He'll survive so long as the Warriors make the top-eight playoffs next year.

That's the template for success. He knows it, the Warriors board knows it, and Kemp knew it.

That's life.

I hope the change brings another adjustment, in sartorial terms. Get rid of the dreadful wraparound sunglasses and pinstripe jackets. A bad look.

Kemp wasn't alone in feeling the cold wind down his spine this week.

Northland rugby coach Bruce Hodder resigned after presiding over 13 successive NPC first-division round-robin losses going back to last year.

It's not all Hodder's fault. Northland are going through grim times, but the coach takes the rap.

Who would be a coach?

Some years ago, former New Zealand cricket coach and all-round good bloke Bob Cunis mock-grumpily bemoaned the fact that when his team did well the captain handled the post-match interviews.

A defeat? Whistle up the coach.

Australian cricket coach John Buchanan copped some serious flak this week from former captain Ian Chappell on the eve of the Ashes-deciding fifth test at the Oval in England.

He suggested captain Ricky Ponting would be far better listening to senior players Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath than Buchanan as he would get more sense from them.

Then again, Chappell is a long-standing believer that the only coaches in cricket should be those which transport players to the ground.

And who would be England soccer coach Sven-Goran Eriksson right now, or for that matter any time over the past couple of years?

Pilloried week in, week out. And that's just for his decidedly messy personal life.

Steering England to an ignominious 1-0 loss to Northern Ireland - put it this way, England were beaten by players from Motherwell, Plymouth Argyle and Hull City - was the cue for another bout of Sven-baiting. You require a certain level of intestinal fortitude, not to mention a thick hide, to operate in the rarified atmospheres of top-level sport.

How a team boasting the combined talents of Michael Owen, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, David Beckham and that 'orrible little Wayne Rooney could be turned over by a plucky but desperately modest bunch of lower leaguers defies logic.

Then again, you always get the sense that the English relish despair. Give their papers a chance to reach for the Thesaurus. They'd take a chance to have a moan over a win any day.

Coaches adopt all sorts of methods in the search for success.

But there's only one golden rule which applies to them all, and you get it any way you can: win.