Terry Wallace's darkest hour Jon Ralph
Herald Sun
August 24, 2010 TERRY Wallace has lived in Matthew Knights' shoes and he never wants to return.
The former Richmond coach knows how it feels to speak to players pre-match aware some are ignoring every word.
Or realise your assistant coaches are aligning themselves with others to save their own skins.
The crushing pressure and expectation was so great last year there were times he retreated to his home cinema to lock out the outside world.
On reflection, Wallace says he suffered a form of depression.
Now after a 10-month period he says was the most difficult of his life, he has emerged to stick up for besieged Essendon coach Knights.
Wallace says he does not want sympathy, but believes senior coaches need more respect as they depart.
And he cannot fathom how the football industry builds up its coaches then mercilessly tears them down.
"My advice to him, and I have left him a message, is back yourself in," Wallace said. "The scrutiny has got worse. When I left it was severe, but it has got even worse.
"For me the scrutiny started in Round 4 and I could have walked away from the club and the supporters would have been happy, but when you fight it can be worse.
"Knighter has been putting up with this for a long time, and it gets bloody tough.
"You have two choices - you can fight, or walk away.
"If you walk away you are perceived as weak, and if you fight, you get smashed more."
Wallace entered his final season under pressure that intensified each week until it hit breaking point in Round 11.
A Herald Sun headline labelling him on "Death Row" early in the season started the rot.
" 'Dead man walking' became the headline and my kids were spoken to in those terms," Wallace said.
"It grows and grows and every supporter uses it to and from games, when you are walking on to the ground, and it becomes a catch-cry."
At one stage one of his children was asked by a PE teacher in front of hundreds of kids at a school sports carnival whether his dad would last the year at Richmond.
How did he cope?
"I don't think I did cope," Wallace said. "I've got a home cinema which is four walls, and it's locked away by heavy curtains, and I would just lock myself in that room.
"That's the reality. You try to get away from it all. It's not real healthy.
"Someone would say, 'We need some milk and groceries,' and you would ask someone else to go and do it because people would be whispering and pointing at you, and all I used to do was lock myself away."
Only midway through this year did the black fog begin to lift for Wallace.
"I didn't get any counselling or anything like that, but I think I probably should have," he said. "I went and saw people in relation to changing jobs, but not from a mental approach, and I think I should have.
"To me, I'm not a psychologist but to me there was a form of depression and from what I can gather it's situational depression."
There was no single moment when he turned the corner, just a gradual realisation life had to move on.
"I don't think there was a day when I woke up and thought, 'I am all right', but things roll on," he said.
The trickle of media and corporate opportunities has become a regular flow and Wallace feels re-energised.
Considered unemployable in the immediate aftermath of his sacking, he is combining work on Channel 9 and Foxtel with special comments roles on SEN Radio and Croc Media.
He says his situation is almost identical to Essendon and Knights.
"Essendon got done (on Sunday), and it was nothing to do with the teams. The game was identical to the one we played in Round 4 against Melbourne," Wallace said.
"We were that much under the eye of the storm that the players don't play with freedom, and they are not listening to messages, and they are not doing anything because they are that under the pump."
Do the players know you are gone?
"They all know. You know yourself. You can sense that but you have to keep battling and do your job. There is a time where you can start feeling it change and it's every man for himself.
"You can feel it. Your assistants start posturing in different directions because they know you are gone, whether it's moving towards the director of football or moving towards the president.
"You feel the players sense you are not going to be there, and it diminishes your message and your power."
He is still mystified by the depth of anger against him , which only now is abating.
"You have to sit back and say, 'All I have done is not win games.' I haven't not turned up to work, I am not breaking any laws, I am just losing games and people hate you for it.
"It's not about feeling sorry for yourself. I am out the other side."
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/afl/terry-wallaces-darkest-hour/story-e6frf9jf-1225909123984
