Shepparton United product and current Werribee coach Michael Barlow served a cheeky lob towards his former AFL club Gold Coast as his Tigers gear up to take on the Suns in Sunday’s VFL grand final.
“I’m in (the Suns) past players’ group, and quite often you get messages from the head around things that are going on with the club,” he said.
“Obviously the game’s on this weekend, and a lot of the Gold Coast former players live around Victoria and whatnot so there was a call to arms for those people to get down and support Gold Coast on the weekend.
“So I just popped in there and said I don’t think I’ll be doing that, I’ll be supporting Werribee.”
The 35-year-old admitted he had to validate who he was so as to not pour petrol on the media storm swirling around Werribee as the Tigers look to end a 30-year premiership drought.
Barlow, who signed on as playing coach for the 2019 season, has been at the heart of the fight since.
While his involvement at Werribee doesn’t extend to playing any more, his efforts in pushing the club to a grand final have landed him the VFL Coach of the Year mantle.
His easy-going nature has been a big part of it.
Don’t get it wrong; Barlow can turn it on when he needs to, but his approach to a game of such high stakes has not gone off-piste from what it has been all year.
“The message is pretty similar to what it’s been all year to be honest,” he said.
“I like to think I’ve got a bit of variety in the way I coach and the way we run the club, keeping it a little bit light-hearted and entertaining but also worked pretty hard when we have to.
“Our mindset and focus has very much been embracing the next moment and the moment we’re in.
“That’s been our focus all year and it really does get challenged around finals time when there’s more interest in you and there is more on the line.
“We’ve tried to strip all that back to eradicate result and concentrate on the process of it.”
Barlow will be hoping to do the job over several familiar faces in Sunday’s decider at IKON Park.
He rubbed shoulders with current VFL Suns players Alex Sexton and Sam Day during his time in Queensland and knows there is a bit of psychological warfare at play.
“Across our whole list of 48, we don’t have any AFL experience ... and that’s the first time that it would be case at Werribee Football Club in a long time,” he said.
“We’ll come up against 21, maybe even 22 AFL-listed players for the Suns on the weekend.
“We’re embracing that part-time versus full-time mentality, we’re aware that our guys have still got to go to work and uni and rock up and train at night and the opposition are kind of doing their thing during the day.
“They’re probably sitting around thinking a lot about the game whereas we can probably have a better balanced lifestyle approach to it.”
As the club focuses on its first grand final appearance since 2005, Barlow drew on the unity of everyone who has donned the ‘W’ to band together for an almighty tilt at the premiership.
“Werribee and VFL standalone clubs are very much clubs that people will pass through, you’ll come and you’ll experience but you’ll also always have an attachment to it,” he said.
“And that’s been so evident to me over the past six to eight weeks with all the people that have had a connection to the club coming back and the interesting is spiking.”
