Having led Werribee to a fairytale 2023 VFL grand final berth against Gold Coast — with the Tigers having gone all the way this season — Barlow’s talents took him to North Melbourne as a development coach in 2024, marking his first crack at an AFL coaching gig.
Though the youthful Kangaroos struggled on-field, winning three games and finishing 17th, Barlow’s work with the emerging core at Arden Street did not go unnoticed.
The former 141-gamer with Fremantle and Gold Coast Suns was the recipient of this year’s AFL Coaches Association Development Coach of the Year award at the body’s annual awards ceremony on Tuesday.
The award is not one that comes with any old criteria, either; both one’s peers and the players under one’s watch cast votes in what essentially becomes an internal and external performance review.
With the continued emergence of future stars like Harry Sheezel and George Wardlaw, Barlow was elected top of the pops at the first time of asking.
He’s keen to keep his head down as the Roos look to the future.
“When you get into coaching, the individual component of it doesn’t lend itself to that kind of recognition normally,” Barlow, recipient of the 2023 VFL Coach of the Year award, said.
“It’s all about the team and the club, the organisation as a whole.
“We didn’t progress as quickly as we’d like, but I feel in my own role that we’ve laid a strong foundation.
“My main role is just to improve the players and the club’s success.”
Working with the club’s first to fourth-year contingent, the former Shepparton United junior has had the chance to oversee the growth of one of the competition’s more exciting brigade of youngsters.
As part of any development role, though, as he states, the best is always yet to come in his field.
“Our younger players, guys like Paul Curtis and Tom Powell, some of those guys really took big steps this year,” Barlow said.
“We’re pleased with some of the improvement, but there’s still a way to go for all of them.
“I love seeing them come through really well in their third and fourth years as that’s a real moving time in a player’s career.
“When you’re a coach, it does take some time in a new environment to build relationships and get to know players, and I’ve put a lot of time and effort into all that with different types of exercises and drills to draw responses from them.
“The benefits of the year I’ve had should be seen within the next 12 to 24 months.”
