Dylan Kerr

Black Leopards coach Dylan Kerr is not new to making sacrifices in his chase for challenges in his career. In his latest job in Limpopo, he is faced with plenty challenges he strangely insists he relishes. KICK OFF’s Lovemore Moyo had an early morning cha

The Black Leopards coach has sacrificed more than most in the game, as he unpacks why he left a successful stint in Kenya to help ensure the PSL newcomers avoid the drop.

In his playing days Dylan Kerr was a clever footballer blessed with a sweet left foot which enabled him to operate anywhere on the flank, fitting in perfectly as a wide midfielder or even at left-back. He initially came to South Africa from England as a teenager in 1986, joining Arcadia Shepherds where he played for two years after which he received an offer to join sleeping giants Leeds United who were then in the English Second Division. Prior to moving back to the United Kingdom, there had been attempts by Durban Bush Bucks to sign him, while Kaizer Chiefs had also shown interest. With Leeds, Kerr won promotion from the Second Division in 1990 and two years later was part of the squad – featuring legends Eric Cantona, Gary McAllister and Gordon Strachan – that was crowned champions of the First Division, which was then renamed the English Premier League the following year. He eventually retired in 2003 after a spell with Hamilton Academical following a journeyman career in the UK which took him to Harrogate Town, Greenock Morton, Exeter City, Clydebank FC, Kidderminster Harriers, Carlisle United, Reading, Blackpool, Doncaster Rovers and Kilmarnock, where he won the Scottish Cup. His coaching career started out in the USA before undertaking stints at Mpumalanga Black Aces, Thanda Royal Zulu and Nathi Lions, where he tagged along as assistant to Sammy Troughton, before eventually stepping up, taking up head coaching opportunities in Vietnam, Tanzania and England before moving to Gor Mahia in Kenya. There he won two titles and played in both the CAF Champions League and Confederation Cup in the 16 months he spent in the East African country before once again moving on, this time for PSL returnees Black Leopards. So why leave Kenya to join a newlypromoted South African team? “This is simple,” Kerr explains. “When you speak to the chairman [David Thidiela] and listen to his ambitions about what he wants, I feel we have the same goals in life. It is easy to stay with a club that has had success so that you keep winning things, but as a coach you’ve got to have ambitions to try and make yourself better in a new environment. This is a

challenge. It is something I didn’t think too long about. When I thought about it after the initial offer came, I spent two days without sleeping. “The PSL is a better league than Kenya and the stadiums are fantastic. It is tough and from my past experience here, I knew what was required of me and my players. My aim is to get the club away from the drop zone, but then as a coach you need that time to settle in, but unfortunately here in Africa coaches are not given that time,” says Kerr, who had chosen not to take up an offer with another Limpopo club in June. “Before that I had also turned down a financially-rewarding package in Indonesia. I’m talking a lot of money. Money has never been my motivation in my coaching career because my success is based on the success of the teams that I coach. Coming to Black Leopards after I spoke to the chairman and listened to his vision, his excitement, his intelligence and his enthusiasm about his club, I knew what club I was coming to.”

Familiar territory

In talking familiarity and success in South Africa, Kerr has had a feel of both as a player and a coach. He lifted the BP Top 8 in 1986 as a player with Arcadia Shepherds before winning promotion to the PSL with Black Aces as an assistant coach at the end of the 2008/09 season after being brought in by Sammy Troughton, who had taken over from Innocent Mayoyo in November 2008. Kerr actually did take charge of one game – a league fixture against Mamelodi Sundowns on November 21, 2009 – which was played between the departure of Trougton and the appointment of Savvas Agiomamitis. While he is now at a club notorious for sacking coaches as quickly as they hire them, Kerr sounds unperturbed before hinting at why he left his previous club. “It is not the first club to change coaches,” he says. “The problems are usually off the field which then affects the players’ mentality and the players never get to succeed. There is interference and then there is questioning interference. With interference, people try to tell you what to do, and with questioning interference, people ask you what you are doing – there is a big difference in that. I hate off-the-field interference that goes against what we are trying to do as a team. I’m employed to coach the team and if I’m not doing that right then I can accept responsibility, but if there are off-the-field issues going against me then you will know why I left Gor Mahia because that comes into play.” For a team that has struggled to settle into the PSL over the last decade, survival is the priority regardless of whatever ambitions Thidiela might have. It is also natural that the mandate for Kerr is as simple as that – keeping Lidoda Duvha up, and the coach is wise enough to understand this. “I cannot wave a magic wand and say we are going to win games,” he says. “All I want to do is give my full attention to these players and the club, and work as hard as I can to make this a PSL club for many years to come. The team needs to remain in the league. I know the first year is always the toughest and I know everybody is expecting Leopards to go down, but I have already asked the players if they want to go down to the NFD, and they said no. What is at stake here are jobs and playing against the best teams. So we all know what needs to be done as a team.”

24-hour coach

Besides staying afloat in the PSL, there is the sensitive issue relating to the technical team he has to work with. As is the norm the world over, most

coaches prefer working with their own backroom staff they trust, yet Kerr is somewhat different. “Everywhere I have been, I have always had a technical team given to me,” he states. It therefore seems that the job of assistant coach Morgan Shivambu is safe, as is the rest of the technical team, even though Kerr is aware of the dangers of inheriting spies, based on what he went through with Simba SC in Tanzania. “I have never had the privilege of bringing in my own people, so I have to trust Morgan and the rest of the team,” he says. “I constantly remind them that if they want to talk positive or negative, they must please tell me. I constantly say, ‘If there is a problem, please tell me’. My experience at Simba SC was such that my goalkeeper coach was the only one I trusted, yet I had never met him before in my life. It took me a few months to figure out who the problem was; I thought it was the board, yet it was my assistant who was giving them all the ammunition and material to try and work against me. In the end I got rid of my entire technical team, besides the doctor and goalkeeper coach. “At the end of the day, it comes down to trust and honesty. If you look at all the best clubs in the world, the backroom staff work for the coach. I read on social media that the former Chiefs coach [Giovanni Solinas] worked 10 hours a day. I’m working 24/7 on football. I’m always watching football. With all the work that you do, you are hoping to get the same from your players. If anybody was to speak to all the players I worked with before, they all still keep in touch with me up to this day because of my honesty.” The 51-year-old then discloses that his attachment to the game has led to sacrifices not many would ever make. “The biggest word in any walk of life is sacrifice … you have to sacrifice a lot to get something in life,” Kerr says. “My sacrifice is that I have no wife and no children and will have no grandchildren to tell any stories to. Footballers are my children, so that is the sacrifice I chose to make when I left home at 18 to come to South Africa. That is the mentality we need to get drilled into our players’ minds. I have had no help or been done any favours in my career. I have had to work as hard as I could to get what I wanted, which was my job as a footballer and is still now as a coach.”