Duff quit dream job to be with his kids
DAMIEN DUFF revealed that spending more time with his family was the sole motivation behind quitting his ‘dream job’ on Celtic’s backroom team.
The former winger will assist new Republic of Ireland manager Stephen Kenny when international football resumes.
However, the prime reason for returning home to Dublin full-time was to focus on his two children Woody and Darcy.
And that meant the pursuit of 10-in-a-row had to be parked a distant second in Duff’s list of life priorities.
‘I’m absolutely gutted, devastated to be leaving, especially at this time when we’re going for 10,’ said Duff, who helped Neil Lennon and John Kennedy deliver a ninth successive title.
‘It was absolutely a family decision. There is no job in the world that would have taken me away from the role I was in. I’d love to be a brilliant coach one day. But it’s more important at the minute that I’m just a brilliant dad, I guess.
‘For the first while I was away, my kids were like: “Daddy, Daddy, stay for nine and 10”.
‘But as time went by, it was more: “Daddy, Daddy, when are you coming home?” Celtic is one big family, but my family is here as well.
‘It was the best year-and-a-half of my sporting life — and I include my football career in that. It was an absolute dream with amazing people.
‘I’m gutted, but my kids need me, which is always the most important thing to any dad.’
Duff stepped up from a brief stint coaching Celtic’s reserve team to link up with Lennon in February of last year in the wake of Brendan Rodgers leaving for Leicester City.
‘The only club that would have taken me away from home was Celtic but, then, with my family based in Ireland, the only thing that would have taken me away from Celtic was my family,’ he said on the club website.
‘It was one big rollercoaster and me leaving was one big Catch 22, but it was an amazing 18 months.
‘The gaffer is the best in Scotland and John Kennedy is the best assistant manager around. I’ve worked with many coaches, but John is one of the best in the world.’
IT is easy to scoff at John Barnes. Whatever he has to say about his brief time as Celtic manager, it is always going to be undermined by the admission he spent £5.75million on Eyal Berkovic because he hadn’t bothered to find out what Lubo Moravcik was like as a player.
He lasted eight months because his side were knocked out of the Scottish Cup at home by Inverness Caledonian Thistle, then a First Division team, after the dressing room had descended into anarchy.
Not because he is black. Not because he lacks a Celtic background.
Let’s face it. Even Brother Walfrid would have been taken to the side and asked to go back to the day job when Paul Sheerin stroked home a late penalty to make it 3-1 that night.
Inexperienced and ill-prepared for a job handed out on a whim by a pal, surely the result of a certain unearned privilege in itself, Barnes was just one of countless mistakes in the wider embarrassment of Kenny Dalglish’s return to Parkhead as director of football operations.
If anything, his departure in February 2000 spared him the further ignominy of trawling round pubs in the east end of Glasgow with King Kenny for those press conferences he held, trying to run through the weekend injury list over the sound of breaking glass and pie-eyed pensioners insisting on one last chorus of Danny Boy on top of the pool table.
Barnes was a bad appointment at a bad time for the club. That short period of his life, though, should not weaken his contribution to the wider and more important debate of discussing current opportunities for BAME individuals in football and society at large.
Sure, Barnes’ return to the spotlight over recent days has come as a result of making that cardinal error of actually trying to engage with people over Twitter about the Old Firm.
Celtic supporters became upset with him for stating that black managers aren’t given as much time as their white counterparts. They took it personally. It has been a good thing, though.
It led to Barnes making a fascinating appearance on the supporter-run podcast A Celtic
State of Mind, presumably as some kind of damage-limitation exercise, and opening up his thoughts on discrimination to a wider audience.
Certainly, whatever he may have lacked in original thinking as a coach, he is brave and challenging on this.
He doesn’t deal in hollow clichés or knee-jerk reaction. In truth, he has been the subject of intense criticism for his views.
He claimed Irish actor Liam Neeson ‘deserved a medal’ for admitting he once thought about killing a random black person as revenge for a female friend being raped. He also supported the right of John Terry to play for England again after he had been found guilty of racially abusing Anton Ferdinand back in 2012.
His theories are steeped in what he terms ‘unconscious bias’, the understanding that our views of certain groups are ingrained by what society has encouraged us to think.
It is an easy view to shake off. Easier, for sure, than looking inside and being honest with yourself, as Neeson did. Yet, it seems clear that is what we all have to do to make progress.
Barnes has done it. He comes from a middle-class background in Jamaica, where those of a darker skin tone would generally be looked down upon.
‘If a man turned up in a turban to manage Liverpool when I was playing for them, I would question him,’ he also said. ‘If a white German, who I’ve never met, turned up to manage Liverpool, I’ll question him — but not as much as I would question the man with the turban based on the fact that he’s from India, so what does he know?’.
Few of us are saints on this front. Fewer still can know the sure path to a solution. We know discrimination is bad. It is about now trying to figure out what we do about it as individuals.
In conversation with friends this week, it was, at first, unsettling to hear many of us admit to harbouring this unconscious bias in different forms. To having negative views towards people of a certain race or sexual orientation.
It is something, we agreed, that can only be lessened through education and effort when you have admitted to yourself that it exists.
And if we can’t all look at our prejudices at this point in time, when can we? Have many of us considered until now just how the statues or the street names within our cities may make some of those we live beside feel?
What do we think when Moi Ali, who has held a number of high-profile public sector roles, talks of the ‘covert, clubby middle-class racism’ of colleagues?
Or when Justice Minister Humza Yousaf raises the anti-black sentiment that exists within the Scots-Pakistani community?
No one is immune from facing up to this.
Barnes’ focus on why black managers don’t get as much time in position as white ones is not really the issue. The main thing here is why so few of them get appointed in the first place and why so many BAME players don’t even seem to believe it is worth trying.
Rangers striker Jermain Defoe is an impressive individual. It is impossible to think that he would question his own worth to his profession. Yet, he still doesn’t know if it is worth doing his coaching badges because of fears there will be no openings at the other end.
Those concerns are repeated throughout all kinds of sectors. And not just among BAME people. Where Barnes’ thoughtful approach to this thorny subject has really made him stand out as a voice is that he sees, despite the current focus on the Black Lives Matter campaign, that this is more than simply a matter of race.
‘Where we should talk about it is in the community, where black
and working-class communities are not being given education, housing, job opportunities,’ he said.
‘I am sure the same thing goes on in Scotland. The fact you can’t get a black manager is a problem, but the bigger problem is the disenfranchisement of workingclass people and black people in the inner cities.’
Britain, as a whole, is riven with a degree of inequality that will only grow in the wake of Covid-19. Social mobility is falling apart as a concept. The United Kingdom appears to be run by a narrow elite. So many of its industries likewise.
Our public education systems are not keeping pace. Lack of opportunity is driven by socio-economic factors as well as those related to creed and gender.
Barnes insists we won’t see him talking about football any longer now he has tried to put the issue of his time at Celtic to bed. That is probably a good thing.
He wasn’t much cop at building a team, but he can construct a compelling argument and his assertion that we must all begin by analysing and owning our hidden prejudices rather than simply waving placards is hard to dispute.
Barnes deserved the sack at Celtic, no doubt, but he has also shown he deserves an audience now. The points he makes speak to a truth about ourselves that we surely know exists.
Even if it is hard to face up to.