The stalwart of Bulleen’s survival in the NPL last season, Dominic Barba is looking to rebuild in his new role as head coach of the struggling Port Melbourne Sharks.
The new challenge is an exciting prospect for Barba, who wants to put an emphasis on a fresh crop of young talent.
“It’s a club that’s got a bit of potential, the depth of young players within the group is a really good opportunity for me to work and develop some depth at the club,” he told MFootball.
“We understand that the club needed to rebuild to some extent, and the rebuild is part the existing players, part the new players coming in and part identifying some of those young kids who potentially have a future at the club.”
He is taking over from Eric Vassiliadis who spent seven years at Port Melbourne, and wants to put his own stamp on the club.
“I’m the type of character that really likes to have a good look at what’s going on in there [the club] without really worrying so much about what the past was like, good bad or otherwise,” he said.
“It’s important to really make your own assessments and place your own spin on there… [and] it’s just a brand new set of eyes looking at a whole situation that gives everybody the same opportunity.”
The rebuild is centred on the retention of some key players that Barba feels are the heart and soul of the club.
“We’ve retained at this stage Port Melbourne boys that we’ve agreed terms on, [Alan] Kearney, [David] Stirton, [Bonel] Obradovic, Ryan Oppermann, Tyler James, James Karvelis,” he said.
“I think we’re still a player or two short, but that might fall into place soon enough.”
Barba believes Port Melbourne can improve on recent seasons and make a meaningful push for finals in 2017.
“There’s no substitute for hard work and everybody knows it, we’ve got to work really, really hard, harder than they’ve ever worked before to make a significant difference for next year,” he said.
“If you want to look at where I’d like to end up, we certainly want to be pushing for finals.
“The way to do that, he says, is simple. My coaching philosophy is to win games.
“What I would like is my team to play an exciting brand of football that caters for every circumstance that they’re faced with. And sometimes you can’t play beautiful football to win a game.
“The principle for me, the essence, is to get a team of young men that are prepared to do whatever they need to do, when they need to do it and how to do it, and hopefully be entertaining and play really good football in the process.”
Barba says his experience at Bulleen Lions last season has taught him some important things that he can take into next year.
“The confidence in knowing that if you put a really, really good, committed group of players together, even though they’re not the most talented players, they’re capable on any given day of achieving anything,” he said.
But he is mindful of the fact that, especially with a core group of young players, there is no safety in banking on that.
“You can’t invest in that thought process because you know that one week they’re going to be up… and next week they’re going to lose to the bottom side.
“So you take that attitude and take that ability of young players to be able to do that, and then you couple that with some experience, some leaders, some strong personalities that are able to align everybody in the same direction, and keep trusting the young player who’s going to be able to deliver.
“The Bulleen experience just proved that young players of good ability are able to play at this level, and we’ve just got to keep investing in that.”
Barba says young players are not only vital to his team, but to the NPL and Australian football.
“At Port Melbourne we’ve deliberately paid a lot of attention to the selection of our 18s and 20s, so that we’ve got a good depth and we can trust that they’re going to do a job for us if we call them up,” he said.
“These young players have to be the future of the league, they can’t be the past of the league and we’ve got to bring them through if they’re good enough.
“We’ve just got to keep investing in [them] because we’ll get a few exciting ones that will go to A-League and then play for Australia.”
He says that is the most rewarding part of coaching at NPL level.
“I don’t keep my job on that, but I’d love to be able to put a kid in a situation where they become something.
“I don’t win trophies [that way] either which is unfortunate, but I win the memory of getting someone to play for their country or for A-League or something like that.
“That would be, from a personal perspective, the most rewarding aspect of what I do.”
In the short term, his focus is on building a winning culture at Port Melbourne.
“I want to develop winners. Winners in football, winners in life,” he said.
“I’m sacked or I keep my job on results, so we can’t lose sight of that.
“Winning things is really important and being really competitive and exciting, and really, having team’s fear playing us because they know we’re capable of beating them.”