Julie Fitzgerald Edit
Fri, 8/26 5:31AM • 24:25
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
coach, players, julie, people, netball, sport, team, giants, tweak, new zealand, change, talk, happening, coaching, enjoy, work, staff, brave, vision, learn
SPEAKERS
Paul Barnett, Julie Fitzgerald
Paul Barnett 00:00
Julie Fitzgerald Good morning, my time. Good afternoon, your time, and welcome to the Great coach's podcast.
Julie Fitzgerald 00:06
Thank you. It's great to be here.
Paul Barnett 00:08
Very excited to talk to you today about all things netball and I can see Sydney is putting on a show through the window in the background there. But Julie, maybe something simple to get his going. Could you tell us? Well, I've just given it away. Could you tell us where you are in the world and what you've been up to so far today?
Julie Fitzgerald 00:24
I'm at my home in Sydney. It is a beautiful day on Sydney's North Shore. And I've been pottering around and doing a lot of work that I haven't had a chance to get to previously. And you've got COVID. I have COVID on Skype for what, two years, two hubs, two seasons, all of that, but it got me this week.
Paul Barnett 00:42
Well, I guess COVID has given us the chance to get together for this interview. So let's can't be all that bad. I'm very thankful for you carving out a little bit of time, because I know how busy you are. Julie, can I start by just talking about a couple of big coaches was a few here, actually that you've worked with? Lisa Alexander Briony Arkell. We were just talking about Norma Plummer. And actually, you've also worked with rugby's wind Smith over in New Zealand. And I'm wondering, from this experience, what is it you think that the great coaches do differently, that sets them apart?
Julie Fitzgerald 01:14
I don't know if they do it differently. But I think people do it in a way that suits them and suits their personality and the way they can deliver it best. But I think there's a few key ingredients that you have to have if you're going to be successful. I think the first one is you have to love your sport, if you love your sport, that you're enthusiastic about developing and growing your part in it. So I think you really have to love your sport. And I think you've got to have a real passion to create a program that enables everyone in it, whether it's staff or players, whatever else to be the best that they can be and that they can grow within it. Because then you have something that's really vibrant and moving all the time, you've got to have a desire to be continually learning otherwise, you can't provide what I just said in terms of the Greg environment that I think you want that anyway, because I've been fortunate enough to coach a few players for a long time. So you've got to be continually learning and being able to develop new ways of doing things and new ideas and addressing it, everyone knows you got to have meticulous planning and time management. But that filters down, I think if you're not organized as the head coach, and you're not looking after your own time, then that will filter down to your staff and your players in the whole program. So I think planning is absolutely essential. And something that I think makes your life a whole lot easier in the long run when you get used to the fact that I'll never go to bed at night until I know what I've done everything that I might need the next day, because you never know what's going to happen. You need to really enjoy working with athletes, you're going to end up working with a whole group of diverse people of different ages and different backgrounds, and you've got to learn to know them, then you create a really good environment for them, I think you've got to really enjoy that side of it. You can't just love coaching, you've got to enjoy that side of it as well. I don't think it hurts either to be competitive, let's face it, it's about winning, you want to be a winner, you want to be someone who wants to win. And then I think you've got to try and interpret those things so that you can bring them to your own coaching role in a way that exposes you don't try and be one of the great coaches. But take from them what you think you can use and interpreted the way that you is just you.[PB1]
Paul Barnett 03:16
You touched on it a little bit in that answer. But I'd like to just sort of ask you, you started coaching in 1985, slowly working your way up there was you went through community teams, representative teams, and then ultimately professional teams here and in New Zealand. But how have you seen the role of the coach evolve over that time,
Julie Fitzgerald 03:38
it's evolved faster than I thought it possibly could. I started off very much as an amateur coach who was coaching at night after working all day, and girls would be getting home at 10 o'clock at night, having trained after work. And then getting up early in the morning and going again. So we went through that until we became semi professional. And now the top players and myself get to be professional coaches. And I don't think I ever dreamed it would happen in my lifetime. I think netball has evolved very quickly and set the path for others that have followed. But I think the main difference is that when you are an amateur coach and coaching late at night and things like that you're getting the job done, but you were never able to apply yourself to the level that you really wanted to. And we were never allowed to address netball in the way that all elite shorts sports should be addressed. So in terms of sports science, and nutrition and recovery and preparation and all of those things. They were suddenly a big part of the job. And I think that's the way it's involved. I think the passion and the commitment and even the amount of work we did on the training track doesn't change that much. It's all the ancillary things around that that have enabled the sport to grow and become a professional disease.
Paul Barnett 04:49
Are Julie one of your most famous players. Liz Ella said she's the sort of coach who worked out early. She didn't know everything and didn't need to know everything that meant she saw short answers from her players. And that's smart because it gives them ownership. It's a really great quote. And this kind of authenticity where you would meet you gaps in your knowledge or expertise is really emerging all over the world now is this sort of leadership trait that people are paying a lot of money to get trained on. But I wanted to ask you, was there a person or event in your life that sort of helped you develop this approach to leadership?
Julie Fitzgerald 05:25
If anyone's met us, at least I know that you she'll never let you tell her everything. Anyway, she's always got an opinion.
But I think it's something that I learned very, very quickly, like I'm coaching, experienced, intelligent women in many cases, and they have opinions and they have ideas. And to me, it's just leaving another tool in the box if you're not really interested in how they feel. And I think I look at the sport from one perspective, I'm sitting on the sideline, I see what's happening on the sideline, I get to devise training, I get to put it out there and say how I want them to play. But the players see it from on the court, they're doing it themselves, they're experiencing it live. So they're obviously going to have a different perspective to what I have. So I've always wanted to know how they felt or if they had an idea, or they turn around, say, Jules, this is never going to work. And we thrash out whether it could work or not work, but to not involve them in the process. You don't get their engagement, but you're also not paying homage to the fact that they're intelligent, they know what they're doing. And they've experienced things that you're not experiencing on the sideline, where you've got to draw the line is you can't take on everybody's opinions. So you have to listen to bait, then decide what's happening[PB2] .
And was there
Paul Barnett 06:34
a person in that background that sort of ignited this, this style in you,
Julie Fitzgerald 06:39
I suppose in itself could have in some ways, because she is one of the most intelligent players I've ever coached. And she's totally driven. She'll never accept any form of mediocrity. So we've had some really robust discussions and some really fruitful discussions over the years. And she probably, I think she gave me the courage to coach that way to be honest, because I was never hesitant to let her speak. And she was always willing to speak. And I think that relationship probably gave me the courage to coach the way I coach,
Paul Barnett 07:10
talking about sort of courage and changing the way that you coach in 2011, your coach, the Australian Institute of Sport team, and I've heard you talk about this being a turning point in your career. Why was that?
Julie Fitzgerald 07:23
It was a massive turning point for me. I coached the Swiss for 15 years before that, and I coached the Swiss I think, in the glory days, I had an assistant coach and manager and a physio and they were all part time. So I went down to the AAS. And suddenly, I was entrenched in this fully professional program. And I had staff that you couldn't dream of I remember the first day I was there, I had an administrative assistant. And she told me, she'd organized lunch with the staff. And I thought this is great. There'll be half a dozen people. And there were 13. And I had recovery specialists, and physiologists and all the normal medical staff, but all these incredible young people who had great ideas, and we're learning all the time and imparting their knowledge with you. And I just found it so exciting. And it opened the world of sports science to me, which of course, now that we're down the track a lot further is a vital part of it, nothing, I would never have been prepared for perhaps the magic roll and then coming back to giants at the level that it is now if I hadn't had that experience down there. And there was this tremendous camaraderie amongst the coaches, of all the sports in the AAAs. I was the only female head coach at the time. But there were great people down there to have a discussion with an we'd have robust conversations. And really you learn to and you are inspired by them. And it kind of breaks my heart to see what the AAS has become now, because I think it was such a wonderful place. And they did incredible research into things that were fascinating. And I really, really enjoyed my time and it expanded my horizons enormously.
Paul Barnett 08:56
The only female head coach, that was at
Julie Fitzgerald 08:59
the time I'm sure I'm not now that at the time, I was the only head coach.
Paul Barnett 09:03
And how did that feel? Well, I
Julie Fitzgerald 09:06
loved it. I mean, I'm not a women's lib or anything else. I do believe that women can achieve what they want to achieve. And you work hard enough, you might have to work a little bit harder than a man but I think you can achieve, but I never saw it as being the only woman I just enjoyed the camaraderie of all the other coaches and there were women in assistant coaching roles and things like that[PB3] . But I just love the camaraderie that we had down there across all the disciplines.
Paul Barnett 09:26
You must have met some very interesting people at the time they've potentially going on and had very big and fruitful careers. Yeah, well, a
Julie Fitzgerald 09:34
lot of the staff that I had at the time went through the diamonds program for quite a few years. The performance analyst and the physiologist and some of those people were young people who started off working through our program and I've seen others go on and have good jobs in rugby and places like that. The Medical Director for the swans now was one of the physios with his down there when we were there. So it's been great to watch how some of these young people have progressed through the sport. Now,
Paul Barnett 10:01
one of the things that's interesting listening to you talk, Julie, when I was preparing for today's this, this knowledge, this insight you have into young people, you've referenced it a few times already in this interview, and I wanted to link it with this idea of self accountability, which I know is a very important value to you. But I'm wondering if you have any experience where people make themselves too self accountable, and they obsess and spend too much energy on something?
Julie Fitzgerald 10:27
Yeah, I think so. I think he can see it in players. And I think he can see it in other coaches, like,
I have one player who would over analyze everything and take full responsibility for everything upon herself. And it's taken an education for her to realize that some things happen. But the majority of what you're doing is great, and you keep the good things, and you don't sweat too much on the bad things because they're easily fixed. And I think you can sometimes see it in coaches, they take a loss or a program that's not running to well, they take total responsibility, and they want to throw everything out. I've seen coaches who lose a game on the weekend and completely want to change their program that we can do everything differently. And I think you've got to be self accountable, you've always got to look to yourself, first, you've always got to ask yourself, What should I have done. But that doesn't mean that you might have done a lot, you might have just needed to tweak a few things. But the basis of what you're trying to achieve and how you're trying to achieve it might be right, you just need to tweak it through things, not throw everything out and start again, not to panic that what you're doing is wrong, just to realize that identify a few things that you might need to tweak. But don't panic and try and reorganize everything. Because you've got to have faith in what you've put in place to be successful. And just tweak it along the way.[PB4] It makes
Paul Barnett 11:39
total sense. But have you got any routines or methods or anything you used to just calibrate? Before you tweak something just to step back and say, Am I doing the right thing? Some coaches talk about mentors, others have sets of questions they ask themselves, is there anything that you do in that space?
Julie Fitzgerald 11:54
Now, I'll certainly look back on a week and think I tried that. And it really wasn't successful. But if we did it this way, it might work better.
I always find talking to someone is great. If you can talk to someone who understands your question, which could be it could be a technical question that only netball people would understand. Or I might be able to walk down the hall and ask one of the AFL coaches you have aid approach something or whatever else. So it's always great to be able to talk something through. But I think mainly, you just have to responsible for looking back over the week. And you might find that thought lies somewhere else? And how are you going to adjust it so that that part of your program is working better? Or it might be something that you've directly done that you can change yourself. But I think you have to resist the temptation to throw everything out and think it's all wrong. You've got to also be able to assess what's good, what's working, what can work a little bit better and keep track. Otherwise you create a bit of chaos in your group, particularly in mid season if things aren't going well.[PB5]
Paul Barnett 12:50
Julie, I've read where you look for leaders within the team that are sympathetic to their teammates, this word sympathetic comes up a couple of times. And I'm wondering, how do you find that balance between empathy and expectations? When it comes to team goals?
Julie Fitzgerald 13:06
I think this comes back to what I said before in the fact that you have to enjoy the people side of coaching as much as you enjoy the technical and tactical side of it, that has to carry through to your leaders as well, and your staff as well. Because players will perform well when they're in a central place. And they can trust what is happening around them. So you have to have empathy for what might be going on in their lives outside of the sport, what's going on in their lives outside of training, there may be reasons why they're extra tired, there may be reasons why their concentrations down, you have to know all those things. And you have to enjoy knowing those things. And being in a position where you can honestly talk about it, you might be able to fix it. But you've got to have the empathy to be able to address it and understand. And then hopefully, that will build a trusting environment. And you can often create that feeling that while everything outside may not be going well, when I come to training, I had this loyal trustworthy group around me, that's all working towards the same thing. So that can be my sense of relief while things aren't going too well outside. And you can cut a little bit of slack if it's needed. And you want your you want the ladies in your team to all be aware of that.[PB6]
Paul Barnett 14:15
Julie, I have another great quote from you. You say you have to be brave enough to be careful of the people that you pick. And I was really intrigued by this use of the word brave. Why is bravery so important when it comes to people selection,
Julie Fitzgerald 14:29
because everybody wants to win, and everybody wants to coach the best players in the world. But sometimes the best player is not going to be the best fit. And while it might be very, very tempting to have that player in your team and be responsible in some way for their development, if they're not going to fit the culture in the feeling of your team in the long run. It is not it's detrimental to you. So I and I've learned this over a long period of time and I've not always got it right. But you'll sometimes have pressures upon you too. Take a high profile player who will bring a lot to the club both on and off the court that if they're not going to fit your culture and lead to the expectations of your team, they will be far more detrimental to you than they will be in the long run, it may take a little bit, but it's not worth the risk. And I think you have to be quite brave sometimes to make that decision. And it won't always be a popular decision, because administrators or boards or even some of your players might think if we get that player we might win, you've got to be brave enough to take the risk, I think,[PB7]
Paul Barnett 15:32
what are your top tips on cultivating or developing bravery when it comes to being a head coach,
Julie Fitzgerald 15:37
I think you have to experience the good and the bad. And when you've experienced the bad, it helps you be a little bit braver to prevent it happening again. But you've got to trust in what you've created. You've got to have faith in the culture that you're trying to create and the atmosphere that you're trying to build and the character of person that you're working with. You have to have faith that That's right. And you have to have faith in knowing that preserving that is possibly more important.
Paul Barnett 16:01
Julie, I know that you're a student of teams, and you've spent time observing rugby league rugby union. And of course, you're based out at the Giants. They're in Sydney. So you get to see Australian football teams, Australian rules football teams up close as well. But based on this, what are your tips for leaders who are stepping into new teams that have already got established cultures and norms.
Julie Fitzgerald 16:23
I think I learned a lot of this when I went to magic in New Zealand, they were a very established franchise, they were going through a massive change when I got there, but they were a very established franchise. And I look back on it now and think Maybe I was too eager to impose things upon them that I felt they needed. I think sometimes you need to sit back and have a good look at how it's all running, understand what they value, have a good look and see if everyone in the organization is living to those standards and believes in them. Give yourself time to work out if changes needed, how drastic it needs to be? Is it just a rotten culture that doesn't need throwing out and starting again, or other some really good things in there that you may not have noticed if you've gone into gangs?[PB8]
Paul Barnett 17:03
And have you experienced a time when you've stepped in? And it didn't go so well? Or was that the magic example?
Julie Fitzgerald 17:10
I wouldn't say didn't go so well. But I think if I had my time over again, I would have I would have traded a little bit more slowly. I think they had a lot of good things that maybe I didn't appreciate enough. And given time over again, I think I would have taken a more personal approach. Perhaps I don't regret anything that I did. But if I'm going to, as we see, you look at self accountability. And I look at that now in hindsight and wonder if maybe those first few months, I could have sat back a little bit more?
Paul Barnett 17:38
Well, one of the themes that comes through in your story we haven't met before today. But one of the themes that I think comes through is resilience, making the most of what you have, not what you don't have, whether it's starting new teams or clubs, which you've done, raising four kids as a single mum, rebuilding teams after players leave or injuries and of course, there's the 2008 premiership team example. And I'm wondering if this is an innate trait, whether it's something that can be taught and
Julie Fitzgerald 18:05
taught Szilard, I think it's experience I think, if you hang around long enough, you're going to experience things and you'll realize that you can waste a lot of time sweating on stuff that shouldn't be can't change. So if you end up a single mother of four kids, you're a single mom with four kids. So don't let's worry too much about that or dwell too much on that, let's just sort out how that's all going to work and make the most of it, because you can cry over it every night, but it's not going to change. So you might as well take the burden and move on. And I try and adapt that attitude with most things. There are a lot of things in life, you can't change, there's a lot of cards that are dealt to you whether you want them or not. There's a lot of great things around you that you can experience as well. So I think you do make the most of what you've got.[PB9] And that comes down to players as well. I think if you lose a key player through injury, or you look at that 2008 team where we lost an enormous amount of experience over a couple of years before, if you worry too much about what you've lost, then you're not giving enough attention to the players that you've kept. So when you lose a key player with injury, you're sympathetic to them and you you help them through their rehab and you do everything you can to get them back. But you don't dwell on that you don't keep talking about it, because that's inferring what you've got stepping up next isn't ready for the job. So you're not looking after what you've got if you worry too much about what you haven't got. So
Paul Barnett 19:19
in 2017, you're the inaugural coach of the GWS giants GWS standing for Greater Western Sydney. And in effect, you're building the standards that the future club will follow, and then build on and I'm curious, how did you go about starting beginning the vision or creating the vision that would then guide this team into the future?
Julie Fitzgerald 19:39
Um, can I just start by saying it's one of the most exciting things I've ever done. I was very happy in New Zealand when I got a call to come back and I thought I never ever thought I'd have a chance to catch a CPE team I didn't think we'd ever have to again so I was just so excited at the prospect and once the season had completed in New Zealand, I flew over and I was the only employee of the giants nipple at the time, we had no name, we had Mariacarla, we weren't even sure if we were going to be giants. And most importantly, we had no players and no support staff. And we had an incredibly short period of time to bring that together. And I do give credit to Carolyn Campbell and netball, New South Wales for how quickly we bought together such a successful team. But I was very, very conscious of the fact that you only get one chance to set things right. And the culture and everything that we established about that team in that one year was our only chance to get it right, and establish something that was worth keeping. And that generations after us would continue to live. So the first thing was recruiting a team. And when I said yes to the job, I already knew that I had a core of players who would come with me. And I knew that each and every one of those players would live the values that I wanted this team to live. And that was so important, because I can talk all I want that if you haven't got the buy in from the players, then you've got nothing. So I was terribly fortunate that I had four or five players already that I knew would help me establish exactly the club that we wanted it to be. And it was just such an exciting time, I think. And then as we bought new players in the excitement of those players about what we could build just grew and grew and grew, and it hasn't stopped. We're immensely proud of the fact that we've only been going for six years, I believe our culture and what we trying to build as a legacy is getting greater every year. And I do honestly believe that when all the originals are gone, that we'll carry on. It was an enormous privilege. And it was just such an exciting exercise. And I love the Giants. I love what we've created. I think we've got a great club. If you forget the team and the onfield ability and all of that I think we had a great club, and we're building something very special[PB10] .
Paul Barnett 21:46
Julie, you have four children. And as you told me when we were preparing for today, eight grandchildren. So firstly, congratulations. But if they ever come and ask you for leadership advice, and I'm not sure whether they will, I'm not sure how it works in your house, sure the grandkids will learn about the kids, they will tell me if they ever come and ask you about leadership advice about you know, uniting people behind the vision, moving them all in the same direction, as you just talked about with the Giants example, what would you tell them?
Julie Fitzgerald 22:19
It's a hard question, I think, first of all, you've got to be very, very clear what the vision is, you've got to know exactly what you want. And then you've got to know how you're going to get there. So work out exactly where you want to end up and what path it's going to take for you to achieve that you've then got to engage people around you who will have a similar vision and will be as committed to getting to that vision as you can. And then you just work really hard and you live that vision and you live the standards that you've set to get you there and you hope that the others will follow because they're like mind, and they're bought into the vision and they're engaged in what you're doing. And they're leading from your example.[PB11]
Paul Barnett 22:56
Julie, maybe just one last question if we can, and it builds on this whole idea of leading by example. I know that you're very close to many of your former players. It's you talk about it in interviews, I can see it on social media. But when these Bay's talk to you about the impact you've had on their life, which in a way is a proxy for the legacy you've left, what did they tell you?
Julie Fitzgerald 23:18
I think I just hope that I've been I've played a small part in them becoming not just a better netballer. But a better person. I think as head coaches, we do have a responsibility to assist young players to develop off the court as much as we can. And I would like to think that they thought that I provided them with a with a environment where they could grow both on and off the court that I've tried a part into helps them becoming better people in the community, not just in sport. And I'd like to them to think back if they're on the time that they've been in a team that I've led. I'd like them to think that they were a part of something pretty special and be proud to have been a part of that. [PB12] So growth,
Paul Barnett 23:56
pride. And I think the word community which comes through so strongly in your story is a great place for us to finish. So Julie, it's been wonderful. Spending a little bit of time with you today. Thank you for carving out the time and I know that you might be feeling too well because of COVID. But we really appreciate it and I look forward to sharing your story with with a wider audience.
Julie Fitzgerald 24:17
Thank you very much. I've loved it. I've always enjoyed your podcast, so to be a part of it's been very special.
Paul Barnett 24:22
Julie, thank you so much.