SOCCER: Coach quits to get back on field

HAMISH BIDWELL
Dean Buckman is hanging up his clipboard - for the time being at least.
The Bridgeman Concrete Havelock North Wanderers coach says it's time to go back into the playing ranks and he will call it a day at the end of the Central Soccer League season.
"I'm definitely not doing the job next season," said Buckman.
"I haven't played proper football for five or six years because I retired pretty young to get into coaching when I was 31. I just think it's time to get back into the playing side of things and have a bit of fun myself."
On the back of Sunday's 4-0 loss to Gisborne City and a change in the team's formation and playing style in the past few weeks, Buckman says he feels as though the steering of the Havelock ship has been taken out of his hands. His preference, especially against the better teams, was to have defended in numbers and try to catch them on the break.
But as the season has worn on, he's bowed to a desire from people around the club to play more attractive football but having seen that fail, Buckman believes that it is time for someone else to assume the helm.
"I think you can see with the formation change that there are a few outside influences that have come in," he said.
"I don't know it all, and I don't profess to, but I wanted to adopt a style that would contain the better teams and best use the assets that we have available. I think we've competed pretty well this year, and at least we're not going to come last, but I think sometimes we've been sucked into trying to compete and play football against teams that are too good for us.
"I think that if we played to it correctly, that my philosophy may have worked, but I probably listened to too many people and let too many outside influences creep in. Perhaps I've been too close to the team, after all, I played with a lot of them.
"I don't know. All I know is that players don't probably answer back to someone like Kevin Fallon, the way they answer back to me. I don't know, I guess you've probably got me at a bit of a negative moment."
Buckman's biggest disappointment with the season is the way the team has tended to fold once it gets behind.
"If you look at the six losses we've had, the only time we kept it close was a 2-1. All the others were 4-0, 5-0, 8-0. You can see by that that as soon as we go down in a game, we get thrashed."
So for now it's back to playing down the grades and trying to get a bit of his love for the game back and in a few season's time, Buckman reckons he might be back to do it his way after all.