Damian Barrett

What young journalists always say to me is, how do I befriend journalists?

people in the industry or how do you try and create a relationship or what do they want from you?

You would have heard that question yourself over the years?

True.

So when a senior coaching job is up for grabs, it's one of the very rare times when a journalist can bring themselves forward and add value to a prospective coach or an assistant coach to try and pay it forward.

The pay it forward pump up.

build a relationship with the potential candidate, talk them up, take the credit for talking them up, because it actually kind of works.

When you put a candidate into the public eye, for whatever reason, it does get them on the radar of clubs.

We'll get to James Hurd in a moment and his tactics on that.

But in pay-it-forward season or the pay-it-forward pump-up, you can either build your contact up publicly –

Or you can build the friend of your contact up publicly.

Or you can build someone who you're yet to build a relationship with but can use that as the means to go and say, hey, this is what I wrote about you this morning, and start a relationship.

Right, okay.

The reason I say all that, I always look for it.

Hand in the air, I was one of those.

I used to do it.

20 years ago, I used to use it as a means to accelerate relationship with prospective coaches or assistant coaches, and it's worked.

Back in the day, I'm a long-time retired, so we can go behind the curtain, 15 years retired.

I saw one today.

Did you see it?