RODGER HARKINS will be at Sefton Park today as Scotland's leading cross country athletes race for European Championship places, his first GB trial since becoming scottishathletics director of coaching; having steered Lee McConnell to every international championships over 11 years from 2001, he is no stranger to such events.
Yet one marvels at the path which has led him there. A one-time plasterer and Glasgow Council foreman, he was a construction tutor at John Wheatley College (now Kelvin College).
"For dysfunctional kids who'd been excluded from school and were heading to prison," he puts it. "People could not understand how I worked with some of the most motivated people on the planet at evenings and weekends, yet by day I worked with some of the most demotivated."
He remains at a loss to understand it himself: "Perhaps there was a yin and a yang there - it gave me a balance." But in 14 years there, he and his colleagues salvaged many lives from potential disaster.
Shettleston Harrier Harkins won Scottish youth bronze in the triple jump, and national titles as a junior and senior indoors and out.
He and world record-holder Jonathan Edwards were British Championship rivals and medallists, and Harkins still ranks in the national all-time top 20 (15.02m, 1984). He dropped out of the 400m hurdles lists only this year, with 52.4 at just his second attempt.
"That was in 1989, but soon after, the front wheel of my bike went down an uncovered drain. I went over the handlebars and damaged my back. I had a 47-second relay split before the accident, but never broke 51 seconds again.
"Yet I managed 53 seconds for the hurdles - so my differential was down to two seconds."
Gangly and self-coached, he acknowledges his developing body was never robust enough for the training he did, and observes that this remains an issue for the sport.
"Young athletes are generally no more physically prepared for what they ask their bodies to do as seniors than I was. Now, one of our aims is to give every athlete a chance to do what they're capable of, instead of being hindered by bad mechanics or bad posture, lack of good movement patterns which ultimately cause injury. That does drive me. I'd a lot of injuries because I didn't know what I was doing.
"I probably did the wrong event for 10 years. But that's why I now enjoy helping people avoid the same pitfalls and unfulfilled potential."
Hence the development of a movement programme being rolled out to Scotland's clubs.
"I hate saying things like: 'the halcyon days of the sport', but maybe things were good in the past because of the large numbers of people. We have to be a lot cuter.
"We don't have the depth of talent, so we have to take more care, and ensure people are structurally sound. Injury is a get-out-of-jail card - an easy excuse to stop."
Though Scotland has yet to reap the benefits, he says at UK level more robust sprinters exemplify the change. "If Britain had 10 sprinters in the 1970s, three might come through and seven got broke. Now you might find eight come through, and they are pushing standards up. It used to be three or four chasing three places at championshps.
"Now it's seven or eight. Britain may not have someone running 9.8 yet for the 100, but look at the number of women under 11.2 and men who can run under 10.2. That's coming from people moving better, and being more robust."
Harkins says he'd no designs on Maguire's job when the Irishman resigned. "Coaching Lee was my primary focus," he said. "If Lee had continued, it would not have entered my thoughts."
Maguire had, however, appointed Harkins manager of the pre-2014 holding camp. "Stephen was a breath of fresh air, raised aspirations with a lot of positive work. But I thought someone might come in with new ideas and focus, and want a clean slate.
"The more I considered how we were heading in a good direction, with two thirds of the team under 24, the more the thought grew in my head, having been part of it for the previous two years."
Coaching individuals is closed to Harkins, who maintains the trust of individual coaches. As he observes, even without poaching talent, "athletes often gravitated to the national coach because they thought it might enhance selection prospects. So I won't be coaching individuals."
Maguire's coach education mantra survives. "Coach education has changed so much these past 20 years that people have not had the chance to build on something solid," adds Harkins. Rapid turnover in his national role is partly responsible as he acknowledges.
"We need stability, and if I can create that, then we can see where we are driving the bus to. It's hopeless when the sport is pulled in one direction after another."
He hopes to do two Commonwealth Games as head coach. Harkins is already planning for the next Games on the Gold Coast, near Brisbane, in April 2018. He dismisses comparisons with Glasgow.
"It will be completely different, and will challenge how people deliver performance. Next summer I want the qualifying standards out.
"Then I want to know how coaches will get their athlete to deliver at that time of year, on one specific day. That's what it's about, and you need to think about that three years out. One year out is too late.
"I'm focused, driven, and want to achieve high standards. I am hyper-critical. I love athletics and have a lot of time for athletes and coaches. I'm happy for people to tinker with the sport and have fun, but they should not expect UK Lottery funding. I am here to help athletes become better. I'm not here as a crutch.
"Does that mean I will be a hard taskmaster? I don't know. People might not like me, but I will be honest."
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