COACHING across all sports, worldwide, is facing a crisis.

It's a paradox that despite more investment than ever before in the hunt for medals, the coach's role remains under-valued and poorly appreciated.

They are being marginalised by new appointees such as high performance directors, performance science managers, experts in a range of fields including strength and conditioning, nutrition, biomechanics, medicine and physiotherapy. In some countries, government-appointed performance-funding bodies will communicate directly only with the high performance director or equivalent. Not the head coach.

In addition, the last 30 years or so have seen the proliferation of sports administrators, managers and agents who have become an acknowledged part of "performance related support" in the IOC concept of "entourage". These are all highly respected and valuable resources and have transformed the climate of support for both performer and coach alike. They had long prayed for such resources, but coaches may now feel they should have been careful what they prayed for.

Then there's the Internet. Friend or fiend? A growing US phenomenon is the on-line coaching qualification - the virtual coach.

"This trivialises not only the process of coach-development but of coaching itself." That was part of the message put yesterday to the most influential figures in world athletics by Frank Dick, Great Britain's former head track and field coach and president of the European Athletics Coaches Association.

Speaking to the coaches' commission of the world body, the International Association of Athletics Federations, in Monaco, he made some observations which may be uncomfortable and disturbing for those who hold to the traditional view of coaching. Dick did not have a gun at the head of the commission, but if they are not convinced, or lack the will to acknowledge his observations, then coaching as we have known it seems condemned to a new order. Not for the better, in my view.

"I simply put forward a position that I think applies to coaches in all sport," said Dick. "Because I'm on the IAAF coaches commission [highest level for the sport] I felt it reasonable to draw attention to the changes out there. The commission can judge whether or not coaches are adapting to those."

On the virtual coaches beginning to emerge in the US (and therefor in a town near us in t he near future), he said: "The growth of on-line coach education and certification courses have created the impression that our development as coaches can be fast tracked." He is fiercely critical of the suggestion that "proof of course completion" is the same as "licence to practice".

Always master of the apropos quote he cited Albert Einstein: "I fear the day that technology will surpass our human interaction. The world will have a generation of idiots."

It does not take an Einstein to draw Dick's conclusion: "Coach education and the licence to practice require review, revision, and strong regulation."

I am aware, as is Dick, of specialists within Britain's elite performance system who have tried to get their involvement in successful Olympic athletes' performance programmes on their cv. Their world is results driven, and it helps keep their job secure. This is sometimes done without even the courtesy of informing a competitor's coach.

"For a number of good reasons, high performance strategies have introduced a centralised system which is staffed by appointed expertise in coaching/performance related support," observed Dick. "Because such appointments are often result-dependent, aggressive talent-selection and recruitment has created tension between those who coach in the centre, and those who locally develop performers in the first place. In the short term this has an advantage, but is damaging in the long term. A better model is a central high performance hub with de-centralised satellites servicing and managing coach/performer partnerships locally."

Coaching: art or science? It's an old debate, but Dick's view is clear. "The art of coaching we learn through experience. When we start off, we creatures of precedent. Now it is founded more and more on scientific principle. I don't argue against that, but how do we pass on the skills, the art of making judgment calls? Not many coaching programmes are equipped to answer that.

Another quote. Vernon Law: "Experience is the cruelest of teachers, because she gives you the test first and the lesson second."

Dick says sport needs to find the right level of coach mentorship to teach how to learn from experience. The former East Germany had no coaches under the age of 40 who looked after national level athletes. Not because they were into drugs, but because they valued experience.

Dick suggests the highly academically qualified figures in the new performance hierarchy: "are often perceived to be more qualified in their field than coaches are in theirs. For many coaches this inhibits dialogue. Unfortunately such perception can become reality to the coach and this must be managed better through a sense of mutual respect and status."

Since coaches need input from performance-related support experts to inform decision making, he suggests "data synthesis" managers be appointed, to translate expert input to usable form. "The level of data has become very complex and consequently beyond what is reasonable for the coach to understand.

"Coaches have always said they don't feel appreciated," adds Dick, a former Scottish national coach who went on to preside over a golden ago of British athletics during four Olympics. "But there is a rapid growth in the notion that if you can't prove something scientifically, don't do it. Of course the science is important, but the fact is that most of us have to make a lot of judgement calls in the course of our lives, and a lot of these are where you may not have very clear evidence. And that's kind of the art of coaching."

And coaches? That's simple - William James: "The deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated."