Michael Duff interview: Insight and background into the character of the new Barnsley FC manager

Duff junior arrives at a club in need of help. Just as he did at former club Cheltenham Town, who initially endured a rough start when he took over in 2018.

Duff called in two Royal Marines Commandos for assistance regarding battle tips and endurance training and it worked a treat in transforming his side’s fortunes. One, in Afghanistan veteran Ben Williams, went onto work for the club for two years.

Might he enlist some extra help given Barnsley’s fraught time last season? Well, not just yet..

Duff told The Yorkshire Post: “I am from a military background. I couldn’t win a game at the start at Cheltenham and basically these two guys who were ex-marines came in and helped give the players a common goal.

“They used language similar to mine from a different environment. As a by-product, we went on a good run and did really well.

“They said ‘Right, we will take you out for a day in the Forest of Dean’ and weirdly, the players really liked it.”

Duff’s journey has come full circle back to the Broad Acres. Born in Belfast, he spent many of his formative years in North Yorkshire, while also moving around the country due to his father’s work.

He went to Bedale High School, among others and played for Bedale AFC and Bedale Juniors, as did former Leeds United and Huddersfield Town manager Simon Grayson.

His accent may not show too many signs of his Yorkshire upbringing, but his values do.

On returning to Yorkshire, he continued: “I am Phileas Fogg. I have lived everywhere. It has come full circle.

“You talk about resilience. I think I went to seven or eight primary schools. I bounced around and you just have to get on with it and you cannot feel sorry for yourself.

“I’d made all my mates and then I went to the next primary school. What are you doing to do? Crack on and make some new friends.

“That is the way I have been brought up. I went to school in Yorkshire from ten to 16 and I know what a Yorkshireman looks like. I played for Yorkshire at cricket and football and ran for Yorkshire.

“I know what a Yorkshire person is like. I had a mate who I used to go to school with who texted me this week and I’d not heard from him for 10 years and him and his son are season ticket holders at Barnsley. So I apologised to him in advance.”

Respect, hard work, humility and enthusiasm are core values that guide Duff’s life. He also does not like people with egos. Or big-heads as people say in this particular county.

In his time at Cheltenham, he occasionally asked his players, who trained near to a village primary school, to listen to sound of schoolchildren playing to provide a sense of perspective and to keep them grounded during the supposed daily grind of training.

His attitude and utterances at his opening press conference could not have helped but chime with Barnsley folk and the town he is now representing at the helm of its football club.

The important thing being the words were not said for effect, but because he meant them.

The Barnsley players he has inherited lost their way badly last season.

It was a team in the loosest sense of the word and there was no culture either.

As someone who was part of strong and winning dressing rooms in his playing days at Cheltenham and Burnley, doing something about that will be his first port of call.

He has quickly referenced the need to find out who wants to be at the club and who doesn’t in the early part of pre-season, which starts on Monday.

Duff, who has previously spent 27 years of his life in football at just two professional clubs, said: “It is just basic habits.

“Be humble, work hard. Have a little bit of respect for someone and have a bit of enthusiasm. They are the four pillars I work on.

“That is not me trying to win fans over. It is alright being hard-working, but if you are dour around the place all the time... Don’t be moody, if you are not feeling great, you don’t have to tell the world.

“I am pretty simple in the way that I work. It is not a bad job. Come into work with a smile on your face, run around like the eight or nine-year-old kids are at school who want to all play for Barnsley.

“That’s what I talk about when I talk about no egos. And then go home. It is not too much to ask.

“You are not working six until six like some people are. It is the best job in the world, don’t let that pass you by.

“Because it does and I have seen it and these people who did years ago and they look back and go ‘I have wasted the best years of my life.’

“It is trying to get them to realise that it is not a bad gig.”

Duff may be from military stock, yet he is no sergeant-major type figure either. He is modest and self-effacing enough to accept that he is still learning as a manager and you are never old enough to learn a few things.

His desire is not to bawl out his players, more find out about them, while seeing who he can trust and rely on – and can’t.

He added: “I am a young manager and cannot know it all – it’s impossible to anyway. I am quite happy to ask for advice and in no way do I think it is ‘my way or the highway’. I am open to learning, just the same as the players should be.

“Steve Cotterill was a big influence on me in the early part of my career. In terms of my managerial career and the way we play, that is mine. But you are always going to learn off people who have done it. John Ward is a mentor of mine at the LMA (League Managers Association). There’s lots of good people who always want to help you.”

Among his characteristics, Duff also professes to being superstitious and famously wore a gilet during Cheltenham’s run to promotion and the League Two title in 2020-21.

He recalled: “That won us the league and then it got parked up. But I am very, very superstitious so you may see me doing weird steps and twitches and things. But I am only superstitious if we are being successful.

“So hopefully next season, I will have some random quirky things.”

Duff may be zany in that regard. More importantly, he might just be the leader that Barnsley have lacked since the departure of Valerien Ismael.