By MARK CASHMAN

Joe Barakat’s plan for the next period of time was for him to ”put his feet up” and reconnect with the family after returning home from 11 years on the international coaching merry-go-round earlier this year.

The realities of earning a quid, a dollar or a yen is that the work is either offshore or interstate and that’s what the new West Harbour head coach has done for more than a decade.

Gigs in Japan at the NTT Shinings Arcs and Toshiba Brave Lupus, as well as a stint at European powerhouse Ulster on top of time at the Waratahs and more recently the Western Force and the Melbourne Rebels have meant that home time has been minimal.

“As exciting as all that stuff was it was time to come home,” Barakat told Rugby News.

“Originally the plan was to put the feet up, play some golf and just enjoy being at home and being there for the family.

“Taking on something like this I must admit was a fair way down the to-do list, but the more I looked at it the more the challenge of turning around things at a club where I have had some great times was just too hard to resist.

“Then there’s the fact that we were looking at such a large footprint of western Sydney being without a Premier Rugby club and it’s something that I couldn’t walk away from.”

The 58-year-old officially starts the journey at Concord Oval on October 1 and he can see some real gems amongst the rocks on his likely playing roster as well as plenty of work ons.

He coached the Pirates from 2001 through until 2005 and also had a stint in the job in 2015 before heading off to Ireland for the role at Ulster so it’s a place he’s not unfamiliar with.

His experience in the Shute Shield goes even deep than that playing out his career at St George as a very handy backrower and then having the honour of being the first club captain at Southern Districts.

Barakat has already pulled together a handy first grade coaching group with the extremely accomplished Stephen James coming on board along with last year’s Shute Shield mentor Mark Gudmunson and Campese Mafu.

The continuity that he will get with Gudmunson in the senior coaching group is a good move and will enable him to channel the coaching messages that he needs to pass on with some nuance.

Barakat sees two areas where the Pirates can lift their game and go from being a side that has at times made up the numbers to one that is a serious finals contender.

“The stats tell a story of where Wests are at this stage,” Barakat added.

“This year we averaged 3.3 tries a game but at the same time let in 5.5 tries, so that tells me that while there is scoring capacity we lacked the intent to work when we didn’t have the ball.

“One of my main jobs will be to develop a level of excitement to work hard when we don’t have the ball.

“The lineout is another area where we need to do a lot of work.

“Our success rate there was around 78 percent and for a team to be winning in a competition like the Shute Shield that is nowhere near where it needs to be.

“Our kicking game is another area where we need to be a lot smarter about the the way we manage games.”

“Look at that game against Easts where we led 18-0 at the break and then ran into a pretty stiff breeze in the second half.

“A good kicking game into that breeze and some intent in defence would have made a difference to the result in that game.”

A lot of the parts of the puzzle are there at West Harbour – including the completion of the impressive revamp of Concord Oval and players of the ilk of Alofa Alofa, Faiva Faiva and Jordan Sharpe – now it’s up to a not your average Joe to put it together.

IMAGE: SUPPLIED