The Tom Barkhuizen interview: Utter honesty as ex-Preston North End man reflects on 5.5 years at Deepdale
The former PNE man speaks to the Lancashire Post to look back on his five-and-a-half year career at Deepdale
When Tom Barkhuizen agreed to join Preston North End in November 2016 the graft and gamble all felt worth it. He inflicted the ultimate test upon himself when dropping down to League Two, with Morecambe, after being let by a fellow Lancashire club who play in tangerine. After 18 months with the Shrimps, the call from Deepdale came; he would go on to score 38 goals and assist 21 in 209 appearances for PNE. Now, three-years after his departure in disappointing circumstances, he is ready to look back.
“I’d not had a good time at Blackpool in that last year,” said Barkhuizen. “I think I had played 25 Championship games and was earning £300 a week... I was probably the lowest paid Championship player ever; I was not 18 at this point, I was 21ish. I had to start making a living. It was kind of just, if I go to League Two and play for the team that has got the least money and is the smallest... if I can’t make it there then I may as well give up - I am young enough to go and do something else.
“Within about 14 months, Preston had come in during the summer. I was a little bit frustrated that the deal didn’t happen at that point but then financial difficulties at Morecambe enabled me to sign for Preston. My decision to go and do that was justified. I was grateful that Preston saw something in me at that point; I think Thommo had a big part in that. I was quite emotional at the time. When you go from having very little... I obviously didn’t sign on big money, but you think that if you are going to make a life for yourself, then you need to work harder to get more and more. Thankfully, it started pretty well for me and for the most part, I think I had a good career at Preston.”
Barkhuizen spent five months playing under Simon Grayson and made a fast start to his Lilywhites career. It took him six games to score goal one, but North End as a team were flying results wise. And after grabbing his first, away to Fulham, the number 29 - whose lightning speed naturally excited spectators - netted six in seven.
He lit up the Deepdale turf at home to Reading, scored at Blackburn Rovers and equalised in the last seconds at Derby County. He headed into the summer feeling good, only to be plunged into uncertainty after Grayson’s sudden exit to Sunderland. Any of that worry was gone for good, mind, when the new guy walked through the door.
“That was quite a strange moment,” said Barkhuizen. “Preston had offered me a new deal that summer. It was very much a club where you got rewarded for doing well. I’d agreed the contract for two months and it was going to all be signed when I got back, but then Simon leaves the first day and you think everything might get scuppered. Thankfully, everything got sorted, Alex came in, and I just loved him. I still think he’s a brilliant person now; we’ve kept in touch. He was just unbelievable... I loved him.
“His intensity, his attention to detail... I think, the best manager Preston have had for quite a while. There is a reason that, at that point, I would’ve played through anything to play for him. I think that is why I played so much; he knew I would give everything for him. I know he has said that Preston team is his favourite team and I think it is because we were all just buying into what he wanted. We were all young; we could do what he wanted because we could run all day.
“Having spoken to a few of the boys from that time, it’s so disappointing we didn’t make the play-offs in the first year. We were so confident that if we’d made it, we think we’d have gone up. We didn’t fear anyone, teams hated playing against us and when they turned up at Deepdale, the crowd were on our back because they loved the way we were playing. Unfortunately, my last team were the ones that nicked it and beat us one-nil to get in there. That is probably one of the things I will always look back on... what if we had not lost that game, and snuck in there?
“Even if you don’t go up, I think to make the play-offs is such a big achievement. I would’ve just loved to have been part of a squad that went up and Alex would’ve been the best manager to do it under. It was a great time and one I probably didn’t appreciate at the time, because you didn’t really have time to sit-back... it’s only when you come out of it, and look back on it, that you realise how special it was. Unfortunately, it wasn’t as special as it could’ve been.”
Barkhuizen, in his 90 minute chat, regularly references the hope that was around North End for so much of Neil’s reign. He was shocked and thrilled when the Scot opted to stay on board, amid approaches from West Brom and Stoke City, while going top of the league at Charlton is a memory he will always cherish.
Having spent so much of that 2019/20 campaign in the top six, though, being thrust into behind-closed-doors football post-Covid is viewed as the beginning of the end. The winger references recruitment, contract stand-offs, signing Scott Sinclair, the treatment of David Nugent, losing Tom Clarke in the dressing room and fans in the stadium, over the course of his utterly engaging interview. The overall impact was, in his words, energy being ‘sapped out of everyone’ and ‘cracks’ starting to form.
“I hope (the fans) look back and don’t just pigeonhole it as the last year, because none of us played well,” he continued. “I think Alex has admitted he wasn’t at the levels he had been at, and I hope we don’t get remembered for that because it’s easy to forget the years before. I think he could probably see that the players were at the end of the cycle and, this is not being disrespectful, but we’d probably replaced players with players who were not at the same level. Even that season, his main, trusted players were not playing well. When Frankie got named manager (until the end of the season) I think the players were a bit like ‘Right, what’s going on?’.
“I never understand when a manager gets sacked, how his number two can take the job, because surely he is part of that team? Monday to Friday, (Neil) was out doing everything. We knew that and the staff knew that. I was out for a walk when the news broke that Alex had been sacked and Frankie had been hired as interim, and it didn’t say for one or two games. We had eight games, were on horrific run and had a lot of players who were not playing well. I remember ringing round, phoning four or five of the senior lads and being like: ‘We need to pull our fingers out here... because we have a real possibility, in my opinion, of doing down’.
“The senior lads agreed that it was on us, whereas Alex had shouldered so much of our responsibility by being so much of a figurehead. Obviously, we stayed up which, fair play, he has come in and kept us up. You get to the summer, wonder who is coming in and, in my opinion, it was tough to accept. At that point it was a bit like: ‘I am not sure’ - and that summer was probably the first one where I wanted to leave. From a selfish point of view, the direction the club was going in, I didn’t know where we were going to go. I had seen a lot of my friends leave, a manager who I idolised leave and his number two get the job. We spoke about fans and players having hope, and I remember thinking that summer that time was maybe up.”
The 2021/22 season would be Barkhuizen’s last at North End, and the summer prior to it saw him experience some of the most challenging moments in his life. Two of his closest friends - who he holds extremely close - were dealt terrible news, and Barkhuizen then woke up one morning to find that his beloved dog, out of nowhere, had passed away at a young age. The mental struggles were serious and football, by his own admission, was difficult to engage with properly. McAvoy was replaced by Ryan Lowe in December 2021 and those final six months - which included him training alone before the last match of the season - were not enjoyable one bit.
“To be honest, I didn’t like the way he treated me,” said Barkhuizen. “I think he tried to make an example of me, as a senior player out of contract. I can except when someone is honest with you, (not) when things are getting said in front of other players that are completely not true - like my agent is on the phone, to him, asking for a new contract, when my agent hasn’t even got your phone number. That was in January, at Swansea, and that side of life isn’t for me.
“It was a bit like trying to prove to everyone you are the big, powerful man in charge. When I signed for Derby it was for less money than Preston offered me in the (previous) summer, but would I change that? No, because if I’d played for three years under that kind of management, it wouldn’t have been good for me. My end of season meeting lasted 40 seconds; I said three words. To get disrespected by the end was difficult. I remember walking around the pitch on my last day being quite bitter, and I probably was quite bitter for a while. It probably hurt me more than I would like to admit.”
“That meant a lot to me.”
“When I went back and was on the (Derby) bench this season, I was walking back in and there were quite a lot of claps,” said Barkhuizen. “I felt quite awkward because I didn’t know if it was for me. It was only really as I got to the tunnel that I turned and clapped to the fans; I hoped it hadn’t come across as not appreciative. I then went out to warm-up at one point and got a really good reception. It meant a lot to me. I’d had a bit of an up-and-down relationship with the fans; it meant so much that I got a really good reception. I probably let go of a lot of resentment in that moment, and made peace with it.”
Listen: The Tom Barkhuizen interview