Demons president Brett Johnson said the club made the decision last Friday to go in a different coaching direction for next season.

In his first season as Demons coach this year, White Hills won just five of its 16 games in the Heathcote District league, while seven of the side’s 11 losses were by at least 80 points.

“We went over a few things and after sitting down with Carl it was a club decision that we wanted to part ways,” Johnson said on Wednesday.

“Carl was going to go again (next year), but after a few different things from both parties that I won’t go into any details on, that’s how we’ve ended up, so now we’ll move on.

“The trouble with football today is it’s so cut-throat to survive, and the thing is if you’re not making finals your supporters start to drop off and then you can’t afford to pay the bills.

“The main thing is to be competitive, but the hardest thing for us at White Hills is keeping our young players… last year we lost 22 kids and their families who moved base into town (Bendigo league).”

Johnson said the Demons would ideally secure the services of a playing coach to take the reins of the club in 2017.

The Demons – who won their last senior flag in 1988 – haven’t had a playing coach since Matt Sawyer in 2009.

They’ve since had Brent Dyer, Jason Stevens, Shaun Makepeace and Hardingham in non-playing roles at the helm.

“We’d definitely like a playing coach and that’s what we’ll be aiming for, but the tough part about it is a lot of players don’t want to coach these days… they can get their money just running around without that added coaching pressure on them,” Johnson said.

“I’m sure every club would love a playing coach. I believe playing coaches dig in a bit harder and when the ball is there to be won in the last quarter, they can stand up and the rest of the players follow.

“Whereas when you’ve got a coach on the sidelines he can only direct traffic.”

Under the incoming salary cap next year, a playing coach will have 50 per cent of their salary up to $20,000 included in the cap, which for the HDFNL will be between $135,000 and $140,000, with some tweaking still to be done around a potential travel allowance.

Hardingham has been sought for comment.

Meanwhile, Heathcote and Mount Pleasant are also on the search for new coaches for 2017.

The Saints are seeking a replacement for Paul Kennedy, who coached Heathcote for the past two seasons.

And Mount Pleasant is chasing a new coach to take over from Derrick Filo.

Filo coached the Blues for the past three seasons, but is returning to the Bendigo league to coach Castlemaine.

Castlemaine will be the fourth Bendigo league club Filo has coached, having also previously led Kyneton (1995 to 1999), Kangaroo Flat (2000 to 2002) and Eaglehawk (2003 to 2010).