The AFL is pledging to soothe concerns of a coaching cohort raging with discontent about assistant coach salaries.
Premiership coaches Luke Beveridge and Simon Goodwin have joined Essendon's Brad Scott, a former AFL general manager of football, in detailing disenchantment among coaches.
"It has never been more challenging," Beveridge told reporters on Thursday.
"The argument is well, if everything else is going up, why aren't the coaches' salaries going up? I think that's the argument."
Melbourne coach Simon Goodwin said the current controversy has weighed since COVID cuts to football department spending.
"It has been a talking point for three or four years since COVID, clearly," Goodwin told reporters.
"The game has grown at a significant rate in the last four years and the money has just not been flowing back into the football."
Bombers boss Scott was sought out by AFL football operations chief Laura Kane after he called the coaching fraternity "disenfranchised".
"In my time in footy I've never seen a coaching group more frustrated with a whole range of things," he said.
The AFL's Kane was concerned at the grievances from coaches.
"I don't want them, them as a collective, our coaching panels and staff, to feel that way," Kane told reporters in the Barossa Valley on Thursday.
"I don't want them to feel like we as a code, we as a football department, don't value what they do.
"My team will work really hard to make sure that perception changes.
"And if it's a reality, it's one I don't want anyone to feel like that."
Scott and long-serving Port Adelaide coach Ken Hinkley are among other head coaches appealing for a greater appreciation of the demands on assistants.
"I talk to the senior coaches all of the time ... about what are the challenges that we're facing as an industry," Kane said.
"I don't want anyone to feel like that, and if that's the reality, we have to change that as a collective and we will work really hard to do that.
"Now the focus is on how do we solve for it?"
Kane expects the topic will be raised at a meeting of club chief executives in Adelaide during Gather Round.
"The coaches and players are two of our most important stakeholders, if you'd like to call them that, in our game," she said.
"It's a really tough job, it's a tough game sometimes, but it's also magical."
Meanwhile, Kane said the AFL would continue to selectively explain contentious decisions in close games.
Adelaide officials said their concession of an umpiring error against the Crows in a one-point loss to Gold Coast was of no use to the club.
"We understand why the club at least want to know how that will be officiated moving forward, if nothing else," Kane said.
"But also for our fans, we feel like we want to make sure they know that we know that it could be done differently or better next time."
