When I was coaching the Waratahs I asked the former Olympic and World Championship silver medal-winning rower Rob Walker to talk to the players about his journey. The wisdom that he shared with the team that day has stayed with me for a quarter of a century.
I had coached Rob in the Western Suburbs Rugby Club under-20s team in Sydney. He was a talented flanker but he was never going to be a Wallaby.
At the end of that season, Rob told me he was leaving rugby to follow his dream to row at an Olympic Games. He had been a good schoolboy rower and he agreed with me that the gold jersey of the Wallabies was beyond him but he believed he could become an Olympian.
The cynic in me thought: “That is the last time I will ever see that kid”.
Three years later when Rob won a silver medal at the World Rowing Championships I was delighted at being so very wrong. Rob went on to fulfil his dream and raced in the Australian Eight at the Atlanta Olympics. The sacrifices, unimaginable volume of gut-busting hard work and the financial hardships he underwent in chasing his dream were enormous.
From Wests under-20s to the Olympic games was a journey that did not happen by accident.
Rob described to the Waratahs players the sensation of sitting in the rowing shell with his oar in the water, poised for the starter’s gun at the beginning of an Olympic final. In that unimaginable situation, with a life’s work on the line, he said that there was a moment of brutal self honesty when the toughest of internal questions were asked.
“Have you done the work? Have you done the hundreds of kilometres in the boat required for victory? Have you honed your technique and your personal form to perfection? Have you followed your diet plan, your recovery strategies and tolerated enough pain inflicted on you by your conditioning protocols? Have you analysed your opponent and yourself so that you have created a tactical race plan capable of success against the best on the planet?
“In those final few seconds if you answer ‘yes’ with total honesty to all those questions, then you have a chance to medal. There are no guarantees, but now you have a chance. If the answer is, ‘No, I cut a few corners’ you are beaten before the race has started.”
Skin, sweat and blood
Success in elite sport is all about those with skin, sweat and blood in the contest.
One of rugby’s greatest attributes is that it was designed by educators as a tool to empower individuals to learn how to accept full responsibility for their on-field actions. A rugby team’s performance, positive or negative, is the sum total of all the players’ actions. The credit for a great swerving run that evades defenders belongs to the ball carrier and the plaudits for an effective tackle rightly go to the individual defender.
Just as a missed tackle, a simple knock-on or crooked lineout throw must also be owned by the individual.
Once a player crosses the white line, he or she must own their play. The ball is the symbol of power and whoever holds the ball has the power. Those who utilise that power or want to reclaim it must do so by their actions.
Coaches do not score tries, miss tackles, kick drop goals, or for that matter, make any of the thousands of individual decisions that make up the play across a match.
Quality coaches will collaborate with their players to create a process that produces the agreed tactics that form a game plan. It is the players’ responsibility to action that plan which should power all their decision making.
In round one of the Heineken Champions Cup the Munster, Leinster, Ulster and Connacht players implemented their plans with aggression, enthusiasm and ruthless determination.
The best support the national team players can provide for their sport and their advocates who are fighting for change is to perform on the field.
Players should bask in the glow of their good actions and suck up the bad, but never look to make excuses. If games are won or lost in the dying moments the players must own “both triumph and disaster”.
Women’s rugby in Ireland is in turbulent times. The demand for change is swirling around Irish women players. There is no doubt that great reform is required right across the women’s game. From the grassroots to the elite end of the game, resources, restructuring and planning must occur.
However, for the national players, it is essential they mentally and physically separate themselves from the distractions regarding reports, governance and funding. Their individual responsibility to the game is to prepare with obsessiveness on the process of winning.
I have been involved in many battles over finances with governing bodies. To quote Brother Joseph McMahon “money is the root of all evil and base of all progress”. Squeezing money out of the bean counters is essential to the development of any sporting programme but it is tough going.
Negotiate
Your position to negotiate is far more powerful when your team is playing well.
The best support the national team players can provide for their sport and their advocates who are fighting for change is to perform on the field.
However, the team must align themselves with the reality that a lack of funding does not permit players to miss tackles or make poor tactical decisions.
The off-field issues are not an excuse to let games slip away as we saw in the recent World Cup qualifiers against Spain and Scotland.
When you are fighting to fulfil your sporting life’s dream of going to a World Cup in New Zealand and you are leading with only seconds left and you fail, administrators are not to blame.
The results must sit firmly on the shoulders of the players. They must not only carry that burden, but they must also own it. As bitter and painful as that is, in the long term the team will benefit from the growth that owning both failure and success brings.
In their preparations for the upcoming Six Nations, the players need to separate themselves from the politics that the IRFU reports will bring. There is a real danger that the team's performance will be caught up in the political crossfire and compromise their preparations.
Women’s rugby in Ireland needs advocates to negotiate on the players’ behalf for more resources and to create a viable plan moving forward for the growth and improvement of the sport. However, the players’ sacred mission is to follow Rob’s example and embrace the challenge of obsessive preparation to win.
Leaders within the women’s national team must seize control of their environment and ensure that rugby and not politics is the only topic on the minds and in the hearts of the players.
