Sportspeople can only control the controllables

FRENCH NOTES:Every bad refereeing decision, every injury, is out of your control. You can only control your reaction

LAST WEEK I was caught up in the French air traffic controllers’ strike. A “wildcat strike” closed all French airports for 48 hours, starting at 6am Monday morning. An hour later I arrived at Dublin airport for my usual short flight to Carcassonne.

I was organised and had planned ahead. Yes, I was feeling a bit smug. I thought I was on top of things and in control. While waiting for the flight to board I did most of my emails and phone calls. Like every Monday morning, the Ryanair Oberleutnant in charge of cabin baggage had checked the weight and size of my bag but I was a mile in front of her. We play our little Monday game. I remain undefeated. Matt 38 Cabin baggage Oberleutnant 0.

Then the unexpected.

For six hours I was kept on that plane at Dublin airport in the ridiculous belief we were in line for a possible take off. Finally with a stiff back and aching arse from those specially designed-to-inflict-lower-back-pain, wonderfully uncomfortable seats, I was informed the flight was cancelled. That translates into Ryanair talk as every man, woman and child has to fight for themselves.

I also made the unfortunate decision to select this particular day to transport my old bike to France, which for months I had left in the Setanta Television car park in Dublin. I had to straighten the handle bar in line with the frame, remove the pedals and deflate the tyres before air transportation.

Kicked off the plane, standing in the baggage area of Dublin airport I made a sorry sight. I was holding the misaligned handlebars of a bike with two flat tyres and no pedals in one hand and an overnight bag in the other.

Worse still I had no flight to get home, no accommodation, and I was supposed to be in a meeting in France at that moment.

I was one very ruffled rooster. In the depths of frustration I was feeling sorry for myself.

At that point, like an old soldier, my training kicked in. I have been touring and travelling with rugby teams for close to 30 years and I learnt the hard way if you are to survive, your attitude determines the situation, the situation cannot determine your attitude.

As my kids would say, at that moment, my “attitude sucked”. Control the controllables. That was a phrase I always repeat to my teams.

Every bus that was late, every rain storm that burst, every bad refereeing decision, every injury, all of these are out of your control. You can only control your reaction to the situation. Standing with a lob-sided grin on my face, I was annoyed I had dropped my discipline and allowed myself to become one of the frustrated masses. The French air traffic controllers’ strike was beyond my control. I could only control my response.

Tom Maher was head coach of the Opals, the Australian Women’s basketball team. Tom was a pioneer coach. He himself was an international basketballer and had married a member of the Opals.

Australian women’s basketball was well off the international standard. Frustrated at this, Tom took over.

When I was just starting in coaching I met him several times. He told the story of the Opals making the medal rounds of the Olympics for the first time at Atlanta. The Opals and their opponents were to be collected at the same point of the Olympic village for the journey to the stadium.

The bus was late.

Tom described looking at the opposition team and seeing the manager yelling and the athletes stressed and arguing. He then turned to his own team and saw them either reading, listening to music or relaxing by lying on their bags. The late bus was out of their control.

He turned his back on his team and broke into a large smile and thought “Today, we’ve got them”.

Australia won the bronze medal and four years later the silver in Sydney and again in Athens in 2004.

When I bump into my former players they often say: “Are you still telling that old story about the women basketballers?” They usually laugh and have some fun at my expense. After a moment most of them will then tell me a story when in a stressful moment their life they have remembered to control the controllables to their advantage.

Back at Dublin airport and I had made the necessary calls and reclaimed control of my situation.

To make a long story short, my path back home to Narbonne took me three days, as there were no alternative flights. Oh, what a glamorous life being part of professional sport and the media.

So I did what I have not done since 1999. I spent a day doing the tourist sights of Dublin. I had no control over the lack of flights to France. I had control over my reaction to it. I made a determined effort to enjoy the forced stay in Dublin and to not worry that I should be some place else doing something else.

That worry would be highly unproductive.

You know what? The Guinness Storehouse is brilliant. Without the strike I would never have seen it.