Readers who know me personally will know that I am a keen follower of Australian Rules football and the Collingwood Football Club in particular. Tonight my team plays one of our ‘traditional rivals’, Richmond. Unfortunately for the spectacle it’s likely to be a one-sided affair as Collingwood are reigning premiers and Richmond are, well, let’s just say they are in a ‘rebuilding phase’.
Richmond are one of the youngest and most inexperienced teams in the competition. In fact they went into the second round a couple of weeks back with less total experience (in terms of games played by the team members) than the Gold Coast Suns, who are in their first year.
Which is why I’m so baffled by this, a quote from Richmond coach Damien Hardwick in this morning’s The Age newspaper:
”I think [talk of a one-sided contest tonight] is wrong. The scoreboard is an end point. We’ve just got to worry about the process of how we play offensively and defensively. Stoppages are going to be very important this week. We matched Hawthorn in that last week, the inside-50 count was OK, we have to clean up our ball use inside 50…”
If this is the way he is talking to his players (and there’s no reason to think that he isn’t) then no wonder his young team have been looking confused and disoriented out there so far this year.
Once upon a time winning football matches was all about kicking a higher score than the opposition. Now, winning is what happens if you ‘get the process right’ – something akin to turning out quality plastic buckets on a production line.
Modern footballers aren’t dumb; they are often quite well educated young men. But Richmond’s young up-and-comers didn’t catch the attention of recruiters by following a process. They got there by hard training combined with a good measure of natural talent, of flair for the game … and of understanding that footy is basically about getting hold of the ball and kicking goals.
I know the trend in all sports is to break them up into parts, to focus on structure and process and to analyse everything to the most minute degree. But I can’t help wonder if, sometimes, young footballers wouldn’t be better off if the management-speak were left aside and they were allowed to just play the game. If that happened, perhaps Richmond fans could look to tonight’s game with some real hope.
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