Quote: musson "Interesting reading some of the comments
When you watch the players at the mo the ones who had the bad injuries don’t look like the players of that amazing 2018 team (I believe they still are those players) So it’s understandably they aren’t quite at the races currently
I can remember Bill and Tinni would both hit the line and pump there legs like a steam train, like there lives depended on it and it was near guaranteed to put us on the front foot
A typical kick return would be Tommy first , then Bill, the defence are already all over the shop because of the effort to put those two down, at this point and were maybe in our own 30-40 yard line
Then Dave booms it in and produces an offload shifting the ball to our left away from Bill and Tommy
Then arona comes in links the play to Miller who is buzzing back over the left
The defence don’t know if he’s going to hit Ashurst or Bill or take the line on but something devastating is about to happen
We were so effective from deep, almost unstoppable
It’s understandable after awful injuries particularly to legs that the foundation of what we we’re so good at we can’t do at the moment
I do think we need an organising scrum half like Tim but I also think we need a few of there players back at there best, it may come quickly, who knows
They need to find that amazing confidence in themselves and each other again
The only way to do that is to grind some wins out, we have an excellent team we are very capable'"
Interesting.
Truth is we are all guessing as we don’t true team dynamic. Unlike individual sports there are so many factors that determine how a team performs.
Injuries play a huge party but when you really think about it the challenge to get 20+ young men to function as an effective unit frankly baffles the mind. Here are just a few things that can seriously effect a teams performance apart from injuries.
Personality clashes, most likely with new signings.
Age
Confidence loss
Personal/family issues
Monetary issues
Pressure from agents and other outside issue
None RL related health issues
And there are many more, bad enough in a single sportsman but multiply that by 30 and it looks impossible at times. When to many of the above collide it gets hard to motivate a team or even just get it to function correctly.
At some clubs like Saints there is a level of inertia that helps stave off the worst but at Trinity where failure is more the norm it gets harder.
Being a team manager in sport has to be one of the hardest jobs on earth. It’s hard enough to motivate 30 young men to sell life insurance efficiently, how hard must it be to get 17 of those 30 to perform at their peak ability for 80 minutes for roughly 26 weekend a year.
Being a coach or being a top player, not as easy as it looks.
