McDermott himself nails the issue in this quote from his interview in The Guardian the other day"There is a bit of your average northern bloke [who] wants to be regarded as one of the lads. Some of the things of how we view life and get brought up, I don't think it lends itself to some of the philosophies and the nuts and bolts of coaching, especially when it gets tough.
"Sometimes you have got to look at things really positively – without putting your head in the sand, you have got to manage the negatives and keep putting a positive slant on it, keep trying to find answers. It is not how I was brought up and it is not how a lot of my mates were brought up. Some parts of coaching, you have to adapt who you are – not what you learned or how you speak, but who you are – to get the right messages across."[/i
My take on it is that RL is still a profoundly working class sport and at comprehensive school we learn deference, not leadership. Our sense of 'us' is strong, but individualism and even self-confidence can be lacking. Now, we're not stupid, so we often come to distrust authority and mock it - but that means we're reluctant to become part of it.
The same could be said of football - no English manager has ever won the EPL.
Now you might point out that RL is a working class sport in Australia (or that football is in Scotland and it still produced Busby, Shankly, Ferguson, George Graham, Dalglish). But there is a deeply embedded cultural difference, IMO. During the first world war the Australians, with their strong sense of 'mateship', were amazed at the gap between the English soldiers and officers, while the 'democratic' atmosphere within the Scottish regiments was much more familiar. Some of that taught deference seeps in to our subconscious and it is a hell of a job to shift it. It took me until my mid-20s. Even now, I crave the acceptance of my peers, so I'll end this post with a couple of jokes.
Northern, working class England does occasionally produce successful coaches/managers - Clough, Noble, now McDermott - so it can be overcome. We just have to name all our sons Brian.
Thanks for reading - because of my upbringing, I'm too tight to pay for a real psychotherapist.
