It Was All Over Before It Started

Yesterday the Richmond Tigers pulled it off. They beat the highly fancied Adelaide Crows to take out the 2017 Australian Football League Premiership Cup. It was a wonderful game and an incredible outcome.

The long-suffering Richmond Fans had waited 37 years for this and the joy that spilled over, right across Melbourne was truly as amazing as it was wonderful.

After the game, I listened to the debriefs from the experts, read several articles this morning and even tuned in to TV for a while this morning for the post mortem. The only Richmond player to appear on the TV this morning was Bachar Houli, who played a magnificent game. His interview was gracious, honest and perhaps the most real I have heard for years. He just missed out on being awarded the Norm Smith Medal for best afield.

I thought that was why he was invited onto the show, but I was to be enlightened a little later this morning by an old friend. “He was the designated TV representative because he is a devout Muslim and does not drink alcohol. All the rest were too drunk”. Well, all power to them if that is how they wish to celebrate.

But something happened yesterday and it was as subtle as it was obvious, if that makes sense.

I was sitting at a friend’s place with a group of eight adults to watch the game. The players were complete with their warm ups and lined up for the amazing Dami Im to sing the National Anthem. Nice touch by the AFL with all the troubles coming out of North Korea, Dami is the Korean girl who stole our hearts by winning Australia’s Got Talent a few years ago.

As she sang our National song, the cameras panned along the Richmond Line up. Some players and others didn’t. But all of them were completely grounded and calm.

To back up a little, for years now I have been delivering Avatar? Courses and along the way continuing to develop my own abilities to feel people, and to perceive beyond what the eye can see. It is a powerful skill that we all have but have lost.

So here I was getting this profound sense of the Richmond Boys, ready to go out and do the job, follow their plan, take it a moment at a time.

Then the camera panned across the Adelaide lads and it was a completely opposite field. Most of them were in their heads, some pulling pretend fierce faces at their Richmond opponents. But they were nowhere near the grounded and stable group standing opposite them.

I realised in that moment that what the Richmond team had done over the previous two weeks had intimidated them. The high-pressure style of play crushes the free flow of most opposition teams. The Adelaide players were already in some sort of response to Richmond instead of being fully in their own game strategy, ready to execute their own game plan.

So I turned to everyone present and said, “Did you pick up on that? Richmond have got this won already and I reckon they are going to smash them”.

And as the game unfolded the Adelaide teams’ worst fears came to pass. The Tigers cut off their oxygen and suffocated their game style. They succumbed to discouragement before the half time siren and the second half it was all Richmond.

Of course, this is not new. We all fall prey t this sort of things sometimes when we get overawed by an event, person or situation and forget who we are and what we actually do well. It’s a good lesson for me.

As an old Management Guru once said to me, “Plan your work. Then, work your plan”. I suppose we can watch the storm, or steer the boat.

And you know, in all of this, I do hope the Tigers fans remember the profound work done by Brett Deledio when he was at the club to change the culture and steer his team toward a way of being that would bring success.

Go Tigers.

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