How a Bird (should of) helped our consistency !! Part 4

In contrast to the previous articles , i'll be documenting in this article how at times our ideas didnt have the same effect or where when we drifted away from the plan that things really didnt work.

Our first defeat in the league came against our rivals and fellow tenants of Musgrave Park , Sunday's Well. The game had been moved to December to allow the game to be a memorial match for Gerry Harrington , a past member of both clubs who had passed away the previous year.

Because of this and the fact it was december the game had been moved from the usual kick off time of 14:30 to 14:00. Despite myself lenny and timmy always preparing everything to the finest detail all week this time i didnt update the matchday itinerary to reflect the new kick off time. So every time i reviewed the itinerary i was imprinting the image in my head with a 14:30 kick off. On the day we set out everything as normal . I should of read the body language of the players as they did their individual warm up on the pitch , they were looking for direction and looking quiet anxious to be honest. They knew the schedule off by heart and started to worry when we werent following the usual routine.

We went in for our team talk which is usually an hour before kick off , this time it was 30 minutes . It took the maximum 10 minutes and then back onto the pitch. We were very casual until someone asked if we were doing the warm up !!! i looked up at the stadium clock , it was 14:15 !!! . As we have the same warm up for 2nds and 1sts i had set it up hundreds of times before and knew exactly what we could do in the 10 minute time we had , We dropped timings off some drills and completely eliminated some parts . In hindsight i am not sure if it did have an effect but as we had prided ourselves on our consistency in our pre match set up it may have thrown some players off.

It may have interfered with their routine as we now didnt have that time alone to gather your thoughts in the dressing room just before kick off.

We lost that game 20-22. Ironically we were awarded a penalty under the posts in the last few minutes which could of won us the game but foul play after the whistle from one of our players made the referee reverse the decision. Ill discipline cost us the game but ill discipline in preparing may have been a deciding factor..... Fail to prepare prepare to fail

The Cup was next time where i decided to introduce another visual , this time the drinking bird.

We were starting our cup run and we wanted to bring the momentum from the league into our cup run. We had won 5 out 6 league games and were currently on a run of 4 or 5 games on the bounce. It was important to maintain the standards we had set for the team Connect Accuracy & Patience were never more important than in this match.

Prior to the game i was thinking of something which may demonstrate consistency , we had noticed that in the last three games we were taking substantial leads but then taking our foot off the gas and allowing teams back into the game. It was one of the points i added to the whiteboard prior to this game .

I searched online for something that could visually show consistency even when things may be falling down around you , to remain connected , maintain accuracy and despite the pressure keep the patience. The only thing i could think of which showed all three was the drinking bird.

So the plan was to have the drinking bird , drinking in the middle of the dressing room as we conducted our usual whiteboard meeting. As the meeting went on despite me walking around , players moving about etc the bird would keep drinking , each component on the bird working without being distracted by any interference. The motion of all the parts working would demonstrate the connection and the fact that he hit the exact same spot in the glass each time showing the accuracy. The patience would come from the start where the motion of the drinking bird takes a few seconds to get going as the water travels from one part of the bird to the other , this happens intermittently in the infinite drinking process aswell. Basically showing that at times we may have to slow down to get our connections and accuracy back but being patient in that process would be key ....

Unfortunately despite testing it at home , in the dressing room prior to the meeting when the bird needed to drink he didnt . It didnt work and we lost the effect , we simply had a bird sitting there looking at a glass of water :) .

I decided to just ignore it and it move on to the trusted whiteboard instead , there was no point in talking about it as it was the motion i wanted to tap into. this wasnt there so again we had to think on our feet and revert back to basics.

Despite that set back , i genuinely felt it was the most connected the team felt all season , even on the sideline we were calm and collected even after going down 12-0 , we remained patient stayed connected and found our accuracy and went on to score 8 tries and won 54-22

In the last part we will take a look at the feedback from the players and coaches !