Part 5 - Making Connections , Being Accurate and having patience

I heard recently on Eddie Jones's Podcast called EDDIE with David Pembroke that 82% of peoples behaviours is dictated by the environment that they are in.

I have also recently had discussion about "creating cultures " with players and people from work. How is a culture defined ? Can you change a culture by dictating people or employees to follow what you percieve to be a " good culture" . Is the creation of a culture a natural process ?

I believe that a team / works culture is formed based on the behaviours of those involved , those behaviours will create an environment and from that environment you will eventually be able to determine what your culture is. It should be led by those exposed to that environment on a daily basis , they should be assisted by as Damian Hughes calls them cultural architects. Leaders of behaviours , outliers , example setters , standard bearers.

I have always been drawn to teams where the makeup isnt easy , where player skill base is different , where experience meets inexperience and where competence has to be shared to succeed. In Muscat we had ex & current international players , 7's players , AIL & Nat 1 players from Ireland and the UK. Kiwi's , Fijians , South Africans , rich in culture and skillset. Locals and South East Asians brand new to rugby found via recruitment drives all playing together for one common goal. We were the #TheGreenMachine tasked with shaking off the stigma of being a social side , showing the rest of the gulf we could play proper competitive rugby. In my time as head coach we achieved a very respectable 2nd place in the Gulf Conference. We had created our own culture. What was it ... The culture was Connection based and in particular around the acknowledgment that to achieve what we set out to do we would all have to work hard , commit & understand that to take a step further in our personal goals we had to move forward as a team , by moving forward as a collective we moved forward as individuals. No one was better than anyone else , we all worked off the same message. Ironic considering there were 17 different nationalities in that squad.

Last years goal with the Dolphin 2nds was development , this year was progress. The challenge here is that the player pool changes , we had our first influx of under 18.5's , new players and a new captain. Players who played a huge part of the previous years development had left. We had new coaches . Alot of potential adversity , but as outlined in part 1 we wanted players to connect tactically , be accurate in their execution of the game plan and what they were training hard for & to be patient in games and trust the process regardless of their skillset or experience.

We got that but we also got more.

Connect

We not only connected tactically but also as people , this new team shared tears of joy and pain , anger and frustration , overwhelming emotion along with a huge sense of success . I as a coach connected with my coaches , building life long friendships with two people i barely knew 9 months ago. We asked them to connect on the field but we created an environment where they connected off it also.

Accuracy

We pushed the players to trust their skillsets and back themselves but also be accurate in what they were executing , the 2nds team is after all a learning ground for these players to progress and make the first team. They didnt just do that they did more and we scored some of the most amazing 1st phase tries i have seen all season. I genuinely still dont think the players realise that wasnt us , that was all them. We just facilitated it.

Patience

We asked them each game to be patient , remember one wave doesnt bring down the house , keep chipping away even when all around you seem like its falling apart be patient. The whole wave concept is around patience and the wearing away of teams by accurately executing our gameplan .Twice we turned games around in the last minute , once against Midleton as highlighted in Part 2 and another time away to Bruff where we left our BP win to the very last play of the game. They will learn more from those games than any other this year. But off the pitch i have seen such maturity and patience from alot of the players , they are patient with us regarding fixtures , training and general logisitics , when they were let down by other players not turning up they battled on and stayed focused , Patience is the capacity to accept or tolerate delay, problems, or suffering without becoming annoyed or anxious: They did this in spades this year.

So as much as we had set out to create a simple message i think we found more than we had bargained on and off the pitch , the environment still isnt completed for me to describe our culture but its evolving for the better , we have created a environment where players want to be a part of it not only as rugby players but as people , we have created an environment where players have been able to get their first AIL caps this year , some who never came back at all and remained in the first team all season.

Here are some of their thoughts on the process.

And from the coaches !!

The next and final part will be the outcome , this saturday !!