In Times of Peace, Prepare For War.

This principle came to life in this wonderful phrase a while after reading Sun Tzu’s ‘The Art of War’. The more I thought about it, the more it appeared to be a principle so valuable in football and life.

One of my great coaching mentors Noel Blake, himself a former defender of the old school, used to be obsessive about ‘keeping the back door shut’ as he called it. I’d sit in the dugout or stand alongside him during an international game and hear him scream, “back door, back door!!”, as play was in the opposition's final third and he sensed a break away or counter attack. What he was saying is, do the work early. Adjust, adapt and concentrate now so that your work is done while you are in a position of influence to create the best outcome. 

Ignorance of this is to open yourself up to frantic, last minute and desperate measures to maintain a status. It looks all very noble to the untrained eye but is a poorer way of doing things. In the game there have been many examples of defenders who have developed the art of this apparent non defending: Franz Beckenbauer, Bobby Moore, Claudio Gentile, and John Charles amongst others. They played with a calmness that defied what was really going on, were easy on the eye and had a presence about them.

‘Always defending’ is the principle here. For some it is more natural than others. In terms of the technical and tactical aspects of the game it is about adjusting your position off the ball, learning to read the game and making the seemingly unpredictable, predictable.

The principle is Stephen Covey’s quadrant II of important but non urgent tasks. No immediate pressure to do them but attendance to them will stand you in good stead for things and times to come. You will be prepared and in a better position to deal with what life throws at you.

‘Saving for a rainy day’ and ‘making hay while the sun shines’ are all throw away phrases that seem to come from the mouths of the older generation. As a youngster the tendency is to take little or no notice of these things that don’t automatically resonate with a young mind taken with other things. Time and experience tend to bring us to recognise such wisdom and hopefully embrace it, sooner rather than later. 

Human nature and the reactive way of the untrained mind takes us away from such principles. Doing activities that are not immediately gratifying is something that has to be learned. The sooner and greater the gratification the more appealing the activity. Survivors and the experienced understand there is a foundation to things that requires unseen work, efforts that are only recognised by similar others. Being led astray by social media and political and celebrity banners is a common road away from the real work. In times of peace when parties and celebrations are rife, if you can find those pale skinned, pasty individuals who remain locked away in their self imposed cellars, you will have found wisdom, those who can teach a valuable lesson and those likely to be the saviours or survivors of the next generation.

In our relationships we can easily find our challenges can be sourced to someone not feeling valued. This may be as a result of a particular act or incident although, more often it is due to the paucity of the positive regard from the significant other over a period of time. People don’t often fall out of love suddenly but they do suffer from a lack of positive attention over time. Psychologists have been found to have a high success rate of predicting divorce or separation just from watching short videos of couples involved in normal interaction. It is said that the number of positive communications compared to negative ones are in the ratio of five to one in couples that stay together. We all know that as humans our lives are unpredictable and we are not always in the space to be positive. It is in times of calm when we are most able that we should be building up the capital in the emotional bank account of the other person so that when, in challenging times we may need to make a ‘withdrawal’ there is sufficient reserve to accommodate the request.

‘In times of peace prepare for war’.

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