Really? English cricket is attritional and certainly not attacking, this summer is bizarre as I can not remember a worse series for close contests, we have always played that way as well pretty much (bowling straight and making the batsmen makes mistakes (stump to stump) as opposed to putting it in areas where it make get hit frequently and taking 6 hours to get a century etc etc).
The same in the rigby where its about territory and ploughing through the middle opposed to wing play and flair.
Not only do we underachieve we also do it in a treacle slow boring manner.
Did you actually watch the Ashes series this summer or our 2 tests against New Zealand?
As for rugby, canât agree moreâŚ
Im with B X 3 on this the cricket during the summer was good the rugby no comment and the football will be mor of Woy not giving the right people the nod to play.
Of course I did, you think we play an exciting brand of cricket? Ha ha Jesus wept. New Zealand made the series and we had to respond, we did but the question is why donât we do that all the time teats? We have been slated for years about being years behind in one dayers and 20/20.
If you think we play exciting cricket you are mad.
The Ashes was poor and only few sessions were actual competition as it was all lopsided, we would be screwed without Root.
But we won for fucks sake. How often do we actually win anything. Rejoice when we do and take heart from the fact that the useless fuckers who failed when we lost will never play again.
That wasnât the post, we failed massively when it mattered in the cricket World Cup, the same again in the rugby and oh again in the football World Cup in football.
We didnât get out of the group stages in any sport, this says to me its as much mental as it is skill as we have the numbers over most Nations in said sports.
Okies.
Longer view on one part of the spectrum.
People want to win. They want their kids to win. Because theyâre their kids and if they are âlosersâ then this indicates (probably slightly more impliedly than would be stated overtly) that theyâre genetially deficient and they (the parents) are winners. Participation is for wimps and is unmanly. ⌠ugh, just opened a huge can of worms there ⌠toast, anyone? Very similar to arseholes out on the lash at the weekend.
Anyway, keeping it simple people need to win to feel âvalidatedâ but they donât understand that often this requires two things: work and talent. Work is the primary one, hence we were force-fed David Beckham for years while MLT was allowed to languish in patronising slightly-faux societal disapproval and being overlooked.
Participation is actually more important than people allow it to be. Letâs take the classic example of the kids playing footy on the streets of San Antonio/some other place where they donât have shoes and pavements. Here what happens is the kids play football because:
everyone does;
itâs fun;
itâs footballâ
theyâre kids in their own world.
The latter is especailly important because it has its own rules. Many of these mimic real-world rules and take from them and are passed down from generation to generation because typically there will be a range of players (e.g. 17-10; younger than that and they probably canât participate unless theyâre exceptional or the age range shifts e.g. 5-12). The rules are pretty simple. You play to compete (and you hope to win, but firstly you compete - or you get brushed aside). Then you copy ofhers. Itâs what people do and so you see stepovers and dummies and copy them, hence there is a lot of self-teaching (not coaching; often not needed). You may not necessarily do so depending on your temperament and psyche and what you learn works for you (fast v slow, defender v attacker, etc) but you learn to bring what you have. There is a large element of the playground pick and no - one wants to be last and there is little to no mollycoddling and due to other circumstances e.g. no football, only a tennis ball, crowded streets, the presence of other people, large teams etc things such as close control and technique are learned by the proving ground of being involved in the game or bored and on the periphery.
Some of you will, to an extent, recognise games lessons from school many years ago: theyâre very similar.
Now if you get good, youâll increase your chances of winning. In Brazil, etc, that means potentially a huge amount of money and being able to play footy all day. In England at the base level it probably means youâll get picked by a better team and perhaps coached and play at a better level (where the emphasis shifts from winning at all costs to being coached to be better and then win, but this by doing the right things). Ironically, however, it can be that many who are coached, while good, have skill coached out of them i.e. there is a greater emphasis on the whole than the individual (hence Mane coming from Sengal where things are viewed differently rather than JWP/Targett/Reed although they may not be the best of examples).
So you need a number of things in place to generate an environment where talent can be honed to enable someone to compete at the highest level of competition and much of this will relate to the mental/perceptual aspect which is not exclusive to sport but to any form of âsuccessâ where this is higher than at the personal level. Many of these are inhered in the structure of the playground (or would be were it not interefered with and separated into amateur - participate for the sake of it and have a reward just for being - and professional where there is a greater emphasis on attempting to replicate the best by way of benchmarking and analysis while ignoring the many failures and fallacies inherent in this philosophy - thanks LvG) and these then more often than not will be used as âmotivationâ. Dissecting that system (as described briefly above), however, tends to short-circuit this and then (with added pressure from an âinstant-liteâ society with no historical basis and thus emotional/individual bedrock upon which to found an assault upon the stated aims of winning consistently in competition - think Ferguson) it is down to an individual who has not learned sufficient intrinsic motivation as a given (see Bertrand for one to whom this does not apply) to endeavour to remain steadfast while relying on those equally, or more so, weak for succour. (Got a bit poetic at the end there).
Hope that helps, Mr Sanchez.
TL; DR: See first post by me.
I read all that (well done must have taken ages) but am none the wiser to why we fail at big competitions.
Originally posted by @Barry-Sanchez
I read all that (well done must have taken ages) but am none the wiser to why we fail at big competitions.
Coz weâre shit.
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Originally posted by @Goatboy
Originally posted by @Barry-Sanchez
I read all that (well done must have taken ages) but am none the wiser to why we fail at big competitions.
Coz weâre shit.
Well yes but could you narrow down that opinion you hold, it is too much informationâŚ
Coz
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Originally posted by @Barry-Sanchez
I read all that (well done must have taken ages) but am none the wiser to why we fail at big competitions.
A bloke on a forum I go on reckons itâs all James Ward Prowseâs fault.
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Yes a modern footballerâs footballer.