World's Best

Indirectly, Ric Charlesworth is responsible for my love of coaching.

When my mentor tapped me on the shoulder and suggested I give coaching a try, it came along with a requirement to read Charlesworth’s first book, The Coach.

I was immediately hooked.

Fifteen years later, I got to meet Ric at a game in Antwerp and thank him for that initial jolt of inspiration.

What stood out to me about Charlesworth’s approach was his unapologetic obsession with team development. Many coaches believe relentless individual development leads to good team play, but Charlesworth thought about it the other way around.

He writes about it this way in his autobiography: “My focus was less on individuals than on teams, although it is clear that great teams are replete with brilliant individuals”.

It’s unclear to me why I have such a strong penchant for this team-centric approach, but three things come to mind:

1) It’s harder;

2) Aussie Rules is a sport with 18 players per team, on a cricket-sized field. Brilliant individuals can change a game, no doubt, but their impact isn’t as much as other sports;

3) I firmly believe social groups shape a vast majority of our behaviour and mindset, meaning it’s an efficient use of resources to place developmental focus on the team (while, obviously, also not overlooking the human beings on that team).

Here are a collection of Ric Charlesworth’s unique observations about teams and being a team-centric coach:

• “Without ‘eternal vigilance’ you do not get world’s best performances. It should be emphasized that the vigilance of which I speak is not only unease, it is also being aggressively optimistic for opportunities, and to take advantage of any situation that can bring you closer to the big prize. It is vigilance for both risks and rewards.”

• “Excellence is never easy and to be outstanding we must go through difficult times. Often we hear that this or that champion ‘makes it look easy’. This never means that it is easy only that they are so proficient that their performance appears effortless.”

• “Every coach who shapes any team should endeavour to always emphasise the need for quality in every aspect of training and preparation. Your task is to be the guide to what real quality is and guard against those things that dilute it in games and on the training track.”

• “At training it is vital to put your athletes in situations where defeat or loss is a constant consideration…the best will fight their way out of this situation or go down giving their all.”

• “There are important tactics and strategy, which underpin how we seek to succeed. No matter how complex or simple they may be it is never possible to put them into practice without the players being able to reproduce their technical skills under pressure and being able to co-operate effectively at the same time. Hence there is a dilemma for all coaches. Where do you place most emphasis? Is it fitness, technical skill, tactics, team cohesion or urgency, intensity and competitiveness? The answer is easy to say but harder to do…you need to do it all.”

• “The initiating factor in creating a scoring opportunity might sometimes be a brilliant piece of individual skill. However, often it is an error of skill made by an opponent that you are able to take advantage of with a series of consecutive co-ordinated plans and actions.”

• “The best teams are replete with athletes who make the right choice at the right time for the right reason. Teams with a critical mass of such characters are stubborn and resilient in defence and organized and determined in attack. They can, of course, also be brilliantly skilled and creative, but best of all they choose the right time to utilize their gifts.”

• “In the end the aim is always to deceive or outsmart one’s opponent and so they are caught off guard or overreact in one area leaving them vulnerable elsewhere. If done well this deception creates hesitation and doubt and indecisive play…and thus it causes errors.”

• “To develop and extend the players in your team must be the aim of the coach, and it doesn’t happen with rules or external disciplines. It requires the coach to trust and guide not always direct and instruct. One doesn’t get to that place without a profound engagement with the task and the individuals, and an understanding of the absolute necessity for co-operation. Real team play requires an understanding of why we ought to do something and putting aside ego so the individual’s personal ambitions and desires are secondary to the team’s goals and ambitions. This does not disenfranchise the individual at all. It just puts them is a place where it is clear that for one of us to succeed we all need to work together. We all need to succeed.”