Go Go Go

By Tony Scanlan

Weekend rugby veteran Tony Scanlan has walked off the rugby field with a broken nose once or twice himself – never did him any harm, he reckons. Children are naturally competitive and banning competitiveness won’t work, he writes.

Saturday mornings, Summer and Winter, cars pull up in front of sports fields all over the country, small figures in boots, shin pads and uniforms pile out on to the fields with a parent left to lock the car or to tear off to another field for another offspring’s game.

Most of these parents are mothers, but there are always a few fathers willing to brave the frosty mornings and cheer from the sideline along side the hardy and long suffering mums.

Fathers have come in for a bit of flak for not being more of a presence on the kids’ sports fields, and those who do are told they need to learn to be more positive and supportive.

A while ago the people who run sport for children in New Zealand introduced a new idea, all spectators, and officials should be supportive, positive and encouraging to all the children involved in their sport. Games were to officially end in a draw.

The players, the kids themselves, were not to be told the score. The purpose of this was to put the emphasis on enjoying the game rather than winning, if there were no losers, no one would feel bad at the end of a game. Everyone gets a pat on the back for coming along.

Some complained that this would lead to a generation of mediocre players, that when they grew up they would be like lambs to the slaughter when they met overseas athletes, especially Australia’s sports people who seem to have been brought up on a diet of raw meat and press ups. The detractors of this plan could have saved their collective breath because like all good executive plans, it is largely ignored by those who are with the kids on the sports field.

Most of the coaching and refereeing is done by parents, and in the male dominated sports, mostly by the few fathers mentioned earlier.

The mums all get excited and cheer when their side scores, and even manage to raise a polite clap when the opposition score, but the fathers on the sideline are often not as demonstrative.

One father in particular was quite hard to please. John (name changed to protect the innocent) had been a regional representative in the sport himself.

He would always come to watch his son’s game, even when his ex wife brought the child. A solid bull of a man, he would watch his talented and strong son take on the entire opposition by himself and score. He would shake his head and mutter about how he should have scored closer to the sticks. You could see the pride in his eyes though. “Well done” was the most praise he could muster.

One year he became coach of his son’s team. They were a bunch of boys who had played together for a couple of years but hadn’t really gelled as a team. There were several excellent players, who knew they were good but who would only pass the ball to boys they also considered good.

Many of the players lacked confidence, and skill. One bigger boy was timid about using his weight. A skinny kid was afraid of getting tackled. The coach worked on improving the skill levels of all the boys. When they played their first game, they won easily. The official result may have been called a draw, but both sides and all the spectators knew one side had scored about ten tries and the other, one.

How could you not know who had won? Although they had won well, the better players had done all the work- they thought of themselves as the heroes, THEY had won the game for the team.

About three weeks into the season they met a team that played together well. They passed the ball freely, 15 boys backing each other up. John’s team was stunned, and lost badly.

They didn’t know what had happened. John told them, LOUDLY.

He was furious.

He said there would be no player of the day that day, as they were all useless. In front of their mums! Then he stalked off. He telephoned each of his charges later and apologised, but hadn’t he broken the primary directive? Would the mums let him continue as coach? Would the kids turn up to training the next week?

Yes, yes and yes. It seemed after his outburst, the boys realised he meant what he said. The less confident ones tried a bit harder. The big kid pushed hard in the mauls, for the first time he used his weight and was applauded for it.

The skinny little kid ran with the ball until he was tackled instead of throwing it straight up in the air, he didn’t get far, but neither did he get hurt. The ‘good’ players found they could rely on the other kids to be there in support after they had run half the field.

They had pride in themselves and each other. There was no magic transformation with them winning the trophy at the end of the year- how could they when the whole competition ended in a draw? The team still lost games and when they did, the coach- the hard man – still told them “Well done”, …but only when they HAD ‘done well’.

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