Sport

Paddy Heaney: Success comes through the repetition of everything – except the same mistakes

Ederney St Joseph's celebrate victory at the end of the Quinn Building Products Fermanagh Senior Football Championship final against Derrygonnelly Harps at Brewster Park, Enniskillen on September 27 2020. Picture by Philip Walsh.
Ederney St Joseph's celebrate victory at the end of the Quinn Building Products Fermanagh Senior Football Championship final against Derrygonnelly Harps at Brewster Park, Enniskillen on September 27 2020. Picture by Philip Walsh. Ederney St Joseph's celebrate victory at the end of the Quinn Building Products Fermanagh Senior Football Championship final against Derrygonnelly Harps at Brewster Park, Enniskillen on September 27 2020. Picture by Philip Walsh.

Among my group of cycling friends we call this time of year “dreaming season”.

For the cyclist, runner, footballer, hurler or camog – dreaming season is more magical than Christmas.

Because next year always abounds with possibility and promise. Everything is going to be different – next year.

Of course, it rarely is. Why?

Because when it comes to sport, training, and the management of football teams, people tend to be pretty stupid.

Maybe ‘stupid’ is the wrong word.

Einstein put it differently. He said: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

I know bike racers who have never come close to winning a race – yet they are already setting out to follow the same failed training regime that they do every year.

Insane or stupid? I don’t know, but it doesn’t make much sense.

Yet it happens across the board – and at the highest levels.

In the aftermath of Matt Busby’s reign at Manchester United, the club fell into a 20-year morass, largely because of the board’s catastrophic failure to appoint a decent manager.

During the halcyon days of Alex Ferguson’s tenure, it’s seemed scarcely believable that a series of unproven managers with no track record of success were allowed to occupy one of the most venerated positions in world football.

But here we are, five years after Ferguson’s retirement and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, winner of precisely absolutely nothing, is occupying the hot-seat at Old Trafford.

Miguel Delaney, formerly with The Sunday Tribune, now chief soccer writer with The Independent is flummoxed at how Solskjaer has managed to retain his job for so long.

In the aftermath of United’s 6-1 defeat to Spurs, Delaney wrote: “It is frankly astounding that they are persisting with an experiment entirely based on emotion rather than any kind of logic.

“Ole Gunnar Solskjaer has never had the credentials for a job like this, bar his playing connection. That’s it.

“That’s the only argument. It is one that is collapsing as badly as his defence.”

For Delaney, Solskjaer’s overriding failure lies with how his team is coached, or to be more accurate, isn’t coached.

Delaney observed: “United just don’t have the modern system – or any kind of system.”

It is this failure to coach a system of play which is the main reason why most teams never come close to reaching their optimum performance.

There are two reasons why managers don’t coach a system of play

1) They don’t know any better

2) They lack confidence

In the strength and conditioning world, some of the world’s best coaches rely on the simplest training protocols.

Most advocate mastery of the basics through unrelenting repetition.

Charlatans strength coaches are always easy to spot. Lacking true expertise, they tend to mask their inadequacies with unnecessarily complicated programmes.

It’s no different in football. Coaching a system of play isn’t necessarily difficult.

You don’t need 300 cones. It just requires immense patience and perseverance.

It can also involve a lot of standing around and lots and lots of mistakes.

That’s why most managers steadfastly avoid it.

Rather than having players get bored, they attempt to placate them with an endless succession of meaningless drills and small-sided games.

It makes for an entertaining training session but it results in a team that crumbles when confronted with well-drilled rivals.

Ole Gunner Solskjaer when he played under Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson&nbsp;(right)<br />&nbsp;
Ole Gunner Solskjaer when he played under Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson (right)
 
Ole Gunner Solskjaer when he played under Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson (right)
 

Systems of play were not as prevalent during the bulk of Alex Ferguson’s career, but he still made no apologies for making his training sessions highly repetitive affairs.

In his autobiography, Ferguson states: “Forget all the nonsense about altering training programmes to keep players happy.

“The argument that they must be stimulated by constant variety may come across as progressive and enlightened but it is a dangerous evasion of priorities.

“In any physical activity, effective practice requires repeated execution of the skill involved.”

But look at how most club teams are prepared. It’s usually a random selection of kick-out work, drills and games.

Yet, come the big day, these players will be expected to defend and attack like a military unit.

Aristotle said: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then is not an act but a habit.”

How can a team execute a game-plan if they don’t practice it repeatedly during their training sessions?

A fortnight ago, everyone who knows the mighty Marty McGrath celebrated when he won his first ever county medal with Ederney.

Tom Conaghan, who managed Donegal to an All-Ireland U21 title, gave Marty his first game. Marty was just 14-year-old.

Marty McGrath has had 24 dreaming seasons.

But it could easily have been another nightmare.

Ederney lost their previous two finals against Derrygonnelly.

In 2018, they lost the Championship final by 12 points. They also lost a league final to the same opposition. In both games, Ederney went man-to-man.

For this year’s final, the brains trust in Ederney decided they weren’t going to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result.

They changed how they played. They went defensive. They put players behind the ball.

They soaked up attacks and used the blistering speed of the McCusker brothers to launch their own offensives.

And for the first time in 52 years, Ederney won the Fermanagh County Championship, which shows dreams can come true, but only if you’re prepared to stop repeating the same mistakes.