The Inevitability of Impact

Rugby is a full contact physical sport. Anyone watching the game for the first time could be excused for wincing at the sheer force of the impacts. With the advances in training and fitness regimes, the modern player is also faster and more mobile than ever before. The harnessing of speed and force make for a dramatic spectacle, but also combine to create the shuddering impacts synonymous with the modern game.

Whilst researching the physical implications for players, particularly in youth sport or in development squads, I came across a fascinating article outlining a study in New Zealand looking at identifying signs of concussive injury. I was drawn to some of the statistics produced in the study. By using sensors attached to players and built into mouth guards, the researchers were able to accurately measure the number of impacts in a game and the G-force exerted in the impact. The results were revealing.

In one game, there were over 3000 impacts. The average impact was 22g. Given a fighter pilot can experience a force of around 9g, admittedly over a more prolonged period of time, the individual impacts in rugby are nonetheless quite remarkable. One recorded hit was over 200g. It almost seems impossible that players are regularly encountering physical forces that would normally be experienced in road traffic accidents. The remarkable thing is the physical resilience of players and for the record, how few concussions there actually were.  Now that's not to minimise the importance of looking for this type of injury and being aware for the sake of player safety. But it set me thinking. One thing is inevitable if you play rugby. You will experience knocks and have to take the impact.

Some of those impacts will take you down. Some will cause you pain. Others will require you to simply put your head down and press on, using all of your strength and stamina. Sound familiar?

There is another arena in which there is an inevitability that we will encounter impacts. Life. But as with the great sport if rugby, how we react to life's knocks will often determine the outcome of the passage of life we're experiencing. Some things take us down. Some things cause us pain. Others call for every reserve of strength or staying power for us to press through. Our response can be critical to how things turn out. When we get knocked down, we have a choice - to stay down or get back up regardless of what took us down. We may be different as a result of the impact, but we can chose to stay down or stand again. We may experience pain, but ours is the choice to let that pain forever define us or to allow it to become something that helps strengthen us for the next challenge. We may feel totally exhausted but ours is the choice to live depleted of our reserves or to shift our thinking to recognise that resilience, resistance work and recovery are essential elements for building strength and endurance.

The bible has an interesting observation, made by the man's man Jesus Christ. He had observed life over an extended period: working in a carpentry business, with all the demands of hitting deadlines, keeping customers satisfied, financing projects. He carried the social stigma of living in a small, rough town, that few people admired. He lived under harsh government regulation, with a though tax regime. He was the oldest in the family he was born into and carried the responsibility. When he set out to make a difference for people, he was looked on with a familiarity that was driven by envy and contempt for his lack of formal religious preparation. No wonder he said to his team "in this world"(the one we have described, the one we live in), "you will have trouble". It's as inevitable as the impacts in rugby. However, he followed that statement up with one that was as astonishing as his previous comment was inevitable: "I have overcome the world." In other words, I have a way of getting through this. A way of getting through these impacts. Whilst there is the undeniable forward look to his destiny at the cross, this man's man was saying there is a way to overcome the world and what it throws at you - by simply not letting it define who you are. You are not defined by your current circumstance, your background, ethnicity, perceived economic value - your definition is not external, it develops internally. Through the relationships that we build. Through the kind of men we become. Through the faith we extend beyond our own limitations. The man's man blew away the final limitation, opening up a way for all men to meet and be comfortable in the presence of their maker.

Whatever, life is throwing at us, has thrown or will ever throw - should never truly define us and  therefore ever truly defeat us. Experiences good, bad and ugly shape us, but true definition is forged through a faith with the friend of all men, who has taken the ultimate hit for us.

preparing for a new season?

Whatever level a team plays at, the run-in to the new season always feels like a shock to the system.  From the end of season to the point at which pre-season training starts, I think there has to be a specialised course that coaches and fitness trainers go on to discover the latest physical punishment techniques. Every pre-season seems to get worse, or is it something to do with the ageing process catching up!!

The physical demands of the sport of rugby are punishing in game situations, but the level of pain in training seems to increase year on year.  It's not as if we have suddenly become unfit from the end of the last season is it? Pre-season is a time for preparation and, as the saying goes, failing to prepare is preparing to fail.

The period before the start of a season is also a time of change and often a time of uncertainty. New players are coming in. Some of your old team mates have gone or retired. The coaching staff may have changed and you could be facing playing a completely different style of game. There could be new sponsors, different kit, even different facilities.  You will certainly be facing new teams following promotions and relegations even if you are in the same league. Nothing stays the same. Everything changes. Even the rules of the sport change from time to time. Change is inevitable. It's how we respond to change that prepares us for what comes next.

Making assumptions about the next season or about our place in the team or our going uninjured for the whole year can be a big mistake. I can remember the very first competitive game we played. A brand new team. Our opponents arrived and swaggered off their bus, buoyed by their teams results in previous years. We on the other hand had been kept firmly in place by our coach and had approached the game not knowing the team until the day before the match. We destroyed them 70-0 and that was in the days when a try was worth fewer points. It was a hard act to follow and the temptation to assume every match would be as easy was difficult to avoid. 

Toward the end of the pre-season, there is a sense of just wanting to get on with the campaign. But there is another hurdle to get over before the season can begin in earnest. Trials. Even though you have played for a team for a long time, you still have to go through the same process. New, fresh, younger up and coming players may have arrived on the scene. Everyone faces trials before the next season begins. The trials precede selection for the next season. 

It's tempting to want the start of a new season to simply roll on from the end of the last, but the new season will also have new challenges.

Life can be the same - physically and mentally demanding, change and uncertainty, making assumptions about what lies around the corner and well, full of trials. Life is also made up of seasons and those seasons do change and bring with them new challenges. A very wise man wrote in the bible in a book called Ecclesiastes - there is a time for everything, a season, everything fits in its place in its right season. How we respond determines what happens as those seasons turn. How we approach the trials will determine how we fare in the next season. 

Another great writer observed in a letter to a group of men called the Hebrews that there is one thing that doesn't change. In fact he was describing a person. The man's man Jesus Christ. Of him it was written: Jesus Christ - the same yesterday, today, forever. In other words in the middle of the demanding, the changing, the uncertain, the trials - he remains consistent in his approach and attitude towards us as men. What a great example of maintaining his composure as a man in the middle of change.  Change is difficult to accept sometimes, particularly if the impact of the change means we have to adapt or stop something to start something new. But as we approach a new season - in sport or in life, lets remember there is one who we can rely on to be totally consistent as a role model, as a mentor, but especially as a friend. The man's man Jesus Christ. 

As we face the challenge of a new season, lets meet the demands, the change, the uncertainty head on, not shying away from trial, but willing to press on in the knowledge that the trails qualify us for the next season and that we do not move forward alone. The man's man has already been there and wants to walk with us through to the other side.

When your game plan falls apart

I recently went to watch a rugby match in a local county league. The match had significance for a number of reasons:

•  it would potentially secure promotion for one of the teams
• I knew a couple of the guys playing in the match
• it was the first time in years I had watched minor league sport

The team I went to watch won the match and were promoted. However, as a spectacle, it was poor in quality and certainly wasn't a great advert for the game. Despite their clear technical and physical superiority, the promotion seekers somehow lost their focus. They spent large parts of the game commenting on the demerits of the referee and complaining. Once they had lost focus, their standards started to slide. The rapidly deteriorating quality of their decision making, made their opponents seem more competent. This boosted opposition confidence, which compounded the title chasers  problems and led to handling errors and mistakes. In the end, the team were arguing amongst themselves. Despite the scoreline, they were behaving like losers.

Now, you could rightly argue "they won". But for me, this game became an illustration of the importance of focusing on the right things and, doing those "right things" right. Despite the win, it was a shambolic game that could have been so much better. In short, it wasn't a very good advert for the game and had the potential to dissuade the neutral from engaging with the sport.  How often do we allow our standards to slip and descend into a caricature of what we should be? How do others perceive the faith we profess based on what they see of us?

As they lost focus, the volume of handling errors and poor decision making increased alarmingly. When we lose sight of the main thing, we begin to bring into sight things that either don't matter, are peripheral or are simply wrong.

Despite the team being capable of blowing the opposition away, the match started to slip away from them.  However, there was a pivotal moment that altered the outcome. The game needed someone to refocus. Someone had to take it back by the scruff of the neck. Someone had to ignore the crowd decrying every refereeing decision. Someone had to get the team playing the right game in the right areas of the field. Just as the game was about to descend into a farce, one player took things into his own hands and stepped up to take responsibility. His intervention made the difference. He refocused and changed the outcome of the game. In the end, the team ran out comfortable winners, but, it was a poor game and one that deserves to be forgotten.

I'm sure there are times we have just scraped through or have felt our approach has been poor. It's worth analysing what goes on when we take our eyes of the main thing. What causes us to shift focus? Offence? Decisions going against us? Jibes from the sidelines, even from people who are supposed to be supporting us? The intervention of other people into "our space"? Things not going to our exact game plan? We can be so easily distracted And we've seen what loss of focus can do.

At those times, its worth remembering that we can refocus.  The bible has some great advice: Run with perseverance the course marked out for you, keeping your eyes focused on Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for joy set before him, endured.. In other words; if we have decided to be a follower, a disciple, one who runs after Jesus the trailblazer of our faith, we need to keep our eyes firmly fixed on him as our focus. Science has belatedly discovered that what we focus our minds on has a strong physiological impact.  The object of our focus impacts the neural pathways in our brains and actually influences our motor functioning ability. Putting it a different way, if we focus on the wrong things, then our game will fall apart! Conversely, focusing on the right thing and following the right lead...

The Space Beyond the Ball

Seeing beyond the current space you're in to the possibilities that lie beyond is called vision. Going on to inhabit the beyond and make things happen is called application and that takes graft and determination.

Unrealised vision is simply aspiration. The power that drives change is the conversion of vision into reality on the ground.

When still a club coach in Auckland, Graham Henry the victorious Rugby World Cup 2011 coach of the New Zealand All Blacks was asked for a key coaching tip. His response was direct and to the point - "get over the gain line in the first phase".

In rugby terms that means taking possession beyond the point at which a phase of play started before it breaks down again. For example, if a player is tackled, his team are expected to recycle the ball and progress past the point of the tackle and over the gain line, before another tackle stops the advance.

Aspirational? No, because what marks Henry out as a coach is his ability to think about the game, its rules, the role of players on and off the ball and use each as a component to deliver something tactically different. He is deliberate about it, it doesn't just happen.

After the successful 2011 RWC campaign Henry commented "We want quick ball in New Zealand and so we concentrate on dominating the space beyond the ball carrier. We want our supporting players to get under the opposition and to move them backwards. We flood past the ball to create good possession for our strike runners" (The Guardian, Sunday 29-01-12).

Now that's thought through. Practical. It's every player knowing what they have to do to "get across the gain line in the first phase". It's not just great vision. It's application on the ground. If you drive the opposition back from the breakdown, you have already created the space and opportunity to get past the gain line before you even begin to move the ball again.

So successful are the thought through, tactical elements of the All Black's game that it looks like second nature. In fact, when you watch great teams, what started as a vision and was fleshed out on the training ground until it became second nature, becomes endemic in the team and is seen by onlookers and emerging new players as part and parcel of what a winning team does - new players coming into the squad simply follow suit. The reality is, it started somewhere. It was worked through with an initial group of players, but then became the norm. Delivering quick ball from the breakdown by taking the space beyond the ball is now part of All Black game play.

Now there's a great principle at work here - what becomes second nature becomes the norm, what becomes the norm is transmitted seamlesssly to peers and the next generation of players coming through. But here's the key, "every generational shift starts with a deliberate decision".

The bible has an interesting insight into how successive generations learn and understand the significance of what is important. The illustration talks about the strength and resiliance that comes from knowing God - the principle at work was written about by the warrior king, David. He put it this way: ..."examine closely the way things are structured, look at the strength that is built into them,  look at the detail and show it to the generation that is following you - model it, be it".... It's about being deliberate in thinking about what is important and how to demonstrate it.

We may be looking to introduce a change. We may be looking at our own behaviours in an attempt to improve our relationships in business, in serving people or perhaps even in our closest relationships - but remember, there is a difference between aspiration and real vision that paves the way for the next step - application. The transition from vision to reality is the critical phase, but it's where so many either fear to tread or stumble. But that transition is crucial to change becoming second nature.

Working on relationships is not perhaps the most natural thing that men lean towards. All too often we let even our core relationships drift or allow things happen by default - despite the fact that we so easily plan events, schedule tasks, review and change processes. Given people are at the centre of events, task or processes, we cannot afford to alllow relationships to develop by default.

Understanding the dynamics of change and being deliberate in our thinking can be the key to making the right adjustments, at the right time and in the right way. Relationships and the people we interact with are after all at the heart of winning teams on the pitch, in business, in areas of service and in families.  Are we allowing things to happen to us by default or are we being deliberate about change?

Festive Fixtures

Going to watch any sport over the Christmas and New Year period is an experience not to be missed. There is a different kind of atmosphere in the ground.

Rugby is well known for the friendliness and banter among opposing fans - with no crowd segregation required, in fact quite the opposite is true. On many occasions I have shaken hands with total strangers at the end of a game, where we have cheered our own, applauded the skills of our opponents, debated the finer points of refereeing decisions (for both sides) and laughed at funny incidents and the wise cracks of fellow fans. But at the Festive games, this goes to another level - with Santa Claus hats, festive singing, mince pies being passed out by people who you've never seen before, seasonal greetings mixed with another kind of spirit and "hellos" and "handshakes", like you've not seen the people sitting next to you for a decade - when in fact they were there at the last home game!!

The players get involved, laughing  and joking, even the match officials seem to be less stuffy. At one festive game, in front of a very large crowd, a rather "stout" referee, jogged up to an incident flagged as a "late tackle" on one of our players, and in a very loud voice, for the benefit of the crowd, said "that tackle was so late, even I got there before you"...to even louder jeers and shouts from the crowd ..."keep off the mince pies ref"...

But against this backdrop, not quite overshadowed by the festivities, there is a game to be played out. The matches over the holiday period, surrounded by the fun and banter, are often pivotal to the remainder of the season and can, in the mud, snow, rain and wind, be defining moments for individual players - some with international selection on their mind.

As a man of faith, these games remind me of another defining moment, which today is often and rightly surrounded by fun, family and all that a major festival has on offer - the birth of Jesus Christ in Bethlehem. Christmas is a celebration. Its a celebration in many ways like the crowd scenes at a festive match. Goodwill breaks out. People who hardly speak, take the time to talk to each other, people share food and banter. But in the same way, now almost overshadowed by the festivity, let us not forget, a crucial game was being played out too, with destiny at its center.

As with festive fixtures, against the background of a crowd filled with festive cheer, the birth of the man's man Jesus, was a defining moment. For Christmas, marks the potential for a turning point in the affairs of every man, wherever his life's journey has taken him so far. What is being played out, is God's game plan for humanity, with Jesus Christ as the key play maker. His birth, life and subsequent death and resurrection, make it possible for anyone to experience the kind of feeling we get at Christmas, throughout the whole year - that understanding that there is a peace, a sense of well being and goodwill toward others and perhaps, the most important aspect, the appreciation that what has been, can be laid aside, forgiven and a man can make new start.

In the same way that a match, an encounter over the festive period can shape the rest of the season for a team, an encounter with the man's man, the Christ of Christmas, can be a defining moment, changing the rest of the "season" for us as individuals.

So, against the background of the festive period, lets spare a thought for the players out on the pitch, recognizing, its game on! Then, pausing, spare a thought for the key player in the humble scene from Bethlehem and recognize that for us too, it can be - game on!