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...

How did I end up here?

Have you ever stopped and asked yourself "how did I end up here?"

Sometimes that thinking can be deliberate - that's reflection. Sometimes, we get a sense of something  and over time we see it - that's realization. Other times, it takes something or someone external to our situation to shed some light - that's revelation. However our question comes to us, its generated by an awareness of us either ending up somewhere we never thought we'd attain to, or being in a position we never intended to be in when we set out.

As men we are not good at reflection - we can have a tendency to get our heads down, engage in contact, thinking we are being courageous, but missing the bigger picture. In sport, its about scoring tries, making touchdowns, hitting home runs, shooting those hoops. In business its about, hitting those targets, making a margin that will produce a return. In serving others its about making a difference to them, not us. In relationships its about us, not me.

In rugby union, there is a move called "the rolling maul" - hey that sounds like life doesn't it? The move starts with a player in possession of the ball engaging in contact with an opposition player. Provided the player can stay on his feet, other players from each side can "bind" onto their respective players, trying to wrestle the ball away from the player in possession - the important thing is, if you enter into contact and a maul forms, you have to maintain forward momentum. Your team mates will try and drive you on and the opposition will try and drive you back.

It can be a very effect tactic, particularly if you have a physical advantage and can travel across the gain line. At other times, it can descend into a wrestling match that is going nowhere, other than sapping the strength of the combatants. Recent law changes have given players and referees some important guidance. Provided there is momentum, the move can continue. If the maul stops - the referee will reset the game and hand possession over to the opposition. Quite a responsibility for the team taking the ball into contact then? Quite often the better referees will let players know - sometimes, you will hear them shout "use it or lose it" - that's the point as a player stuck in the middle of a mass of players, with no chance of shipping the ball, you think to yourself "how did I end up here?".... the point being, when we committed to engaging in contact, our intention wasn't stalemate or conceding possession.

The man's man Jesus Christ, notes something about the way in which men start to engage and the effects different contexts have on us. He used an illustration about ground conditions. Seed sown by farmers lands on ground which may be experiencing different conditions. Some ground is rock hard and the seeds bounce off it and are picked off easily by predators. Its not much of a game if we can be picked off easily, especially if we think we are hard. Other conditions are shallow and the seed doesn't stand much chance of making it - how often we are shallow about things that are really important - especially relationships. At other times ground conditions can be thick with weeds that simply choke the life out of anything that starts to move - a bit like getting stopped in your tracks in a rolling maul. At other times, the ground is good and the results are great. Who would set out to be picked off or through being shallow lose something of worth? Or who sets out to have the life choked out of them? No one.

The offer of Jesus Christ is to help us as men to reflect on where we are right now, to see that there is a big picture that we are part of and to be there with us, driving us forward, being that great support to us, mentor, coach, life strength conditioner. Perhaps the best question we can ask ourselves as men, no matter how we arrive at it (through reflection, realization or through revelation) is "how did I end up here?" - perhaps that can be a starting point to regaining or refocusing on our part in a much bigger picture - how about it?

Blessed are the Referees for they shall be called...

Who would be a referee? My uncle Jim was a football (soccer) referee. Even when he wasn't on a pitch, he was still a referee. We once found him in the middle of town directing traffic. Oh yes. Raised hand to halt the flow, whilst waving drive on (play on, play on) with the other. If we hadn't rescued him, he may have booked a driver and a cyclist following a touchline, sorry roadside altercation.

There was something in him that just kicked in when he saw that order was required where there was chaos. He was like it in life. When he saw someone in need, he didn't stop, then ask for permission to help; he just helped.

By all accounts uncle Jim was one of a rare breed; a players referee. He knew the rules, understood the game, could assess the spirit in which any game was being played and adapt his approach to the game to keep it flowing.

The best games to play in and the best games to watch are the ones that flow. They can be tough physically and emotionally draining, but it takes great skill to judge the mood and interpret the laws of the game to keep a match at a great tempo.

Not all games are like that and certainly not all referees are like Jim. I don't think I'm the only one who has been walked back 10 metres in a rugby match,for questioning a referee, or has been carded for dissent. Equally, I don't think I'm the only one who has stood on a touchline or in a stand or been sat in front of a TV and questioned a referee's sight, parentage, intake of pies or asked whose side he was on. Referees the world over seem to have a knack for generating emotion in players and spectators alike.

As a man of faith, I am intrigued by the words of Jesus, recorded by a man called Matthew. He wroted that Jesus said "blessed are the peacemakers". I have often thought about what this means. Do I have to go around stepping in wherever I can see there is a problem so that I can bring peace? Do I have to be like a one man United Nations mission? Do I have to deliberately look for trouble so I can bring peace?

I know there are times when unless we intervene nothing will change. But the more I've thought about this in the daily context of my own life, I've concluded that the best peacemakers are like the best referees - they create the conditions in which peace thrives, rather than intervening, blowing a whistle to stop play because something has happened. The greatest referees and the greatest peacemakers are those who help things to flow: with a quiet word here or there, a supportive comment, a word to the wise...

As a husband, a dad, a friend or a colleague am I someone who has to be constantly blowing the whistle because I need to make peace break out, or, am I a peace maker who knows how to create and maintain the conditions to keep life flowing. I wonder which one Jesus was thinking about..