Great interview and well worth the watch.

You’re right across all the latest mainstream and not @dazzledavey36

Much appreciated!

33 minutes ago, dazzledavey36 said:

Great interview and well worth the watch.

Thanks so much Dazzle. The JVR interview is a great insight into the players and life under Kingy. Sounds like the culture Kingy is building is pretty awesome. Roo is interviewed in the first 30 minutes. Highly recommended to Demonlanders, especially during this Easter weekend. They're giving away a gather round Dees jersey signed by all the players. This would be great for the rapidly growing number of young Dees supporters.

Happy Easter everyone!

When asked about the difference between the two senior coaches, JVR describes Goodwin as intense, whereas King runs a more relaxed and fun program. Intense will work for a time in a workplace (hello to the ‘21 flag) but probably is not sustainable over the longer term.

Surprisingly entertaining interview and JVR was extremely eloquent and honest….nice job

1 hour ago, FarNorthernD said:

When asked about the difference between the two senior coaches, JVR describes Goodwin as intense, whereas King runs a more relaxed and fun program. Intense will work for a time in a workplace (hello to the ‘21 flag) but probably is not sustainable over the longer term.

Best motivator in the world is 'fear' (getting dropped, shame from teammates coach etc etc) it works, but only short term, its too fatiguing...

I'm about to record a podcast on Norway at the Winter Olympics - some similarities...

Q1. Norway bans scorekeeping until 12 and then embarrasses countries ten times their size on an Olympic medal table. What’s going on there?

It only looks like a contradiction if you think development is driven by pressure. It isn’t.

The logic is quite straightforward: remove the scoreboard, and you remove the sense of threat. Remove the threat, and children can actually pay attention to what they’re doing. They learn movement, coordination, and how to deal with difficulty... not just how to cope with being evaluated.

In Norway, around 93% of children take part in organised sport. The guiding idea is simple: sport should be enjoyable. That’s the priority.

Compare that with Australia, where many children lose interest early, and a significant number stop playing altogether by their mid-teens. Despite strong facilities, good weather, and a deep sporting culture, participation still drops off.

The difference isn’t resources. It’s timing. Norway delays competition until children are ready for it. They give them years to build skills, confidence, and enjoyment first...without unnecessary pressure.

Later, the results speak for themselves. A small country performs well above its size on the Olympic stage, not because it pushed harder early on, but because it didn’t.

It’s a long-term approach. Calm, patient, and difficult for most systems to stick with and effective.

Edited 15 hours ago15 hr by Engorged Onion

Was also interesting to hear when he was talking about the casual clothes, that for the past couple of years something like that would have leaked to the media early in the week but this year it was kept quiet. Sort of crazy that even the players were aware of how much we were leaking.

Is it now safe to assume the leak is either no longer at the club or has finally been silenced?

41 minutes ago, Engorged Onion said:

Best motivator in the world is 'fear' (getting dropped, shame from teammates coach etc etc) it works, but only short term, its too fatiguing...

I'm about to record a podcast on Norway at the Winter Olympics - some similarities...

Q1. Norway bans scorekeeping until 12 and then embarrasses countries ten times their size on an Olympic medal table. What’s going on there?

It only looks like a contradiction if you think development is driven by pressure. It isn’t.

The logic is quite straightforward: remove the scoreboard, and you remove the sense of threat. Remove the threat, and children can actually pay attention to what they’re doing. They learn movement, coordination, and how to deal with difficulty... not just how to cope with being evaluated.

In Norway, around 93% of children take part in organised sport. The guiding idea is simple: sport should be enjoyable. That’s the priority.

Compare that with Australia, where many children lose interest early, and a significant number stop playing altogether by their mid-teens. Despite strong facilities, good weather, and a deep sporting culture, participation still drops off.

The difference isn’t resources. It’s timing. Norway delays competition until children are ready for it. They give them years to build skills, confidence, and enjoyment first...without unnecessary pressure.

Later, the results speak for themselves. A small country performs well above its size on the Olympic stage, not because it pushed harder early on, but because it didn’t.

It’s a long-term approach. Calm, patient, and difficult for most systems to stick with and effective.

Great answer to that question EO.

I'd add that in the Australian context I reckon a big factor in participation drop off is how sports like athletics, soccer, basketball and Australian rules football all have entrenched pathway systems that aim to funnel the supposedly best players into the elite level (eg AFL).

My son was a pretty decent basketballer, and played at representative level. Domestic level basketball, which he had to continue ayimg, became a chore, and it showed. Which of course irritated teamates who only played at the domestic level (and me as coach!).

One he plateaued, and it became evident he wasn't going to get any higher, his interest in basketball dropped. And he stopped playing all together.

I read a few years back that one theory why Australian soccer has failed to replicate the so called Golden generation that saw us punch well above our weight at an international level and have mutiple players playing at the highest domstic levels (eg EPL, Serie A etc) was during that era there were less rigid elite pathways and players were not so 'over coached'

Rather than being funneled off to eite rep teams, players like Viduka, Cahill, Kewell and Aloisi played in their clubs junior teams before being promoted into their club's senior teams (tgough from memory kewell went straight to Europe).

The theory was that by staying with their club, they played with their mates, enjoyed their footy and were able to play instinctively amd with more freedom and creativity than would have been the case if they were taken out of that environment and put on an elite pathway with all the attendant coaching, discipline and training.

The other part of the equation is by staying at their junior club for longer all their teammates benefited from playing with super talented players.

A related point is young players develop at different rates, amd having quality teammates helped their development amd made it more possible to get to a higher level.

The bottom line is despite a massive increase in participation and the development of talent spotting and elite pathways we are producing fewer world class players (particularly strikers) than we did in the mid eighties to the mid nineties.

I'm convinced that the same issue is a big factor in the appalling drop in the number of indigenous players in the AFL.

Edited 12 hours ago12 hr by binman

Hey @binman - the basketball and soccer examples really resonate... It's not just the kids who plateau that lose out. The whole environment that made development possible gets hollowed out.

I wanted to say that where it gets complicated -is what happens when you take the same logic into elite sport . Because suddenly the whole frame flips. Maybe what JVR was subtly acknowledging between Goodwin v King.

The same logic should apply just as clearly in elite sport. But somehow it doesn't. Elite sport culture is still largely running on pretty archaic ideas about how to get performance out of people. Fear is still the default tool. Getting dropped. Shame, The coach's look. And honestly? It works. Short term, fear drives compliance, effort, showing up.

The culture sees the results and reinforces it. We dress it up as toughness and move on. And anyone who questions it gets told they don't understand what it takes at that level. The nervous system doesn't really care what level you're playing at though . Sustained threat (perceived) is expensive. Look at how JVR's career arguably has plateaued.

So when you're under 'threat' it costs you attentionally, physically and emotionally.

And what the research keeps showing is that the capacities elite performance actually depends on... reading the play, adapting in real time, making good decisions when it matters.. those are exactly the things that start to go quiet under pressure that the brain perceives or experiences (not just in game, but the entire FD ecosystem). You end up with athletes who are physically capable, but cant execute... Not because they lack character. Because the environment has been teaching them over and over, that mistakes carry a cost....

Look at the beautiful Fages and Brisvegas (sure there are other narratives there re: concessions etc).

The indigenous AFL point deserves its own conversation. That's a real and profound loss. And I'd guess the same thread runs through it... somewhere along the way, the environment stopped feeling safe as an overall (well, arguably it never has)...

Edited 11 hours ago11 hr by Engorged Onion
edited with a bit of ai to fluff up my writing as I am cooked...

I’m sure it’s a great interview but I listened to 4 minutes of absolute floggery from the hosts and developed a severe hatred for their voices before I even got to the bit I was there to listen to, and could go no further. Not sure if I’m getting old or what but my tolerance for this kind of “media” has never been lower.

18 minutes ago, Nasher said:

4 minutes of absolute floggery

🤌