Grr-owl

I'm totally with you. I suspect that the corporate PR management-speak that he dishes out in press conferences manifests itself within the organization as performance reviews, vision documents, all kinds of other micro-management horses*it that results in people groaning in mental fatigue in front of screens, ticking and not-ticking boxes. I have a feeling that Lockhart was dropped because some box somewhere wasn't ticked; otherwise I can't see a reason why the successful backline of Harmes, May, Lever, Tomlinson, Salem, Lockhart and Hibberd was disturbed (okay, Harmes was being wasted in the first place) and Smith brought back in to play where he has only failed. I can think of more examples. I want to get off my chest why I think this kind of thinking is so bad. I work in an English Department at a University located somewhere between Beijing and Paris. Last week we were asked to analyze the top ten English departments around the world and develop a step by step plan to bring our department into alignment with them so the university can achieve its goal of being among the best in the world. Whatever we come up with will need to be cross referenced and aligned with various local and national goals as articulated in a multitude of other action plans and vision documents and requirements of accreditation bodies and so forth. Well, you might be able to guess the immediate and overwhelming obstacle to achieving that goal: our students aren't the best in the world. In fact, some of them make it into my classes without being able to write a coherent sentence. And yet, we are required to endure the grind of producing that document, devoting time and energy that could be better spent on genuinely productive stuff such as..... let me think.... hmm... teaching them how to write a coherent sentence. Somewhere some people in the organisation are fooling themselves. That's the f*@#ing problem.

I dunno which thread to write this in and I don't want to start another, so I'm going to say it here, flaky as it is. I've sensed in the last few injury videos that Burgo kinda feels like he's wasting his time. Seems a serious bloke when it comes to his business. Just a feeling. Hope I'm wrong.

Where were the options? It was just long, long long, no movement, no run..... The game this thread has so beautifully teased out seemed forgotten. What can explain this ongoing lack of awareness?

Alan..... stop masquerading as nsoupforme. We've had it, okay? Back to the rumpus room...

We got to get him back into the club ASAP.

Well, Optus is clearly the best ground, but politically the Gabba is the place to hold it. Having said that, having it at Optus might just mitigate the sense of alienation and discrimination the West feels and be thererefore worth it for that. Eh... the Gabba management have been unhelpful to footy over the years, so give it to them and give them an opportunity to appreciate it, if for nothing more than the flood of money it would bring to the organization.

To invoke a cliche, it would be about which is the better team on the day, and we aren't that consistently enough.

Polec or Williams or Saad. Heard On the Slouch that Saints and Blues are going hard for Williams....

Just wanna give a nod to Binman for opening this thread, then to he and EO and AoB and AF and everyone else who've chipped in. I'm now convinced that Goodwin is onto something that will gives the team an advantage. Now all we need is a couple more players to lift the skill level, a bit of development, and the confidence to implement the plan under pressure. A couple more seasons and we could be top four consistently...

First time I’ve been thankful that Viney doesn’t have any outside run...

He looked it. Heavy legs at times.

Do you think Oliver ran enough? I saw him plodding along behind the ball a number of times, never catching up. Acurally I pondered if he was injured.....

I am fighting my anxiety with positive thoughts. In other words, I’m begging for a win.

I reckon. The mere fact of acknowledging it would mean that blokes individually and as a group could discuss strategies for dealing with it. Given our team’s inconsistency, I wonder if something could be improved on that front — could the psychological realities be more honestly addressed???

The Guardian article is awesome. Will have a go at getting the book. Now I know that when I sensed a team of scientists had been brought in to study the game while my back was turned (18 years or so) I was not entirely off. Was also pleased to read about he blowback re rotations. Had long suspected it must have been very tough to change attitudes about that. Even now we hear Carey and others declaring their failure to understand why teams bring players off after kicking goals. It’s simple: it’s better overall to bring a bloke off when he’s done something good than when he’s done something bad. Psychology.

Great post. Great article. Useful advice in any walk of life. And, yes, mindfulness is more than achieving a desirable state of mind, it’s about pure observation. I might derive from it a conclusion that our team needs to embrace the experience of footy, the positives and negatives, the ups and downs, the pain and the pleasure, as a totality, and understand that whole as a positive. That’s getting a bit woo woo, but I reckon you know what I mean. At this point I want to bring something up which I reckon has damaged the group. The pain of the Prelim loss against WC was allowed to linger. I think it has given the group an anxiety of winning. That is, once their performance is high, they embrace the result for a while, but then at the back of the mind is the knowledge that high performance leads to pain, and bad practice creeps in. Not sure what the term is — Success Anxiety? Perhaps this mechanism is also at work in the the drop off of Adelaide after a GF loss, and GWS, possibly.

Gee, we’re getting into some meaty stuff now... I find the difference between perceived effort and actual effort fascinating. When you’re up and about, you can go and go and go and it feels easy. But when you’re flat, just getting out of bed can leave you breathless. Everything seems a chore, but you’ve done bugger all. The best performers in any field narrow the gap between their best and worst by combining technical proficiency with mindfulness. That is, they have elite skills that shine when their confidence is high, and when their confidence and energy is low, they are aware of it and take steps to rectify the situation or, if not that, to maximise their performance given the circumstances. Hard work, that. Nobody can be always on top of their game. That is the dynamic which makes test cricket so fascinating. Even Hendrix blew hot and cold, but nobody ever worked harder at the fundamentals than he. Interesting to note that friends knew he was in trouble when he began turning up places without a guitar; he’d stopped working so hard and lost his way. Where do energy and confidence come from? The players have to work that one out in their own minds.

He was a gun at Port and I was stunned we didn’t go hell for leather for him. I s’pose we couldn’t match what North were offering, which was overs, so no contest. Now that he realises Norf is nowhere near what he expected, his performances have dropped, but his competitive spirit might still crave a club that needs him and could help him reach his potential. MFC should do all they have to to get him and Zac Williams.

Spot on. Two things: 1. Work rate. 2 Consistency. I reckon 2 will come when the team realises that 1 is the only way to a premiership, and that will bring confidence.

Agreed. Regarding confidence, what I saw last week was the team reverting to poor practice under stress. That is, for three weeks they tried the system, found that it worked and so were encouraged to continue. It even worked against the Filth, happily, though diminished as they were. But then, against a determined, energetic, committed and physical opposition, we lost faith. There was a moment in the 4th when we were coming... Trac dashed from the middle, thought again, Hollywooded a handball instead of kicking it, which resulted in a turnover that led to the final Dog goal. My gut turned. Hope drained from me like an Englishman's bathwater... So, IMHO, we have the right system. We just need one or two more players to fit the necessary roles, a season or two for others to develop... and to trust ourselves under pressure on the big stage.

Sam Harris's podcasts go into this issue regularly. Anyone interested should listen to the one about Child Sexual Abuse Material, usually misnomed as Child Pornography -- a tough listen generally, but enlightening regarding the willingness or lack of it of big tech to do something about it. Turns out that Facebook is doing good work up to a point -- questions remain about the level of resources devoted to it given their astronomical revenue. But as for the others.... they are doing fundamentally nothing. There's very little incentive. One solution posited by Scott Galloway #189 is to break them up and force competition upon the market. That way, freedom from bovine excrement could be a feature that many of us would gravitate toward, leaving the rear-orifices alone in their own little bubbles, salivating over each other's ignorance.

One thing I keep noticing is that in our best games, I see our midfield running two ways with urgency. When we're down, I don't notice it. It could be me.....

Freudian....

How about broken tackles. I’m having A recurring nightmare in which a demon meekly reaches after a bulldog as it breaks into space.

Imagine what will happen when they roll out the vaccine...