IT is said that one cannot buy experience, no matter what walk of life one finds one in. Many of the ancient cultures placed great importance on experience, and valued the wisdom and knowledge of its senior citizens.
Of course, experience only becomes valuable if one learns from it. Unfortunately, in life most people tend to learn from their mistakes.
I have found that many of the observations that I have made about life, in general, can be applied to the world of my sporting involvement, and similar principles from sport can be applied to the life.
Whether one is involved as a player or participant, a coach or administrator, most of the same principles are relevant.
The great performances in sport don’t just happen. It is not simply achieved by just getting the 15 best footballers in the country together and they suddenly produce a great performance.
No doubt Tyrone’s Mickey Harte would agree that their winning this year’s All-Ireland senior football final was the accumulation of hundreds of small but relevant details.
Anyone involved in sport, at any level, will know that there are no big things in sport, only a logical accumulation of many little things that are done at the highest standard.
Experience plays a big part in identifying what are the important small but relevant details, which are essential in order to be successful.
One must avoid spending many hours perfecting small, irrelevant details that bear no relevance to the end result. All the small but relevant things done to the highest intensity is what won Tyrone this year’s All-Ireland football final.
Whether in business or in sport, failure in attention to detail, inevitably leads to poor performance.
This year’s near-perfect performance by the Kilkenny hurlers, in their All-Ireland final win over Waterford, did not just happen because the team all hailed from Kilkenny.
It was the result of Brian Cody and his management team deciding what were the nuts and bolts of a perfect performance that was required.
Some of these would have been to perfect the basic skills such as striking, hooking, catching, soloing, etc, and practising these details to the highest intensity.
On the team play aspect of things, they would have spent hours perfecting physicality, their support play and, above all, their ability to close down and pressurise the opposition.
They would have focussed on hundreds of other relevant small things in their preparations because they would have known from experience that there are no big things in sport.
They know that it is the little things in sport that make the big things happen.
One of the aspects in gaelic football that gives me the greatest enjoyment is to observe creative geniuses such as Colm Cooper, Mikey Sheehy or Maurice Fitzgerald do the unexpected or something unique in the heat of battle in a championship game.
These are the things that cannot be coached. This is the unique, creative talent that they have and, in my opinion, should not be inter-fered with.
The danger lies here in the modern game of these creative geniuses being over coached and, therefore, destroying their creativity.
In sport, the manager is trying to harness all the resources in order to play to a set plan, while on the other hand, he must allow the creative player enough room to express himself.
In fact, most players want and need to be playing to a set plan but the Colm Coopers of this world of sport, to a certain degree, must be given the room and the scope to express themselves as well.
In fact, one of the major problems associated with modern professionalism in sport is the whole idea of ‘paralysis by analysis’ whereby creativity is being stifled out of the game by over analysis.
Most of the really creative play-ers in every sport learn the game as kids on the street. They express themselves in a carefree manner.
Their secret is that they bring that carefree approach to the big occasion.
They do no worry about the consequences of their play and the ‘what if I make a mistake?’ feeling that normal players might feel. They let it flow, enjoy it and they have no fear of failure.
I have no doubt that they get anxious, like the rest of us do before games. The difference is that they didn’t allow that anxiety get in the way of expressing themselves.
Experience has taught me that you give these geniuses the room to express themselves, and that sometimes they approach the game differently to the other players.
This does not necessarily mean that they are less serious than the others - just horses for courses.
Education is the sum of experience and how we learn from it. More often than not, we learn from our mistakes in sport. It’s trial and error.
Experience has taught me that it is by addressing the small but relevant details, with the highest of standards, that will make the big things in sport happen.
Experience has also taught one that in order for geniuses to flourish, they must be given the space and the opportunity to blossom and express themselves.
So much for experience!
