More than I can chew?

I think I've done it out of spite! A BBC Breakfast interview and a One Show segment say that somewhere between 9th and 16th January most of our good intentions are abandoned. Not that I had any good intentions in particular, but I definitely don't like the feeling that I'm becoming an easily predicted statistic. So, in two moments of foolish exuberance, I've entered a 10k and a triathlon. It's not that 10k is hard. It's not. In that event, I'm actually worried about my time, not about finishing. In the tri, it's different. I can swim. I can ride a bike. I can run. But can I fit them together into a coherent cooperation where one doesn't leave me totally finished before the next has even begun? Is the whole experience going to leave me as a statistic of a different kind - a paramedic's?!

So, I'm allowing comments. How should I approach the day? What's the best pre-match brekkie? Is the general idea to take the swim and bike easy and use everything left in the locker on the run? It's a pool swim - should I learn to tumble turn? If I do get a few opportunities to train, should I do the distances for the race or do longer so the race seems easier?

Anyway, that's enough from me - I need to take out some insurance.

Manager or Coach?

Where does one start and the other end? It’s always fascinated me what the pros do on the training field. Given that they’re already that good, what is left for them to be coached on? What has Graham Gooch got to tell Alistair Cook? What has Dave Alred got to impart to Jonny Wilkinson? (Although I hear he is more often on the golf tee than the kicking tee).

I think it would be helpful to all onlookers if the two roles were properly defined and distinguished. From what I have read, it was Clive Woodward’s ability to create an atmosphere of professionalism that made his players feel valued and supported to do the business on the pitch. But that’s logistics isn’t it? Not the nitty gritty of lineout calls and effective running lines. It’s creating an environment and an ethos. To use Army terminology, one’s the commanding officer, the other’s the regimental sergeant major. Ones on the bridge, the other’s in the engine room. One’s a manager, the other’s the coach.

In my line of work, a headmaster creates a feeling within a school. His or her character is all over the day to day running of the institution but in a way that is often intangible and hard to describe.  Surely the same is true in sport. I have no doubt that Alex Ferguson’s character is stamped all over the training field at Manchester United but on a day to day basis, how much does he have to do with the coaching of players? If the answer is not much, as I increasingly think it might be, then why are the managers and not the coaches sacked for the poor play of their team? Shouldn’t managers be sacked for poor planning or ill discipline in their squad? As Brian Ashton told me, he was never allowed to pick his own coaching team and back room staff and yet he was sacked for the poor performance of the England rugby team. Interestingly, I think many if not all of the coaches stayed on to see other managers come and go. But Ashton was always described as a brilliant coach who should never have been given the role of manager with all the extra baggage that entails.  

On that basis, are we safe to say that a great coach will not necessarily make a great manager, that a great teacher will not necessarily make a great headmaster or that a superb RSM will not necessarily make a talismanic CO? If so, then why does sport in general seem so increasingly preoccupied with putting ex-players in positions of management? I couldn’t coach a professional but I’m pretty sure that, with appropriate training, I could manage one. There have been many examples of fantastic sporting leaders coming from a beginning in the classroom. Why is that? Communication skills? Planning? Delivery? Isn’t sport missing a trick by not opening up management to people who can manage. Shouldn’t Sport Britain Plc have a program for the development of managers across all disciplines where coaching is seen as an entirely different concern?

Even in golf, where one might think a coach and caddy were all a player needs, Rory McIlroy feels he has a better chance of getting where he wants to go without Chubby Chandler. Even though Chubby manages so many greats.

So let’s see the two roles for what they are because good management makes us more than the sum of our parts.  

Tommy Curtis - need a manager?