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Today was our main session day and involved the same routines as those practiced in Sydney. Team meeting, training preparation, bus ride and then train. There isn’t a great deal of glamour and shine about the process, just a need to work hard and prepare ourselves for the next big game. We don’t get long to train in the current climate and so we have to make sure we are efficient and effective in what we do.
One great thing about hub life to date that I am noticing is the positive energy created by having our whole list along for the ride. Sure, we won last week and winning certainly helps your mood but having 46 competitive mates around you also helps create an optimistic atmosphere. There is more time inside the hub than normal to get to know new information about each other. Mealtimes, breakfast, lunch and dinner provide one example of an opportunity you have to chat and converse about life with teammates.
Yes, these moments provide chances to find out more about someone’s life story but they also provide the chance to pick up on the more subtle personality traits of each other. How he holds his knife and fork, the way he sits at the table or the manner in which he eats. These are important cues we could all reel off about our own family, things we see all the time that become their habits, their idiosyncrasies.
These are the things that come to make relationships with our family members so valuable. We learn to notice when these habits and idiosyncrasies differ from the norm. We can pick up when something is wrong, when a mood isn’t a reflection of normal. A great team is formed by spending time with each other because only through time and contact are we able to get to a stage where we know each other’s tendencies like those of our families.
How does knowing this help? In a team sport where you are reliant on each other knowing how your teammate will react and move is predictable and team success is so often the result of predictability. So understanding how a team mate holds his knife and fork might not seem like something worth knowing, but over time that understanding of the knife and fork hold grows and at some point in time in a big game you might just react a split second quicker because your understanding of what your team mate was going to do is as strong as that you would have with any member at your family dinner table.
Quiz question answers below.
1. Harry Taylor
