Taking Responsibility

Midway through Saturday morning’s session, Olof lit my fuse and it has triggered this entry. ‘Taking responsibility’ is a phrase you hear thrown around quite a bit. It has been especially prominent in my mind in recent weeks playing with FC Irlande. When the opposition launch a ball into our box, silence descends on the defenders. Guys don’t call for the ball until the very last moment and that inevitably creates opportunities where you can have two lads collide (or totally leave the ball) and an opposing attacker reaping the reward.

The root of this is a fear to commit, because you don’t have the confidence to finish the job. This is a practice that merely provides a platform for failure. In the FC Irlande situation, reading the game and communicating amongst each other is paramount. Spot the danger early, make the decision and execute. You must have the confidence in each other that ye can get the job done. You can’t stand back, you must anticipate and take the responsibility. Instead, we are still at the stage where we shift the blame and stand behind excuses.

Olof and I were in the same group for a ball drill yesterday morning. I was involved in each of the first three possessions and when I was running back after the third I heard Olof say ‘Barrett, that’s three in a row’, referring to the fact that the play had broken down and the tone implied I was key to that! Straight away I reflected on each possession and started to defend my role in it i.e. search for excuses. As individuals we can all come up with a way of exonerating ourselves from blame and that was my initial reaction. That’s not the attitude to have though. I didn’t react at all to Olof but his message got through and when I went through each possession, instead of looking to defend my position in it, I tried to look for what I could have done better.

Another example from yesterday was in the warm-up. A few lads were quiet and not calling names. When I told one to become more vocal he turned to me and said he didn’t know a fella’s name. That’s another excuse to a situation that is solved simply by asking the fella his name.

Going back to Friday night’s session, we were able to reel out the excuses why we didn’t perform well at it; we had sat for 2hrs at a talk, it was 21h30 on a Friday night, we hadn’t eaten since 12. Conor Counihan talks about controlling the controllables. Some of those were indeed out of our control but others, like managing your own eating, is completely in your hands.

In 2009, we had an excuse every time we failed with the possible exception of the last tournament in Maastricht were we held our hands up and said we were not good enough and the responsibility lay with ourselves and our commitment.

Olof asked Mike about how to handle the unique tournament format we have where we spend a lot of time travelling on a Friday and then have a disjointed day of matches. Mike also talked about controlling the controllables; there are factors that you can’t change like the travel or the schedule. You should override this as much as possible by doing the other things right like hydrating properly, resting properly and eating properly. That responsibility lays at the feet of the player.

It’s a culture which I have been guilty of being part of in the past but one we are going to totally eradicate from the club this year, if I have anything to do with it. We have a number of phrases which we will use to trigger our thinking about different parts of our game. Taking responsibility is going to be high on the list.