Pampered stars should remember thereÕs no i(pod) in team

Date Published: {J}

An abiding memory of covering inter-provincial rugby match before they got sexy was the sight of the then-Irish international back row Willie Duggan during a Leinster team talk – he was standing on the dressing room bench blowing his cigarette smoke out the window.

You knew Willie was an international because instead of a tracksuit, he was wearing a sheepskin coat over his gear; it kept him warm and it was somewhere for him to keep his twenty fags.

Fast forward to Connacht’s recent clash with Munster at the Sportsground and the sight of two of the visitors warming up beforehand – wearing massive headphones so that they could do their stretches to some hip-hop hero of the working classes.

The embattled Hull City managerial consultant – whatever happened to mere managers? – Iain Dowie is a man who might still believe that headphones are a verb as opposed to a noun in that he may well have practiced his aerial technique by having coin boxes lobbed at him from outside the box.

But the former Northern Ireland striker had a point recently when he claimed that personal stereos were wrecking team spirit because everyone spent the bus journey to matches, just chillin’ and listening to toons.

You see them getting off the bus before a big game, one after another in a world of their own with headphones that a radio DJ would be proud of.

They may look focused but mainly they look disinterested and they are certainly not bonding or thinking about the task in hand.

Of course we don’t need a return to the card schools where fortunes were won and lost at the back of the bus or to drinking schools where players were left with sore heads rather than headphones.

But Dowie hit the nail on the head when he said that this iPod generation leave the ground and go away to their closeted little lives instead of realising what got them to where they are and what impact they can have on the lives of so many others.

If they’re not on the internet or itunes, they’re on the mobile – doing anything other than building team spirit with those around them.

Liverpool boss Rafa Benitez claimed last week that his squad’s long journey to Madrid actually strengthened team spirit through bonding even though they were beaten at the end of it – but of course after the season they’ve had, introducing themselves to each other would count as progress.

Towards the end of his international career, England defender Gareth Southgate observed that when the squad were together at the end of the day, those sitting round a table having a chat and swapping experiences were the older players. The younger ones had scuttled off to their rooms and their laptops, DVDs, video games and so on.

Current Brazilian coach and former captain Dunga saw the arrival of the mobile phone as a massive blow to team unity; having captained the side that won the 1994 World Cup, he saw their defence fall apart in France – partly because Ronaldo got the runs but also, he believes, because the squad spent all their time talking on the phone.

In 1994 they were almost unheard of in Brazil – but by 1998 all the players had them. And so the outside world was continually allowed in, interfering with the focus of the group, undermining the process by which a team gels and the collective unit becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.