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Locked-in: Harry in action for Tarbes |
FRC
columnist and Tarbes lock Harry Spencer
gives his thoughts on what makes some clubs
successful while others either flounder, or appear
happy to plod along in mid-table obscurity...
One month ago a team-mate of mine
wrote on his Facebook wall “Cherch club avec
ambition!!” which, to those of you who don’t
know, translates as "Searching for a club with
ambition!!". It got me thinking, and over this
past month I have gone over it many times. What is
it that players look for in a club or team? How
important is it? What characterises 'ambition'?
My first thoughts take me back
about three years; I was a new addition to the
Saracens academy at the time and we were coming to
the end of my first season with the club. Then, if
you were to ask someone to describe Saracens as a
team you may well have come across the terms
“Mid-table”, “Making up the numbers” and “Team of
mercenaries”. However harsh these might seem, they
were ultimately true.
Fast-forward two years and
Saracens took part in their first premiership final
and only lost in the last five minutes to an
all-conquering Leicester Tigers. Few had seen such a
dramatic turnaround in such a short space of time.
Let alone a repeat of that this season. What has
happened? How has it happened? Why has it happened?
Ambition
is at the heart of any successful club
Ambition, you probably could have
guessed from the start of this article, is at the
heart of any successful club. Chairmen and CEOs need
ambition to keep backing their team to achieve their
goal, and coaches require ambition to continuously
seek new ways of improving training and tactics.
Most of all, players need ambition in order to
constantly strive for improvement and success. It is
this ambition for improvement that I believe is the
difference between the mid-table mediocrity and the
repetitive success of the top teams in world rugby.
It may seem pretty obvious that
an ambition to improve and win is the key to
success, but I do think that this ethos is often
lost in the modern world of professional rugby and
the businesses that most clubs have become. What
many people don’t see is that success breeds
success and without that ambition the ‘business’
is destined to produce negative returns.
So, going back two years, in club
house just outside of St Albans in rural
Hertfordshire, a new Chief Executive and Director of
Rugby were unveiled, bringing with them a great
passion for success, and the ambition required to
transform Saracens into one of the top teams in
England. They assembled a good squad of like-mined
and enthusiastic players, giving them the
opportunity to prove themselves at the top level.
They invested in the players' welfare, looking after
them as if they were part of a large family, similar
to how I believe Northampton have done during their
ascension after regaining their place at the top
table. Being well looked after, the players had no
excuse but to focus on their performance and their
ambition to succeed.
Shared goals
I think it is an important lesson
for clubs to learn, that if they look after their
players, then the players are free to focus on their
performance and improvement as athletes, and
essentially employees of the club. If all members of
that squad then buy into the shared goals and
ambitions of the group and stick by that, then they
are well on their way on the road to success. If,
however, players take advantage of the club or don’t
buy in to the team ethos, problems are bound to
occur. A key example of this is Gavin Henson’s
recent foray into the premiership; clearly a
talented player, I have been told his attitude
conflicted with that of the Saracens squad, and sure
enough, problems arose, and his premiership
experiment ended prematurely. These problems also
seem to have followed him to Toulon, where you can
see that there is clearly a tight-knit team spirit.
This also works in reverse. If
the clubs take advantage or mistreat players, this
allows their attention to shift, often out of
necessity, to off-field matters. When ambition to
succeed becomes the least of their worries, the
performance of the team and the atmosphere at the
club suffers, leading to somewhat of a snowball
effect which is very difficult to halt without
wholesale change within the club.
Players often find themselves with two options,
either finding a club who share similar goals and
ambitions, or try and have an input into their
current club by making suggestions for improvement.
The latter option is potentially the more difficult
due to the hierarchy within a team environment,
where not everyone sees the same way, and the
balance of power is unequal.
Feel free to
share your views, thoughts and opinions on anything to do
with French rugby in the frenchrugbyclub.com forum. Is Harry
right about ambition, and can that 'ambition' be bought? Join
in the debate and get those Gallic (or should that be
garlic?) juices flowing...
Forum
Previous Columns:
22.03.2011:
There is something
strangely satisfying about a good old rant
16.02.2011:
Land Rovers, Limoges and learning the
language - Life as a ProD2 lock
Harry
Spencer Biog: Harry Spencer plays in the second
row at Tarbes Pyrenees Rugby. Before joining in the
summer of 2010 he had spent three years at Saracens
Rugby Club as part of their academy, which also
included brief loan spells at Southend, London Welsh
and a season-long loan with Bedford Blues last year,
as well as representing Devon in the County
Championship and being part of the England Counties
tour to Canada in June 2010 . He started playing
rugby as his main sport when he was 17, after
playing cricket, basketball and football whilst
growing up. He attended Ivybridge Community College
and hails from Plymouth, having made his debut for
Plymouth Albion while still at school.
