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Team
player: Joe El-Abd
©
RCN Toulon |
Toulon flanker and FRC columnist Joe El Abd
this week asks how easy (or difficult) is it to judge an
individual performance within a team sport.
One thing you learn
quickly when you’re out in France is that the Midi
Olympique published every Monday and Friday is French
rugby’s equivalent to the bible. Each week the games are
previewed and reviewed with all the top performances being
singled out for praise.
As a professional rugby
player you expect to get judged on a week to week basis and
it's certainly the case out here in the Top 14. Players are
awarded ‘etoiles’ (stars) for good performances and its
always interesting to read how the reporters have viewed the
match. For what is clear in a sport such as rugby is that
judging how well a player has performed is no easy task. As
a consequence everyone has his or her own opinions on what
makes up a good performance and it always throws up much
debate. So what do I think you need to look for when judging
a performance?
For me the first
determinant of whether a player has played well is how
effectively he has performed his role within the team. This
sounds a simple concept and it is, but when judging from the
touchlines it is not always easy to know what role each
player has been given to perform. This is because each team
requires each position to perform different roles depending
on their style of play.
For example, players
roles can differ in the line-out, in different patterns of
play or in the defensive structure. Therefore unless you’ve
been privileged to have spent time inside the camp of a
team, knowing the exact role of each player is not simple.
Without this inside knowledge would you from the stands be
able to tell which player missed a call and therefore a lift
at a lineout? Or would you know which player was supposed to
clear the ruck when the team got turned over? I certainly
don’t have all the answers but performing your role within
the team certainly provides a basis on which a good
performance can be built.
The next part to look
for in a good performance is an absence of mistakes within a
player's game. This may sound negative but a player surely
can’t have played well if he has made numerous mistakes
during the match, even if he did score the winning try. The
problem with mistakes is that they only really get noticed
if they lead to noticeable consequences for the team. Is
there a difference between a missed tackle that lets the
opposition score to one that does not? So for me when
judging performance mistakes need to be taken into account.
What you will find is that the best players rarely make
errors during a game.
So I think that if a
player has performed his role in the team and made very few
errors, then he can be said to have performed well. What
separates the good performances from the very good
performances are the extra things often visible to those in
the stands. The big tackle, the line-out steal, the great
pass or the great break, the things that often get the crowd
standing on their feet. The problem comes when you judge
solely on these visible aspects of the game while forgetting
about the first two building blocks already mentioned. Has a
player performed well if he has scored a great try but
missed four tackles during the match? Again I only have
questions and not answers but what I have found is that the
top players seem to get the building blocks right every week
and more often than not finish off the performance with some
style.
As you can see judging
performances is not as simple as it seems, as there are
always things to think about when watching a match. To make
it easier I’m just going to stick to reading the Midi
Olympique!
A bientot
Previous columns:
27.10.09 -
Why I relish the role of 'gratteur', and the key to back row success
21.10.09 -
'My brothers think I'm mad when they see all my rugby scars'
07.10.09 -
'I keep telling them Rovigo is not Rome, but they're still excited'
28.09.09 -
'The three-part conundrum of winning
away in France'
22.09.09 -
'There's more to Jonny than just kicking'
14.09.09 -
Lesson number 1 - 'Pas de melée,
pas de victoire'
08.09.09 -
'The money's good, but so is the
weather, the rugby and the
crowds'
