The word “team” is used so liberally now to describe a collection of people with a common purpose. I’ve worked in several “teams” in my professional life that weren’t really teams. We just shared a common supervisor and divvied up the work.
There are teams that are exactly the sum of their parts; there are teams that are less than the sum of their parts; there are teams that are greater than the sum of their parts. The latter is what makes sports like volleyball satisfying – even when you lose against teams that are equal to or less than the sum of their parts.
In some of the programs I have been involved with, many of the decisions on how kids are coached, and at what level of competitions they will compete have been made by what chances they will have of winning. As a sport that is constantly the poorer cousin of more established sports, the coaches of these programs have been pre-occupied with ensuring the players win a medal in order to get an enjoyable experience. This often results in short-sighted coaching and teams being entered in competitions that are of a lower standard. The fear is, if kids don’t win a medal, they won’t keep playing. Kids need quick wins to stay motivated.
Daniel Coyle’s The Talent Code offers an interesting insight into how people become experts in various fields. Becoming an expert requires an individual to invest 10,000 hours of uncomfortable practice. What makes them choose to do this is described as “ignition” – a moment where they receive a vision of what they wish to become, or an event that pushes them that way. The book describes how Anna Kournikova’s appearance in the semi finals of Wimbledom ignited several young girls at her Spartak Tennis School to follow the path and become world class tennis players. Interestingly, the book doesn’t mention anything about quick wins. There’s no part in the book where a successful person gained a love for something to invest 10000 hours of practice into because they won something easily young.
So the question is, can ignition be a stronger motivator than generating a quick win? This became the thematic question when I coached my most recent team of U15 girls at the national championship. At an age where winning comes from playing a low risk/moderate reward game that doesn’t translate to a higher level, our team’s philosophy was to play a higher risk game. The rules were simple: 1) Max Jump on every spike; 2) Take on the block; 3) Lead with the platform in reception and lateral pass when possible; 4) Pass the ball high and in front of the attack line; 5) The setter’s rules (if you watch the video, we’re still working on it!).
This team philosophy exposed the team to losing more points. Although we did win in our practice games and tournaments, we lost sets and games to beatable opponents and often only barely beat teams we were much “better” than. In many games we’d score most of our opponent’s points as we kept swinging high and hard at the ball while the other team served in with a fist and played most of their balls over the net with digs, sets or standing spikes.
To get players to buy into this, I used a lot of “ignition” – I showed a lot of video examples from the Olympics and deliberately chose clips with big crowds and the Olympic rings prominently in view. In my newsletters I would feature profiles on players the kids could identify with (players who went to the same schools, lived in the same neighbourhoods, played for the same clubs). It also helped that my assistant coach was a current member of the women’s national indoor team, who the team all idolised. We also didn’t talk about reducing errors. We just talked about improving.
The kids really did buy in and committed to the playing principles. They didn’t seem to mind the high expectations – if anything, they seemed to enjoy the pursuit of excellence and that we didn’t “dumb down” anything for them. By the time we reached the tournament, we were still making a lot of errors against conservative teams. Irrespective we managed to win enough games to make the Gold Medal match playing the most attractive and impressive style of volleyball. Ultimately we didn’t win the Gold Medal. We made too many serving errors and didn’t receive serve well enough to dominate with our superior spiking and rallying skills. The kids didn’t seem too shattered and keen to keep improving. Thankfully, their parents who came to watch bought into it too and were proud that their children were setting high expectations for themselves and finding some success.
I was also lucky that the club historically stood for teaching and playing a style of game that was a logical progression to a game at the highest level. The greatest compliment a coach could receive at my club was that they were someone who “didn’t put limits on players”.
Do quick wins motivate? I think they do in the short term. But it takes ignition for someone to invest 10,000 hours of uncomfortable practice into becoming an expert.
All in all it was a good week. The kids all got plenty of meaningful court time, won a medal, got better, had fun and will keep playing. It was also made all the more special because my parents on a whim decided to come watch (the unintended consequence of my aunt selling her spare car was that they had to drop me off at trainings when I flew to Adelaide to coach the team and they would wander in to take a look and took an interest in the team). They helped with taking stats during games which allowed us to quickly put together videos like the one below that we would watch as a team each day.
I wrote yesterday about how handy it was to have a video delay system at trainings that consisted of an iPad mounted on a tripod. Here’s some other things I’ve found handy:
Goodreader. It’s a file management system. The annoying thing about iPads is that you can’t organise your videos and photos into a conventional hierarchy, read *.doc or *.xls files. Goodreader lets you organise stuff into a folder hierarchy and display just about everything. I put all the media (diagrams and video) for my playing systems on there and show video examples before we start a drill
FlipScore. It’s a scoreboard. John Kessell suggested this when I went to his session on the USA Coaching tour. Useful when taking sessions at the AIS as the manual scoreboards and missing some numbers (I know right?).
Having a video delay system at training: PRICELESS*
*As you read in my post it’s not always actually “priceless”
It’s great to see that Moore’s law applies to volleyball and art too. The defining moment for my animation studio was a period when the professional software tools for creating animation could be run on an ordinary household PC. Similarly, we are at a point where technological things that used to cost a fortune to do in sports now cost next to nothing.
The other great breakthrough I discovered recently was in video feedback technology. Quite simply, it’s a system that captures then displays video on a delay, so players can see what their previous actions looked like. Research has shown that it can accelerate skill acquisition.
I’ve seen a couple of systems over the last 5 years, all with a similar recipe: A Laptop with a firewire port; boutique software; a video camera with DV output to firewire; a data projector and white screen or TV display. The Dartfish software I saw cost $2000 at the time Déjà vu cost $300 and Live Video Delay was free. The software could be put on a short delay (5-10 seconds) to see the last action, or a long delay (90-120 seconds) to see multiple reps.
These setups were generally not very portable and suited training environments where they could be set up permanently. In my Performance Analyst role at the Australian Junior Women’s Development Camp last year, I had to set one up for a session, which involved a camera in on a tripod in a referee stand to get a high angle, a viewing area for the screen and data projector and the laptop in between. A lot of cables, and it all had to be close enough to capture the action while being out of the way for the athletes safety. Meanwhile on the other court, 2 coaches had come up with a different solution: one would film a group of players with his iPad; the other would be off to the side showing a group of athletes their last lot of repititions; then they’d swap ipads when the player groups swapped (another simple solution I saw in the US involves a TV on a rolling stand, a camera with RCA outputs, both connected to a cracked TiVo box).
Which brings us to BAM! Live Delay – developed originally for dancers – for the iPad. It’s a $5.49 application from iTunes and the iPad lends itself perfectly as a portable device that can capture AND display video (no laptop, cameras or cables). I always bring my iPad to trainings mounted on a tripod and I can place it close to spikers to see their spiking action, on the net so blockers can see their blocking form, or on the sideline for receivers to see their technique.
What if you don’t want the video to be displayed where it is captured? For example what if you want to put the camera at the back of the court to see the width of the net but don’t want the players to always have to walk back there to see what happened? Chau showed be an even neater trick with BAM! Live Delay – with a wireless router and a $14.99 airserver application, you can wirelessly send the feed from the iPad to another device. In this case, for setting feedback with my U15s, I have put the iPad at the back of the court and my laptop on a desk on the other side of the net directly opposite the setter. The setter only needs to turn to their right to see where the ball went on the last rep.
All this stuff is cool, and studies have shown that it can be effective, but I still have scepticism. Despite its affordability and ease of use, a lot of coaches still don’t bother. A lot of coaches assume that I can do this stuff because I have some technical nous (On closer inspection of our iPads, I’m consistently the coach with the least amount of apps. I’m convinced most of these coaches spend most of their time on their iPads playing Angry Birds). It’s like when animation software became available, why didn’t more small studios spring up? Even when I do set it up, a lot of players don’t look at it. A lot of players don’t like seeing themselves on the screen (I’m starting to think I set it up largely now so that players behave more professionally at training. Even though they don’t use it, they expect to have it now).
The cynic in me believes that technology is not always a catalyst for change. This applies to both players and coaches. If it’s taught me anything, it’s who really can’t be bothered. The players who choose to look at the video and make the adjustments and progressions are the ones that are willing and able to get better. The same goes for coaches.
“I thought one of the most valuable players in the game for us didn’t play, and that was Damon Huard (#19). I thought the look he gave us in the scout team for our defense was fabulous.” – Bill Belichick after the Patriots win over the Baltimore Colts for the AFC Championship
One thing I like about American sports is that they give out championship rings to a broad base of people within the sporting organisation that wins the championship. The NFL pays for 70 rings for the Superbowl winning team to give out to players, coaches, executives, owners, and general staff. It’s a nice way of recognising it takes more than just the people on the field on the day to win a championship (I would probably draw the line at commentators and cheerleaders).
I’ve never liked how Australian Rules Football competitions only recognise the players that play in a grand final when they give out the medals. There have been too many Footballers that have made contributions to their teams to miss out. I’m sure purists will talk about how it’s a big part of the charm of the game that makes it unique and gets people talking – something along he lines of that bullshit Sepp Blatter said about why they shouldn’t use goal line technology after Lampard’s goal was incorrectly disallowed (thankfully he’s recently backflipped).
The good team cultures are the ones that recognise the contribution of players off the field. One story that struck me was the contribution 3rd string quarterback Damon Huard made in the New England Patriots preparation before the AFC championship game against Indianapolis in the 2003-2004 season. The “America’s Game” documentary shows footage of Huard mimicking Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning to a tee including mannerisms, habits and speech to thoroughly help prepare the Patriots defense. Belichick praises his 3rd string quarterback after the game by acknowledging his work in front of the media and team and giving Huard the game ball.
Grantland recently wrote a sentimental yet tongue-in-cheek article on the “12th men” on NBA rosters in the 80s who “enjoyed” long careers. As 7’5 Center Chuck Nevitt, who won a championship with Boston said of his playing days with limited court time:
“My job was preparing the other guys… And I was fine with that.”
In Volleyball, there is ongoing debate over substitutions and court time. I was surprised to hear a coach of a high profile college program in the US explain that he used the 15 sub rule so he could give a generous amount of court time to 9 players and “keep the locker room happy”.
Back home in SA, it’s interesting to see how the various clubs treated their bench players. At some clubs they were peripheral players that were just picked on the day to make up the numbers. Some clubs didn’t train with 12 and would just have their best 7-9 players train on their own while their reserves team trained on the next court. At my last club, #10-#12 on the League men’s team were treated with a lot of fondness and respect by the rest of the team, and it was made clear they were very much part of the team. As a player from another club commented to me “the club makes a bigger deal of what these players do than other clubs would.” It’s probably how they kept good players that could, and should have moved to other clubs for a starting spot.
While I was watching New Year’s Eve fireworks with friends from my volleyball club on Brighton beach (SA), an 18-year-old was killed only a few streets away in a moment of madness that is incomprehensible. We saw ambulances driving past as we headed back to the house but thought nothing of it until news broke. I didn’t know Lewis McPherson personally. He graduated from Brighton secondary, where he played in last year’s Open Honours Boys team. He also won a reserves premiership with USC Lion earlier in the year. It was barely three weeks ago that we sat in the same crowd watching a gold medal match. He had tied a blue helium balloon to his bag to celebrate his 18th birthday. It’s a tragic loss for a family, a community and a sport.
Risk is assessed by likelihood and impact. For example, if a spiker contacts the ball high and aims deep in the court, the likelihood of getting blocked is low and the impact (at worst, the ball stays in play) is relatively low. It’s low risk. At this point it gets interesting. As an IT Project Manager, I’m required to document risk all the time. A lot of it is guesswork as the variables are always changing (technology, budget, scale, scope, organisation, complexity etc). In sport, there is more consistency in the data and likelihood and impact can be more accurately – you have hundreds of games played by the same rules to look through.
Fans don’t often understand or appreciate the role risk plays in a team’s philosophy. Italian Soccer teams were often criticised for playing too defensively in the Catenaccio style. In Soccer Against the Enemy, author Simon Kuper spends a day with Helenio Herrera, the coach credited with popularising the tactic, who vigorously defends that the principle was always to counter attack in situations of advantage. In essence it was a low-risk/high-reward tactic. Perhaps fans just prefer to see a team attack in more than just the advantageous situations that present themselves in a standard soccer match. Playing low-risk/high-reward isn’t necessarily easier than playing high-risk. It demands having a strong defence that can create opportunities to score points while stopping the other team from doing so. Strong defence requires organisation, coordination, skill, discipline, trust, unselfishness and the mindset to do the right thing instead of just being seen to do the right thing.
In business, risk-taking tendencies are often associated with entrepreneurship. In his New Yorker article The Sure Thing, Malcolm Gladwell presents an alternative view of entrepreneurs as having more “predatory” instincts. Predators aren’t risk-takers, but rather attack in a low risk situation when they are at an advantage. The successful entrepreneurs profiled in the article often found a market anomaly, which presented a low-risk/high-reward situation that their competitors failed to recognise, and exploited it until it closed. Often this opportunity isn’t obvious because it presents a high “personal risk” that exposes people to some sort of embarrassment but a low “professional risk”. For example IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad’s decision to get his furniture manufactured in communist Poland in the 1960s presented a small professional risk but a high personal risk in terms of public opinion. Thinking about it in this light, there’s certainly a predatory mindset in playing Catenaccio.
Like business, competitive advantages can be gained in sport by finding different ways of assessing and managing risk. For example, it’s assumed that a block is exposed to the most risk if there are gaps between the blockers and their hands. I was surprised to learn at a setting seminarthat some short Italian setters used the tactic of blocking wide with their hand next to the antenna, even if it left a large gap. The spiker, trying to exploit the shorter block had a greater chance of hitting the antenna, and otherwise the short setters could manage to get 1 or 2 positive touches a game. What looked like a High-Risk/Low Reward tactic was actually Low-Risk/Moderate-Reward.
Other than being adapted into a movie that Sandra Bullock won an Oscar for, Michael Lewis’s book The Blind Side documents the evolution of American Football from a running oriented game to a passing oriented game, and the corresponding rise in the perceived value and salaries of Quarterbacks and Left Tackles. Before the 80s, throwing the ball was considered to be high-risk. It was Don Coryell and later Bill Walsh who designed a way to make passing low-risk/high-reward by making short passes that stretched the defence.
Sometimes playing higher risk can bring success. I was surprised to also learn at the setting seminar that the 8 top teams at the 2002 Men’s World Championships included the 2 teams that made the least errors as well as the 2 teams that made the most errors. I heard one retired professional player recently say that he’s heard coaches in teams tell a jump server to aim for 2 errors for every ace to get them serving more aggressively (it’s usually aimed at servers who are consistent who err on the side of conservative). In Coaching Confidential: Inside the Fraternity of NFL Coaches Giants Quarterback Phil Simms recounts an instruction from coach Bill Parcells, “If you don’t throw at least two interceptions today, you’re not taking enough chances. Take some Chances now.” Maybe they’re playing higher risk. Or maybe it’s a calculated risk and they’ve found a creative way to manage the game.
One aspect of volleyball (and sport more broadly) that fascinates me is the element of risk, and the role it plays in a coaching or playing philosophy.
For example in a competition for 12-year-old beginners, playing the first ball straight over the net is Low-Risk/High-Reward; playing three hits is high-risk/low-reward. At a slightly more advanced level of volleyball where players skills have improved, 3-hits becomes Low-Risk/High-Reward and digging the first ball over the net becomes Low-Risk/Low-Reward. How a coach chooses to teach their team to play depends on how short or far sighted they are. I am guilty of coaching some of the worst volleyball that does not translate to a higher level and seek redemption every day.
Recently I helped out at a camp for the Australian Junior Women’s Development Program. What was evident was the number of players who had playing habits that were low-risk/high-reward at school and club volleyball level, but did not translate to a higher level needed for international competitiveness. The two most problematic habits were (making every attempt at) midlining the ball on forearm reception and spiking to the middle of the court.
Players spike into the middle of the court because it’s easy, and at a crappy level of play doesn’t cost them (the other team either defends poorly and loses the rally, or gets a transition and attacks poorly and loses the rally). Lateral passing is considered (rightly so) as being higher risk than midlining the ball and a combination of teams trying to “manage the game” and weaker serving only reinforces that it is not a worthwhile skill to develop. At a decent level, players absolutely need to be able to lateral pass and spike in places other than the middle of the court. Incidentally, I’ve got a hunch that doing these things and finding success at a basic level of volleyball are not mutually exclusive.
One of the benefits of living in Canberra for the last 8 months is experiencing a different volleyball culture in Australia. One thing it’s made me appreciate, is that many of the values and behaviours I took for granted as “universal” to (Australian) volleyball, was actually more specific to where I came from – South Australia.
It’s hard to know where to start, but perhaps it’s easiest to start at the end. I spent the weekend watching the SA Wolves play against the AIS and Canberra Heat Teams as part of the final regular Mens AVL round – distinctly different volleyball cultures I have become familiar with having lived in both SA and ACT and seeing these individuals and teams play – and the contrast just jumped out.
One of the things I’ve come to recognise is that there is a large body of values and knowledge that South Australian coaches share due to the influence of Steve and Mark Tutton. Most of the coaches from SA have either been coached by a Tutton or by coaches who have been coached by the Tuttons (whether they know it or not).
Certainly I’m sure that what most South Australian players and coaches understand about setters comes largely from Mark Tutton. I found it really enjoyable this weekend to watch Brad Tutton (Steve’s son and Mark’s nephew. #6 in the video above) coaching and setting part of the time. Despite injuries he demonstrated he could still “set the right ball”, change the direction of the ball, and had the uncanny ability to sense what the block was doing – all while making it look easy and effortless as he put his spikers into favourable situations that they liked and could score from.
As a coach, the SA values I identify with are working hard, with intelligence and innovation; the perpetual desire to find improvement wherever possible; and leaving no stone unturned to create the best possible experience for those you coach.
The most negative part of South Australian playing culture (at least in the men’s) is the amount of trash talking that goes on – something I’ve never subscribed to. Having asked numerous people what it was like to play volleyball in SA in the 80s and 90s, they all have anecdotes about the amount of trash talking that went on and instances of when players could or could not back it up (there are also stories about when fights got physical). I’m sure that the players from that era passed on that culture to subsequent generations and the talk is still common in SA state league and representative teams (I am confident that to some degree of accuracy, I could draw a tree diagram showing which players taught which players to trash talk). While many people think it’s an enjoyable part of the game, I’ve always found it to be a distraction that doesn’t add any value to anyone.
Earlier in the week, I spoke to a Canberra Heat player, and brought up that I was looking forward to the games on the weekend and that I would be supporting the team from my home state. His usual easy-going demeanour was replaced by a grim look as he proceeded to describe what he thought of SA players and teams and how unpleasant they were to play against. I didn’t think about it until watching the games a few days later.
The Canberra team was loud, but generally positive. The SA team was loud, but in a much more antagonistic and aggressive way. They talked trash through the net, got in people’s faces and managed to antagonise the referees and even the commentator. Part of me recognised the SA behaviour as what every SA Men’s State League match has always looked like – loud, aggressive and obnoxious, with players arguing with the referees over everything. Lots of theatre. The other part of me recognised that it wasn’t how they played on the other side of the net. I wouldn’t go as far as saying that that “expressive aggression” from the SA team was exclusively South Australian in character – There’s at least one other “loud” team in the MAVL competition – but it’s certainly not universal.
The starting South Australian setter (not Brad) got yellow carded twice in one game. In the final game, at 1 set all, he got red carded. The SA Captain also got yellow carded. Whilst the officiating wasn’t perfect and may have cost 5 rallies the match, the Wolves became preoccupied with antagonising just about everyone in the stadium to notice that they were always within 1 or 2 rallies and had the tools to possibly win the 3rd set. What should have cost them 5 points ended up costing them more dearly. With the setter red carded, Brad Tutton, who had decided not to play, had to get on the court. Since it took some time for him to get changed and they had to immediately make a sub after the red card, it lead to the unusual scene of one of their receivers setting for a couple of rallies and changing up the whole rotation. As Brad subbed on, the whole rotation changed again and was just completely out of whack.
SA let the game get away. Meanwhile, the Canberra team just got on with it and won the points when they needed to and made few errors.
(A clip created from VBStatsHD. From Mens Australian Volleyball League, QLD v Canberra Heat)
A few years ago, I was fortunate to meet through this blog, Chau Le, a Programming/database/user interface expert who was developing a suite of volleyball statistics applications for iPhone devices. The first of these products, VBStatsHD became available last week when Apple approved it to be available on the iTunes Store.
I’ve been a beta tester for VBStatsHD for the last 6 months and for $31.00, it’s a great app that lets you take stats and then synch them up with video of the match. Once coded, clips can be created of individuals, skills, rotations etc.
While this stuff isn’t new, it’s never been so affordable and accessible. Products like DataVolley and DataCode cost $5,000+. And it works on iPads, which are hardly rare these days amongst volleyball coaches. I used VBStatsHD during AJVC this year. I was able to scout/stat our opponents while my team dutied and in a matter of seconds exported the clips we used for gameplans and team meetings. My assistant took stats during our games, so we also had video of our own performance. So it didn’t cost us a lot of time to get stuff that was of huge value to the team (as you’ll read later, maybe I’m overestimating the value players have for video).
Video is now just standard in Volleyball. Whilst visiting the USA, a common task assistant coaches would be doing in between training sessions and games was sitting in the office coding video. It’s just something you have to do and a habit I’ve now gotten myself into.
From reading books on other sports it’s interesting to see the evolution of the technology.
From David Halberstam’s The Education of a Coach about Bill Belichick starting his career “doing film” for the Baltimore Colts in 1975:
“That season they badly needed someone to break down film on opponents which was critical to the (George) Allen system… So (Had Coach Ted) Marchibroda badly needed to find someone to do the film for no pay—and there was young Bill Belichick, Billy to Marchibroda then and forever, knocking on his door, wanting work, and not interested in being paid for it… ‘All work and no pay was their motto’, said Belichick. That was not entirely true. Because he was so good, they started paying him $25 a week, and by mid season, when the colts were doing very well, and on a winning streak, (General Manager) Joe Thomas came by and told Belichick how well the other coaches were speaking of him, and he was therefore going to raise his pay to $50 a week, but not to spend it all in one place at one time.
Marchibroda was hugely impressed. ‘You gave him an assignment, and he disappeared into a room and you didn’t see him again until it was done, and then he wanted to do more’. Soon Belichick’s duties expanded and became more interesting. At first they would send him to the airport to pick up film being shipped in, that and other donkey work, but then they decided that he was too valuable , that if he went to the airport they would be wasting two hours of his workday.”
My Brother-in-law used to be a film editor, Splicing 16mm film sucks. And because film was expensive and delicate, someone had to pick it up from the airport. No hard-drives, H264 codecs and broadband back in 1975.
The Footscray Bulldogs ruckman Andrew Purser tells this hilarious anecdote about Sam Newman using video analysis in an interview about his 1980s VFL playing days:
Q: “Who was the Bulldog’s ruck coach during your time at the club?
AP: Sam Newman. He was fantastic, but very injury prone too. He modelled his style on Polly Farmer.
Q: Did he use videos back then?
AP: Yes, but nowhere near as sophisticated as we see today. He used to get (infamous VFA legend) Fred Cook to edit some tapes & just put highlights together.
Q: Sounds like a recipe for disaster, if any of the rumours about Cookie’s videos are true.
AP: Funny you should say that. One day my wife’s parents were over & Sam rocked up large as life & said to my in-laws, I’ve got a tape of some of Andrew’s highlights & he wacked the video into the machine.
Q: Unfortunately it was one of Freddie’s blue movies featuring him going at it hammer & tongs. Poor Sam just couldn’t find the stop button on the remote. He became extremely embarrassed & beat a hasty retreat.”
It’s not a surprising anecdote about Sam Newman (except that he was the one with his clothes on in this story). VHS tapes and two VCRs were better than a reel of film and a splicer, but still took ages. Obviously they still paid peanuts for someone to do the jobs. When you pay peanuts, sometimes you get Bill Belichick, sometimes you don’t.
They were still stuck with VHS in the 90s, although offline editing systems like AVID started being used in Film and TV. Still, the idea of using computers for anything video based was still in its infancy. The North Melbourne Kangaroos used video during their glory years in the 90s. Denis Pagan recounts in The Champions: Conversations with great players and coaches of Australian Football:
“(Football Manager) Greg Miller and I both took our problems home with us. I was the only full-time employee in the Kangaroos football department when I started in 1993. I often wonder: ‘How were the Kangaroos ever successful?’ Our resources were stretched beyond the limit. If people didn’t put the in time over and above their job descriptions, who knows what might have happened? Greg took it upon himself to do the video-editing of games. We’d play on a Friday night and he’d stay up all night and cut videos so we’d have ‘positive’ and ‘room for improvement’ tapes to watch at the recovery session the next morning. I’d tell Greg the things I wanted with directions like: “Third quarter, 20 minutes in, knock-on by (Darren) Crocker”. He’d have two VCRs going and it would take him about five hours. I don’t know of anyone else who has done that.”
Greg Miller was the General Manager on a part time basis while presumably holding down another job, and still MADE the time to get the video turned around by the next morning??? Good thing the players really appreciated his efforts, as Wayne Carey recounts in his (ghost written auto?)biography The Truth Hurts:
“In the period from 1993 to 1996 we used to play 8 or 9 Friday night matches each season. We almost used to circle those games on the fixture list – not just because we played well under lights and invariably won, but because it meant we had most of the weekend to get the drinking boots on nd get stuck in.
After Friday night games, we’d always have a Saturday morning session at 9am to review the match and do a light training run. It would usually last an hour or so…
I remember Martin Pike arriving at training one day after a big night and looking as though he had come straight from a nightclub. He was unshaven, dishevelled and stunk of grog.
I said what the hell are you doing, Pikey? Just sit in the corner, don’t say a thing, and don’t do anything which draws attention to yourself, OK?
Dennis showed us a video pointing out the positives and negatives. Someone had made a really lame attempt to spoil, so Denis froze the video and said: “What do you think of than, Martin?” Slurring his words a bit, Pikey said Cheryl could spoil better than that – Denis’s wife! “
So while Miller was up all night with two VCRs editing a few minutes of footage from Channel 7 coverage, Carey and the boys were getting drunk and probably too inebriated to really watch the video. To be fair, Carey sometimes watched the video:
“When I dislocated my shoulder in the first game of the 1997 season, he (Pagan) came to visit me in hospital and dropped off a videotape of highlights of myself. He knew I was feeling down and needed a pick-me-up so he had this tape made, set to music. I wasn’t big on watching replays of myself but give that he’d gone to all that trouble, well, I certainly made the effort to watch it.”
I wonder what the music was. Probably Van Halen. Or ACDC. Maybe KISS? Music with highlights isn’t a bad idea. I showed my U17W team a highlight video this year before our gold medal game without music (i had debated for a while whether or not to). It was eerily silent and sombre. The mood just wasn’t right.
* * *
Anyway, VBSTatsHD. Check it out. For $31 it’s $1 more expensive than the camera Tripod I bought off eBay. Bargain.
