The u16A team has been through some massive learning’s these past few weeks, and this weekend was no different. Sometimes good teams have to learn what it takes to win and must understand what it feels like to lose. That feeling of bitter defeat is something that can either break a team or build it. In the u16A team’s case, it’s building them.
After last week’s loss to Jeppe, getting the boys mentally ready for the game against Boland was a small challenge, but one that was accepted by the team. We had a fantastic week of preparation, Tuesdays practice was hugely interesting as us coaches put them under immense pressure and although they did not succeed, they learnt from it. Friday was just awesome, we had a conversation led by Dean Rimmer getting unsaid things out in the open and this proved to be a massive success. The key words for the boys were passion, belief and body language, these were our weaknesses against Jeppe and we were determined to right them against Boland.
Sometimes even the best prepared team can have curveballs thrown at them and Saturday proved just how unpredictable sport can be. Just before kick off our explosive hooker suddenly felt extremely ill after looking strong in the warm up, and so had to be withdrawn for the entire match. Our lineout and vice captain left the field injured, his replacement then left 5mins afterwards. Sometimes teams get tested and get asked to give it their all in order to win under trying circumstances, this the boys tried to do, but ultimately failed to win the match in the end. However this learning was not lost on the boys and will be put in the memory bank for the future.
Losing games is sometimes seen as a massive failure and boys, teams, parents, coaches can sometimes value themselves on their win-loss ratio, certainly winning is the aim for every match, but is not always the outcome. The way I see it, our jobs as coaches at u16 is to give the boys the best chance of success in every match, and win or lose we take the lessons from it and get better with every match so that one day these players will be able to play 1st XV rugby for SACS and succeed where they failed in their junior years.
The u16 team is made of some strong stuff mentally, they may not realise it yet, but where others may have given up, this team carries on working extremely hard and is always up for every battle that arrives every Saturday morning. They never give up and will always give it everything for the cause, the team bond is very strong and I believe that it is only a performance away for them to realise how competitive and good they have become.
Against Boland they improved markedly on their body language and passion, not going to sleep for one minute as has been the case the few weeks prior. As always we are working harder than ever to improve and make this team realise their true potential.
There are a few technical flaws we will be working on this week, and once they are sorted they should be playing a seriously good brand of rugby every weekend.
This week will be interesting and the boys are again excited for this weekend’s game, measuring themselves against the best.