‘Talking Tactically’

with Lachlan Tighe..... 

(a weekly edition, commenced 12/9/2001, of thoughts, observations and commentaries on developments for bowls coaching and competition)

‘ Spring is in the Ayre’

(edition 118  - 2004 of thoughts & observations on lawn bowls)

I spent the past few days in Ayres Rock and acquired my spring of imagination and reinforcement of the tried and traditionally true formula for success.

On the flight home I read the story of that delightful inspirational Evonne Goolagong, twice Wimbledon champion.

The story I got goes something like this

‘..she relates how each night, when the dusk has finally clouded the night and the dying light forced her to stop, she wrote in the dirt how many times she hit the ball against the wall without missing’

‘Next day she’ll try and beat that number’

‘Every time I hit the ball against the wall I dreamed I was playing at Wimbledon.  Dreams do come true.’

I presume Evonne was about 10-12 years old when she recorded her daily performance.

Nothing in (attaining) sporting excellence is new.  Except maybe in bowls.

My journey in bowls continually highlights this apparent unwillingness by good bowlers to place on record their training and playing performances.  A sort of ‘pb’ version parallel to Evonne’s.

Evonne was’nt good.  She was great.  Her approach should have been a  model the tennis players rolled onto.

In bowls, in case players don’t look to other sports, good players should look at the names Bryant, Allcock, Schuback, Snell, Yates, Bosisto as great players to learn what these players did to be better than good.

What have the crop of good bowlers learnt from the great bowlers. Do in fact the current crop of good bowlers even know of , read about, the exploits of the great players. The measures (note that word) these great players went to so as to record their enormous national and international feats.

As coach of the Elbows squad I plead guilty.  All I did was create the measure template.

Guilty of frustration. Guilty of poor leadership. Guilty of not injecting sufficient vision, or of ample motivation for each individual in the squad to want to make that commitment to record their performance and progress in both training and competition for them to go further in their bowling achievements.

Guilty of mediocrity by any measure.  Guilty of not inspiring any one of the 16 to record every ‘pb’ performance in training and competition so as to make a reality of aspiring to be great.

However like Evonne I have dreams too. To discover that lode of gold when one of the squad players comes ‘on board’ and seeks from me an even greater level of commitment of me as their coach so that they can take their game to that (dream) level of greatness.

Lachlan Tighe