Another post on behalf of Thorny:
Last week's game resulted in a rather depressing 8-0 hammering! There were very few positives from the game, apart from the fact that we got a healthy dose of physical exercise chasing a ball around! Actually, joking aside, there was no shame in last week's result. We fielded, to my knowledge, at least five players well into their forties (apologies to anyone if I have this wrong), several players knocking on the door of 40, and, again apologies if i am wrong, only two, possibly three players who can seriously claim to be still at their physical peak. Against a team that were not only technically far better than us, but also, pretty much to a man, in their mid/late twenties, the result was hardly surprising. All this highlighted to me was the need for us to be more discerning in selecting our oppostion, which I am sure we will be in future. That said, we were still almost silent again, which I found to be the only truly disappointing thing about Thursday. In a roundabout way this brings me to another issue.
In the pub on Thursday, and afterwards by text, a number of players aired the view that selection should not be based on the 15-man, equal-time rotation policy that I have been employing, but rather, on picking our strongest team, with substitutions brought on as an when appropriate ie they want the team to be selected in the same way that a Saturday or Sunday league team is picked. As promised, I have spent the weekend reflecting on this issue.
The first response of most Accies reading this will no doubt be the mantra of 'form, fitness, talent and commitment'. To me, this is, and has always been, a bit of a red-herring as far as selection is concerned. Since I have been with the club the only person to implement this policy strictly was Simon and, at least to my recollection, it proved to be highly unpopular. When I took over picking the team from Joe a few months ago I at no point planned to use FFTC, even though we all agreed to it at our last AGM. The reason was simple: if I did, some players would hardly be getting any football, and others would be playing all the time. The Accies is a club of widely divergent talents and abiltities. Some obviously see this as in sometimes understandably negative light ie after 8-0 dubbings!!! I have grown, reluctantly at first, to see it as one of the positive things about playing for the Accies.
Hence I have tried, much in the same way that Joe did, to make everybody who turns up for the Accies feel important to the team, and therefore give everybody the chance to contribute. This has meant that I have used this strict rotation policy, with everybody getting approximately equal minutes on the pitch. It should be stressed I have done this not just because i believe in some kind of broadly democratic principle, but because there is a deeper philosophy, based on a fundamental sense of team-spirit, behind it. Put very prosaically it's part of an effort to make us a better team, but a better team based not just on a handful of individuals playing well, but on all of us playing well together and supporting each other. As Steve said to me during last week's game, "your mistake is my mistake, mate" (in fact he says that to me most weeks in an effort to keep my spirits up after my latest misplaced pass!). This, in a nutshell, is exactly my point. Thus, it shouldn't matter if people are coming on and off fairly frequently. We are a team of 15, 18, 20 people who can all do a job for the team, playing football in a way that we enjoy, and will hopefully, in time, become more successful than not. This is the reason I have made such an issue of communication rather than focusing on tactics or technical stuff.
All that being said, I consider this to be an open debate and would greatly appreciate all club members' views on this issue. My email is anaxagoras484@yahoo.com, so feel free to drop me a line, or I'm happy to chat about this after games in the pub. In the meantime, and until I get a considerable portion of the Accies demanding I change my selection policy, I'm going to continue with the ideas as I have briefly explained above. Let's bear in mind though, whatever system we use, we are going to get beaten sometimes, maybe even frequently. The trick is, I think, to win and lose as a team and, just as importantly, to play football in an environment that we can all enjoy. For myself I can only say that there is nobody in the Accies I don't look forward to seeing come Thursday evening.
As for this week's game, it's looking like we are going to be oversubscribed with players again. Some of us will therefore have to miss out. I will do my best to let those whose turn it is know beforehand, although that still means we would like you to turn up to the game (see above). If you do miss out, be assured, you will get plenty of chances to play before the end of the year. If you are in the 15 let's try to forget about last week, show a bit of determination and start to play some good football again. I thought the week before we showed signs that just round the corner are a string of excellent performances, which will hopefully be accompanied by similarly excellent results.
3 comments:
This is the age old conundrum with The Accies. Do we play to win or play to play? Whenever this question has been aired in an official forum, the consensus has always been to play to play, be inclusive, regardless of people's own level of ability, fitness etc.
Simon's strict adherence to the FFTC mantra brought about a whole heap of unfair criticism of him. What these people managed to forget was that this philosophy had been voted on and approved by the majority (all?) of the squad, it wasn't something that Simon randomly introduced, and he was effectively hamstrung by it, as have some of the other Coaches.
The entire club was built on fairness and inclusion. I don't know if people felt unfairly treated by me in my time as Coach? This was never my intention. Certainly nobody voiced such an opinion (apart from one particular instance obviously!). It's easy to bleat and moan after an 8-0 defeat, it's almost forgivable. However, trying to write-off 10 years of The Accies and what the founders of the team had hoped to achieve is not so easily forgivable.
The best thing everybody can do is to channel their frustration in to turning in a better performance in the next match.
Our club ethos is what marks us out from the teams we play against. It's the difference that means we don't turn up looking for a fight every week, or to break people's legs, or to do all those other things that so many of us detest about Sunday League Football. If some people are craving such lunacies, I'd suggest they should move on to a Sunday League team!
I have always said that personally I can accept a defeat if I feel like we've given our all. If we can honestly come off the pitch saying we've tried our best but we lost to a better team, who could possibly want to argue against that?
Andy is the current incumbent of the Coach's chair. The best thing the entire squad can do is to support him and each other. Andy's right that if we play better as a team, then better results will come.
Joe
All i can do is apologise for the mis-match. My fault entirely. If it's any consolation( I know it won't be) , BB Eagles were in awe of us as a club, if not as a team, and had great respect for the well organised and sportsmanlike way our team approached the game.
That made me feel really proud. Mind you i didn't have to play them.
Really the particular bit of alchemy that the Accies have been grappling with for 11 years is how to become a better team without becoming a worse club.
There will always be thousands of teams much better than us, whatever our selection policy. We'll never be promoted or relegated - we're not in a league!! We could get 10% better by ditching some of our squad - but in my view we'd lose much more than we/you would gain
iActually, t wouldn't be a bad idea to set up a league side as an offshoot to the Accies, but it would probably need more organisation than we could muster. Mind you, Bazza from Grafton is looking for an 8th team to join the league that Grafton are bottom of.
Hi Gent,s
After reading Andy's blog and Joe's and Elbows comments i just wanted to add my thoughts. When i started playing for the Accies i was in the position of not having played football for quite a few months after giving up playing Sunday league footie after 10 years with Blueflag. I had to wait for the chance to earn my place in the team getting games behind more established players in the team which i was more than happy to put up with as i was enjoying being in the football fold again, and that hasn't changed one little bit.
I have had experience of what seems to be the hardest job in teh world (that of running a team with a large playing squad and it is not easy i can tell you) so i sympathise with all the past and present coaches of the Accies with regards to this, and will also state that "you will never keep all the squad happy, all you can do is go with the majority"
I liked Joes comment about those wanting to chase the Sunday League game again, i for one would be fooling myself if i said that i didn't miss the excitement of Sunday Footie but not for the reasons that Joe has stated, i miss the excitememt of the chase of the league or the cups, not the fights or trouble that comes with teh football. i hear some of you saying how can he say that when he plays the way he does!
Yes i do play hard but i never have or never will play in a way that will hurt anyone i would rather stop playing than become a player like that, My proudest moment in football to date was managing Blueflag and winning the Fair play trophy from the whole league which was no small achievement, you only have to ask any of the Blueflaggers, or Woolfie from Southbank how hard thie was. I love playing for the Accies and i for one am happy to stick to the playing mantra that we all get as much footie as we can fairly as i think it would be a crying shame if some of the squad memebers felt the need to seak football else were because they felt that teh Accies could not offer them the chance.
I may be prickly on the pitch sometimes and have paid the price for it a few weeks ago but rightly so, i really hope that we as a team can put these grumblings to bed and get back to playing the good football that we are missing, but mores to the point do it for each other again.
All the best for tomorrow night as unfortunatley i wont be there as work has raised its ugly head again good luck and,
UP the Accies.
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