I would like to add two cents to the topic.
I am somewhat of an academic expert on "winners" and "losers". My father was a life insurance man. It is a very tough business involving cold calling to get interviews and then making a presentation to sell a policy while the wife tells the husband not to buy because they need a new TV.
Virtually all of these salesmen pump themselves up on "go get em" "you can do anything you set your mind to" "rah rah" "science of winning" literature, books, cassettes, CDs. DVDs, etc - unless you jack yourself up when you get home at night for an hour you will get despondent and clients will hear it in your voice and then you will never make a sale.
My Dad was so bought into it that he made me read all this material when I young because he genuinely thought it would help me,
I read about the science of winning. What is loser mentality. Why winners attract success to them etc.
The end effect was I became arrogant and sometimes became unglued in social settings so I wisely gave up those books. Nonetheless I have always remembered the material and hence I consider myself an expert on the topic.
Most of the Warriors are not losers they are just idiots. E.g. we all remember the Penrith game last year which we lost despite them not having Cleary, Maloney, and some other SOO forward. Adam
Blair came to the "insightful" realisation after the game that the guys took the game for granted and assumed they just had to turn up to win.
This makes them idiots. I have never forgotten that Adam
Blair interview. And then I think it happened again against the lowly Titans and they admitted they hadn't taken them seriously either. Idiots.
There is one player on the team who truly is a "loser" however according to the definitions of the literature I have read. That is
Hiku. If you watch him he keeps making strange choices that lead to negative outcomes for the team. Whatever he applies his mind to and decides turns out to be the wrong answer.
Some examples:
1) Last year against Penrith - he thought he couldn't catch a guy who made a line break so he started walking after him, then the guy slowed considerably because
Roger Tuivasa-Sheck confronted him and unloaded to a support player for a try, All the commentators noted that if
Hiku had not given up he could have caught up easily and helped defuse the try. Only someone with failure consciousness would make a decision like that. He attracted failure to himself.
2) On the weekend
Chanel Harris-Tavita threw a ball slighty and I mean slightly in front of him and he chose not to try to catch it and it went into touch instead. Perhaps he thought it was meant for the winger and he felt he should leave it alone, but it was the wrong decision and it killed our momentum at the time. Any other player in the world would have just accepted the pass. But not
Hiku. He again made a strange decision that resulted in a set back for the team.
Whenever he steps on the field he will do something stupid or make an errant decision. This is because he is a loser. This is not me hating on him. He legitimately needs a sports psychologist to work with him. The Black caps players work with a psychologist, so do the All Blacks but to the best of my knowledge it hasn't caught on in league due to negative stigma associated with seeing psychologists.