It seems confidence\arrogance is second nature to Aussies, they deserve to be there they deserve to be winners and they go out there and grab their opportunity with both hands and will push you out of the way to get it. They do it for themselves and their mates
Kiwis are more likely to come from a background/culture where you get led by your Elders and betters who have a dominant position in the family/society. So you are less likely to think you deserve something. BUT you will do anything to defend and protect the family and your way of life.
So how do we make playing for the warriors feel like we are fighting for our pride, our parents our family our tribe and get them up again the next week to do it again?
The AB's do it, Tonga do it, both for shorter periods of time but they do it.
Graeme Lowe can make you want to grow another leg and play for him, why not
SK?
I kinds just wrote down a bunch of crap from my head, not sure I even believe it but it rings true and given the amount of kaka posts I been readiing lately (yeah u know who u are) thought I may as well go ahead and post it.
That’s a brilliant post, Tragic.
Adding my take on it.....yes, there are definitely some cultural issues involved. Plus the fact that there is only one NRL team in NZ and in Auckland. In Sydney there are several teams all competing with one another, while up and down the eastern seaboard of Australia there are more, all in Australia. It’s a competition - there.
But the cultural issues. In Australia...before I emigrated from the UK 20 years ago I heard about the Aussie saying “she’ll be right”, meaning don’t stress about it, it’ll work out alright. But I never actually heard it in Oz. And Australian sportsmen (and women) definitely don’t compete with that in mind. And here it gets to be my opinion and some would say opinionated, so apologies if I offend anyone. From my limited experience and knowledge of Maori and Islander cultures, it’s almost as if that saying, “she’ll be right,” is one of their own. There’s far less of a desire to be precise about things, to achieve. More a kick back and enjoy what is, how it is. Where’s the food. Which is great, for life generally. Far too many people in western culture are far too precise and far too concerned to do things absolutely right. It’s a trait of, for example, German people, and it’s made them excellent sportspeople and fighters and manufacturers and so on.
Where the kind of culture I’ve described starts to dominate in the side, then yes, as Tragic has explained, it’s a major problem for the Warriors. We’re the best side in the NRL when we’re scoring madly, Warriorball-style, and the boys are loving it. But when the tables are turned, something goes wrong, we miss a couple of tackles and a 50/50 call goes against us (again), the boys just kind of shut down, accept what is and hope the final whistle isn’t too far away.
How to instil a relentless determination to win in a team with many players who just switch out and accept what is (another loss, because it was great while it lasted, but now it’s too hard) is the problem we face. (Obviously)
IMO, to achieve a culture change in the side,
A. We need almost a complete change of the coaching staff. Whoever is coach has to be someone who isn’t afraid of giving players who don’t perform what for. Loyalty to under-performing players is tantamount to rewarding under-performance.
B. We need a mix of different cultural backgrounds in the side. The current plan is to have mainly Kiwi-born players, of whatever background. But that just does not work. If the Warriors were a union side, fine, there’d still be a mix of cultures and there could then be a string competitive spirit. But there are so few Pakeha league players that it won’t work for us.
C. No more retirement package contracts. This isn’t always the case, eg. Steve Price, but generally it is, that those close to retirement lose that competitive edge. A combination of this innate slackening of desire to win with the majority of the team’s cultural acceptance (when things go wrong) of whatever is just won’t produce results.
And that’s it. Apologies for the length of this post.
And apologies if I’ve upset anyone’s sensibilities...
