It was very disapointing players who had the chance to step up and take that bit more responsibility didnt come to the party.
Have to agree Bull. I was extremely disappointed in the blokes from the "junior leadership" group, yesterday was the opportunity for them to make a statement and they didn't.
You know it's difficult because I find myself thinking perhaps I'm being too harsh and my expectations are unreasonable but then again I look at the blokes out there yesterday from that group and with the exception of Lids they are all 24y.o and are in the 4th ,5th or 6th seasons of senior footy and I don't really think it is unreasonable to expect them to step up in these sort of clutch situations
I know we've spoken about it a number of times but I really do worry about our leadership at times
As most of the leadership groups is made up of experienced players, part of the reason why the junior leadership group was started was to bridge the knowledge/experience gap between the experienced, middle tier and junior players, as far as leadership goes, which you would already know.
I would think the role of the junior leadership group is to learn, rather than expecting that they are suddenly going to come in and know how to lead, just because they now have a title. Unless players are natural leaders then I don’t know how we can expect them to turn our leadership fortunes around in the space of 7 weeks of football, because they have this title, and especially when our leadership is acknowledged to have been lacking over many years. If it was that simple wouldn’t RFC and other Clubs have worked it out by now?
Therefore, I doubt there’s a quick fix solution to it, and it’s just a matter of trial and error and working out who the leaders are. Grant Thomas works by the theory that if a player is in a leadership group then he needs to learn how to be a leader. And if he’s already a leader then he doesn’t need to be in any leadership group. Whatever method clubs adopt, there seem to be more followers than leaders in the world and it’s a matter of finding who the leaders are, rather than expecting that anyone with a title should automatically know how to be a leader. Just my opinion.