Transcript

SPEAKER

Well, I was first introduced to them through-- I was part of the ASPIRE course with Sports Coach UK. I was lucky to be one of the 15 people on that course, which was like an 18 month course. I'm not sure if you know much about it. Sure. Just in a nutshell, it's like an 18 month course where we come together maybe once every six weeks or so. And we have two days' workshops, where we would do a lot of-- all the focus would be on anything involved in coaching that's not technical/tactical.

So it's understanding the biological age, just understanding the relative age effect. It's understanding the rocky road of talent. We had some guest speakers in there, like Dr. Richard Bailey and a lot of other people, who were extremely interesting. I personally learned loads from that. And I really, really loved every moment we were together for that course.

But through that course, we had a speed dating session, which was very interesting. I've never been on a speed dating session before. And our speed dating session was to find a mentor for this 18-month period. So what we had to do was we'd move around the room. We'd have five minutes where we'd talk to each mentor. There was about 15 or 20 mentors.

Mark Bennett happened to be one of them. I never heard of him up to this point. But when I sat down with him, the first question I asked him was can you explain to me how you worked with your previous mentee? And he said to me, well, it didn't work out really well, he said, because we agreed a plan, and my mentee wasn't living up to his end of the bargain. OK. We gave some support. He went again. And I just cut him loose, because he wasn't doing as he agreed to do.

And in that moment, I thought, this is exactly who I need, because my schedule's so busy, as everybody is, that I will probably keep putting stuff off. And I need somebody, basically, who's going to keep me in check or challenge me to be better and be quite straightforward with that.

So I kind of gravitated to Mark. And as it turned out, I think I was the only one that selected him, because I could see a guy that wasn't going to you know wrap me up in cotton wool and kind of say, yeah, it's OK. He was going to hold me accountable for what we agreed. And I really liked that side of Mark.

So I chose him as my mentor. And then from there, we just built our relationship. He came into my school. We had our first meeting to just get to know each other. He came with me through the national team that summer with under 16s. It was about four or five years ago Now and he turned up to the first practise session. And me trying to impress him, I guess at the time, when I look back on it right now, I produced him a session plan for a two-hour practise. And the session plan was three pages long.

He had one look at it, and he just put it down on the table. And he said, right, and completely changed the subject. And that kind of rocked me a little bit. I didn't know what to make of it.

And as you know Mark quite well, Mark can be very emotionless when he wants to be. He doesn't show you a lot of emotion. He's very good at a poker face, let's say. So he watched the practise. We had a conversation after. And as you know with Mark, he doesn't really give you anything straightforward. He kind of gets you to take it get it out of yourself.

So he was asking me a lot of questions about it to review the practise and do a hot review, as you know, in the moment straight after practise. And everything I said to him was completely wasn't going to help the conversation move forward in terms of how I wanted. I wanted to talk about technical/tactical. Mark was talking about, well, how do you know what they've learned, what you've tried to teach them? Did you have any moments where you asked them to recall what you did? How are you going to start the next practise?

So forth and so on-- so later on in that camp, probably next day or so, he asked me to he said to me, how vulnerable are you are you willing to be? And I said, well, I feel like I'm on Big Brother at the moment. You've got a GoPro camera on me. There's another camera over there. Your questioning me 25 questions a minute. So I said, look, how much more vulnerable do I have to be because I feel like I've gone through all extremes?

So he asked me, he said, would you mind if I take the practise tomorrow? And I've known Mark-- as well as I know him at that stage, I knew that basketball wasn't his specialty. I knew it wasn't a sport he played or coached or had much to do with. He'd mentored some coaches in the States for sure. I knew that. And my assistant coaches were saying to me, Alan, this is crazy.

We've got the European championships next week. You can't allow this guy to come in and take a practise session, because we don't have-- we can't waste that time. So I just bit the bullet. And I said, you know what, Mark? I'm going to go for this. I didn't know what to expect. He brought the players together. He basically asked them what did they feel they need to focus-- what's urgent? What's top of the critical list that they need to be better at in terms of preparing for the Euros next week?

They gave him a couple of technical/tactical stuff. He said, OK, now, I want you to pick one. They picked one. Now, I want you to define what's acceptable, unacceptable, but what's exceptional in these moments? OK? So they listed two or three things. He said, OK, well, how long can you stay in this? So if that's what exceptional looks like, and this is what acceptable looks like, how long? What's the time frame you can stay in an acceptable actions striving for exceptional?

They gave him some crazy-- they gave him a number like seven, eight, 10 minutes. And he said, are you sure? So they said, yeah, we can. So they gave like three technical points, like fast break with spacing, all five guys boxing out on the release of his shot, this type of basketball type stuff.

So he set the clock. They played. He gave them like three lives. OK? You get it wrong once, boom, twice, three. Once it's the third, you've got to stop, that's it. We stopped the clock. They lasted 32 seconds. So he brought them back in. He said, OK, let's recalibrate this. Let's start again.

Now that you really assessed yourself in these moments-- because they thought that this would be very achievable. So they said eight minutes, nine minutes, some were saying 15 minutes, because it was very simple, basic stuff, but simple, basic stuff that would change the game completely if we're consistent with it.

As it turns out, we got it down to like a minute 30, so we failed it like three or four times. Then they got the time down to a minute 30. When they achieved the target of a minute 30, the celebration, the atmosphere and the energy in the gym was electric. I had not achieved that in the past two days in any of my practises. In comes a guy who knows very little about basketball in comparison to myself in terms of technical/tactical.

I give him the reins of the practise session. I stand back. My assistant coaches think we're crazy. I can see the expression on their faces saying, this is just a waste of time. What are you doing? And that practise session that Mark took, I'm not ashamed to say, was better than any practise I took over those three days.

So that was my first introduction, really, with hands on with Mark. And from that moment forward, he won me over completely. And all he got them to do, really, Stuart, was to kind of change the focus from we've got to do these seven, eight things to OK, what can I do now in this moment to be the best I can be? So he got them, really, to focus on their behaviour in a moment.

And secondly, we could talk a little bit about it after. I know Mark spoke to you about it last week or two weeks ago, the rule of three, where the coach steps away and the players are self-sufficient. And when they're struggling, another teammate recognises it, and they step in, and they help. So actually, the engagement in that practise that morning was higher than it's ever been. The communication-- I spent the whole year going, guys, we have to talk. A quiet gym is a loser's gym. You're not communicating. You're not communicating, really having a go at guys for not talking.

Looking back at it now, they probably didn't know what to say, because I hadn't given the guidelines of what effective communication was and what that looks like. In comes Mark, and all of a sudden, the gym is louder than it's ever been. The engagement's better than it's ever been. Guys are talking more than they've talked. And the technical execution was better than it's ever been in those two or three areas that they selected.

Just one more thing that comes to mind, actually-- and it was on that same weekend. We had a four day camp. And part of the four day camp was we were to play Holland twice. And the other thing that comes to mind-- one of my targets was managing my emotional state. The other target was to check learning of players, which we can talk a little bit about after. We did a project in my school, which was really interesting in terms of that.

But to go back to the Holland game, he said to me before the game, he said, OK, well, now, I want you to become more vulnerable again. You've done great up to this point. And at this point, I was all over the place. I was like, geez, I was really beginning to doubt myself as a coach, because I was like OK, the old traditional guy in the sidelines shouting, telling everybody where to go, what to do, the PlayStation coach, if you want to say-- he took me away from that, and I felt like I couldn't do that while he was there. And I felt almost paralysed a little bit.

So he said to me before the first game, he said, I want you to agree to something. You don't have to. It's completely up to you. But he says, I don't want you to say anything to the players during the game except for one thing. And he said, you can choose how you want to phrase it, but he said, it can be, talk to me, reflect, review, what are your thoughts? He said, choose one of those.

And I said, OK, well, I'll choose talk to me. So the game, we start the game. Everything's fine. We call a time out. As you know in basketball, there's a lot of time outs. Each team has-- so there's four time outs in the first half. There'll be up to six in the second half if both teams use all the time outs.

And in that time out, you have one minute to bring the players together, talk to them. So I called a time out in the first quarter. Mark's sitting on the bench beside me. I've got a GoPro on my chest. All this was crazy for me. I didn't know what was going on.

And he elbows me in the side, and he said, remember what we agreed. So the players come over, sit down on the bench. Now, at this stage, we've had seven or eight warmup games anyway. So they're used to my style of coaching. So I crouch down in front of the players, complete silence. And I took a deep breath, and I say, OK, guys, talk to me. And the players, all the players, all 12 them, looked at me as if to say, with a confused look on their face, as if to say, what are you on about?

They were waiting for me to give them 100 different things like I had been previously. OK, you're not doing this. Why are you not doing this? You're not getting back. You're not switching on screens. All this technical/tactical jargon. And they were expecting that. The only thing I said was, talk to me.

So 45 seconds went by, which felt like an hour, and there was absolute silence. Nobody said anything. I'm sitting there feeling like I'm looking like a fool. The players are looking at me confused. The referee comes over and says, time up. Everybody back in.

Players go back on the court. I go back to my seat. My assistant coach is going to me, this is crazy. This is nuts. We've got the Euros next week. What are you doing? And Mark's on my other shoulder going, don't worry. Just be patient. Be patient. When the next time out, do the same thing again. So we get to it. Holland called a time out five, six, seven minutes later.

So here I go, take a deep breath, thinking, oh, god, this is going to be awkward again. So I crouched down in front. I said, OK, guys, talk to me. And there was silence again for about 10 or 15 seconds, Stuart. And then the quietest player, the player who hasn't said anything all summer, comes up with the best comment that any coach could've made in a game. He made an observation about a tactical thing that Holland were doing. And he came up with a solution for what we could do to counter attack that.

Now, when he said that, I looked at my assistant coach. We kind of looked at each other as if to say, we didn't see that. But that's what he said and saw. So I said, OK, guys, if that's what you say, is everybody else in agreement with that? Yeah, we'll switch these screens. OK. Great. You guys are fine with that? Great. Let's do that.

And it changed the face of the game. And again, that was another light bulb moment, that OK, I'm beginning to trust Mark more now, because I see the value in the stuff he's asking me to do. It might take time. It's not going to be something we can really change the face of the game in a weekend or one camp. But I left that camp driving home, and I had so many thoughts going through my head about things he had asked me to do and situations he put me in which were completely out of my comfort zone.

But as time goes on, that has become my comfort zone right now, to question the players more, to kind step back and ask them to do-- actually, the biggest challenges I ever had probably in the past three years is my assistant coaches, trying to get them to buy into that philosophy.