Christmas break cricket; an Australian holiday mainstay. Imagine my despair while enjoying this year’s Boxing and New Years tests when hearing the reports regarding England cricketer, Rory Burn’s injury during “fun” yet competitive warm up has caused such a partition of views amongst current and former players.

When this report came out and the high profile criticism around it, most notably from ex baggy green players, it made me reflect and question what does fun look like for high performing sportsmen and women? Are we as coaches, advisers or administrators not offering them a “fun environment” or valuing results and short term success over enjoyment and long term engagement? When does this focus change for us as coaches and athletes?

I was approached by Pouria Nabi of UQ research team and someone whom is heavily involved in leadership research in soccer coaching in AUS about what do we know or what do we ASSUME in regards to team or group leadership. His research looked at different structures and ways coaches and athletes can work together to influence and contribute to the leadership tasks and processes.

Throughout my research and listening to fellows such as Pouria’s research, I have developed beliefs and philosophies surrounding the necessity to develop player and peer leaders within elite rugby settings to satisfy motivational aspects of the players while ensuring they develop sense of meaningful connections and relatedness.

Using these ideas and research notes, I utilised them to reflect on Ireland’s RWC2019 review and Rory Best’s comments in particular.

Flow – also known as the zone or transient hypofrontality – is a state of mind where we lose our sense of self. This engaged state of mind in which whatever you're doing feels nearly effortless was named ‘flow’ by Hungarian-American psychologist and former professor of the University of Chicago, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in 1975, when he discovered that people are at their most creative, productive, and happy when they are completely absorbed in a task. Basically, flow is the optimal state of consciousness. However, I wanted to consider or open for discussion how we as coaches can enhance performance environments or learning atmospheres to get players individually or as a group into flow or more frequently “in the zone”….

The aim of this study is to examine the personal strivings of individual players who have been identified and selected into a program within the ARU’s performance pathway. Emmon’s basic dimensions of personal strivings frame the data collection procedures that include administration of a survey at three time points (preseason, in competition, and post-season). Survey responses are augmented with qualitative approaches including probes regarding temporality and specific examples.

Through a comprehensive understanding of what these players are trying to accomplish, seeking to gain, and trying to avoid, an objective of this study is to assist coaches in understanding and contributing to suitable inputs for reasonable, measurable outputs and markers. Findings will be discussed in relation to the ARU’s vision of elite success, with recommendations presented for coaching practitioners

While there is the high expectations and pressure to perform, developing a fun, inclusive but challenging environment bring the best out of players of all capabilities and levels. Ultimately, a coach’s ability to acknowledge and develop positive interpersonal connections, driven by interpersonal skills and united sense of purpose and achievement, can offer solid base for positive relationships and performance atmospheres. However, I wanted to consider more into how have or how do the leading nations create a fun, progressive, inclusive environments where they embrace challenge and have desire to continue to grow, learn and apply at the biggest stage of their sport?