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Post by lothaar on Sept 15, 2006 2:46:08 GMT -6
I read the thread on motivating winless teams and thought this deserved its own thread.
I play in an amateur league in Europe. Our team has gone pretty much undefeated for two seasons and has won the championship the last four times in a row (and five of the last six). We've retained a lot of players through that run, and most will be returning next season.
I know it doesn't sound like a bad situation to be in, but we have trouble getting the guys fired up before games. Complacency seeps in. Training sessions lack intensity because there's a feeling that it doesn't matter... we'll win anyway!
I'm worried that this will ultimately be our downfall. We nearly lost a couple of big games when we took our foot off the gas and let the other team back in the game. Suddenly they were fired up and we couldn't bring anything extra to the table. We blew an 18-point lead in a Bowl game, but thankfully came back to win it in the last minute.
The problem is, the players think they're invincible.
How do you keep the intensity up when you keep winning?
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Post by lothaar on Mar 1, 2006 3:31:30 GMT -6
In 1988 or so a Bengals DB hit Don Beebe in the air from behind, flipped him upside down... the ball popped loose, Beebe landed on the top of his head, and the DB recovered and made an unbelievable one-handed catch when the ball was about an inch off the ground.
Not as crunching as the Atwater hit, but it has an extra element of finesse.
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Post by lothaar on Sept 29, 2006 2:59:46 GMT -6
A little off topic, but here's a story relating to the uncertainty factor...
A couple of years ago we were playing in a Final. We were up 24-22, after a big comeback, putting one in with 1.30 on the clock. The other team marched down the field into the fringes of FG range, With 30 seconds left, we held them and they elected to kick a 47-yarder. It was a beauty of a kick, split the uprights and put them ahead 25-24.
But wait!....
A flag had been thrown on the snap of the ball for ‘illegal participation’. The other team had 12 men on the pitch.
The kicking team protested, then the ref (back judge, I think) who threw the flag started changing his mind. The whitecap had been in the wrong position and didn’t count the players too. The whitecap asked the flag-thrower if he was sure, to which he responded: “I dunno… You make the call.”
At this stage both teams are going crazy.
Next, the whitecap tries to count the players on the pitch! He counted 11… but this was about 30 seconds after the play, and video footage shows that one of the players had just wandered off to the sideline while he waited for a call to be made.
Whitecap waives the flag, and we go absolutely mental! How can you count the players after the fact? Remember, this is the difference between winning and losing the final.
40 minutes later – yep FORTY minutes – after arguing back and forth and even consulting video footage on the tiny flip-out screen of the sideline cameras (which isn’t provided for in the rules, and it was impossible to tell anyway) they finally enforce the penalty and move the kicking team back 10 yards, out of FG range. They didn’t convert and we won.
I’m glad they got the call right in the end but it took the sweetness out of the victory. The fans were bored, and p**sed off because an absolute cracker of a game turned into a 40-minute long farce. We felt like we didn’t deserve the win, in a way.
I appreciate that this is the exact scenario that officials have nightmares about – huge, uncommon penalty on the most important play of the most important game. Still, if decisiveness had prevailed the initial flag would have resulted in a penalty and it would have been a lot tidier.
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