You've obviously never coached / managed a competitive team before

Mental aspect is huge. A real world example for you:

My American Football team got hammered 21-0 by a very s**te Div.3 team the first time I watched them before joining. Concentrated on the attitude and mental aspect and a month later they tonked the same team 48-0.

4 years later (this season) they (mostly a student team with few athletes) reached the national (i.e. top division) semi-finals before going out to the eventual champs (and champs for the last 4 years).

Granted, much time was spent on fundamentals and tactics but even if I was an NFL coach I couldn't have taught them enough in that first month (8 training sessions) to have turned them around that much.

Steve

Posted By: Steve in Holland, Aug 30, 20:07:55