Sunday, November 20, 2005
Bouncebackability?
Another classic article (hmmm!).... from ECFC v Grays (attendence 6682) 19th Nov 2005
It is often said in relation to football that the result is all that matters. This is certainly true in the long run: you don’t get any points for playing well and losing but you do for playing badly and winning. However, in the short term, the performance feels almost as important as the final score. I know I’ve come away from a few games feeling thoroughly miserable despite City scraping the win. And it works the other way around too: you can feel proud of the performance despite defeat.
I experienced the competing emotions that a victory while playing badly (and losing while playing well) can cause last weekend while playing for Exeter University’s 2nd team at an Ultimate Frisbee tournament in Cardiff (South West Student Indoor Regionals). Ultimate Frisbee can be played indoors or outdoors (although the game is best played outdoors).
Indoors, teams are made up of 5 players (plus rolling-substitutes) and the game is played on a pitch the length of the sports hall. Each team lines up at opposite ends of the pitch, with one throwing the Frisbee (disc) to the other. Teams score points by moving the disc up the pitch so that a team member can catch it in the opposition’s end zone (you can’t run with the disc), with the opposition trying to stop this. If the disc hits the ground, or is intercepted by the opposition, then there is a “turnover” and the opposition get the disc and have an opportunity to score in the same way at the opposite end to that at which they started.
Overall, my team came 12th out of 24 teams, with the 1st team in 6th, the 3rd team in 22nd and the 4th team in 21st. But it wasn’t so much our final position that was disappointing as the way the second day had panned out, with two results on Sunday afternoon being a cause of emotional conflicts. After the first day’s group stage we had put ourselves in a reasonably good position and had a game to put us into the top 8. This game turned out to be against our first team. We lost it 7-1 but were pretty happy with how we played so weren’t too annoyed.
It all went a bit wrong after that however. In our next game we struggled to beat a team who we had comprehensively put away earlier with a shocking performance. Despite getting the win we were all thoroughly depressed with the way we played and seemed to carry this with us for the rest of the day, losing our final two matches.
What this shows is the effect that a poor performance, whatever the final result, can have on a team: it can drain confidence and lead to a run of bad form. The team need somehow to forget their last game and be totally focused on the next. A lot of this comes down to belief in your own ability. Manchester United, in their glory days of the 1990s, were often praised for their capacity to bounce back from a poor display and play with confidence in their next game. This is often nowadays referred to as “bouncebackability”. It is a crucial skill as it’s inevitable that a team will perform badly at some point in the season. If you can maintain your confidence despite poor performances, results are more likely to turn in your favour and a bad run is likely to be kept short. This is something that we learnt the hard way last weekend.
It is often said in relation to football that the result is all that matters. This is certainly true in the long run: you don’t get any points for playing well and losing but you do for playing badly and winning. However, in the short term, the performance feels almost as important as the final score. I know I’ve come away from a few games feeling thoroughly miserable despite City scraping the win. And it works the other way around too: you can feel proud of the performance despite defeat.
I experienced the competing emotions that a victory while playing badly (and losing while playing well) can cause last weekend while playing for Exeter University’s 2nd team at an Ultimate Frisbee tournament in Cardiff (South West Student Indoor Regionals). Ultimate Frisbee can be played indoors or outdoors (although the game is best played outdoors).
Indoors, teams are made up of 5 players (plus rolling-substitutes) and the game is played on a pitch the length of the sports hall. Each team lines up at opposite ends of the pitch, with one throwing the Frisbee (disc) to the other. Teams score points by moving the disc up the pitch so that a team member can catch it in the opposition’s end zone (you can’t run with the disc), with the opposition trying to stop this. If the disc hits the ground, or is intercepted by the opposition, then there is a “turnover” and the opposition get the disc and have an opportunity to score in the same way at the opposite end to that at which they started.
Overall, my team came 12th out of 24 teams, with the 1st team in 6th, the 3rd team in 22nd and the 4th team in 21st. But it wasn’t so much our final position that was disappointing as the way the second day had panned out, with two results on Sunday afternoon being a cause of emotional conflicts. After the first day’s group stage we had put ourselves in a reasonably good position and had a game to put us into the top 8. This game turned out to be against our first team. We lost it 7-1 but were pretty happy with how we played so weren’t too annoyed.
It all went a bit wrong after that however. In our next game we struggled to beat a team who we had comprehensively put away earlier with a shocking performance. Despite getting the win we were all thoroughly depressed with the way we played and seemed to carry this with us for the rest of the day, losing our final two matches.
What this shows is the effect that a poor performance, whatever the final result, can have on a team: it can drain confidence and lead to a run of bad form. The team need somehow to forget their last game and be totally focused on the next. A lot of this comes down to belief in your own ability. Manchester United, in their glory days of the 1990s, were often praised for their capacity to bounce back from a poor display and play with confidence in their next game. This is often nowadays referred to as “bouncebackability”. It is a crucial skill as it’s inevitable that a team will perform badly at some point in the season. If you can maintain your confidence despite poor performances, results are more likely to turn in your favour and a bad run is likely to be kept short. This is something that we learnt the hard way last weekend.
