Blue you ARE coming round because you told us you backed Middlesbrough, Wigan and CHESTERFIELD. That's to win leagues. Then much later when Jack won us two games you wrote about aiming for the play-off zone. I was wrong about Notts County and Forest Green by the look. Nothing wrong with being wrong, it's part of human evolution. (As is optimism!) But at least you'll be welcome in the dressing room with Jack. Nobody could accuse you of living in the past.
As for Stevenage, what Dancing calls neanderthal I'd call planning. They'd thrashed us once - they knew they had physical advantages and they knew we were vulnerable both to conceding and being unable to score even when on top. Should they have said, "let's pass the ball around like them and make no progress"? Seems to me they have a smart young manager who is prepared to adapt in order to win. He knew how we'd play and used it. Might not have been nice to watch, but those three points made sure they'd have to have the worst run ever to go back to non-league football.
The trouble with now is it barely exists. If I type NOW now it is already then (or a new now) by the time I've done it. By the time you read it, it is already ancient history.
Certainly I can see how complete attention on the present moment relates to sport. Why do defenders under pressure in the last five minutes of a game so often concede, and do so by making an horrific and uncharacteristic mistake? Managers cry lack of concentration, but Jack and I would say that aren't focused on the moment, which is different. They are looking at five or ten minutes more of pressure, and crack ..... or thinking of the last time they were in this position and cracked. It is playing every ball when you are batting at cricket, not the one which just beat you, or the one you now fear. It is catching a cross without thinking of the one you just dropped, or the potentially disastrous consequences dropping this ball ........ n o w Just catch, ball down to chest, feel it safe, pat it, look to see who is free.
But it helps if the images you inevitably rehearse in your head, because no one manages to be in the now all the time, are those in which you succeeded ........ so that you never focus on those last five minutes in which you conceded two and the worst was that needless penalty ............
My thought, having inevitably studied a bit of this stuff - Jack would love Totnes, it is the mindfulness centre of the universe - is that NOW has to encompass the Cambridge game and nothing else, it is not because that game is particularly vital though it is, it is because maintaining total focus upon that now is everything. The game isn't tomorrow night, it has already started. So I reckon he's right to keep even unintentionally negative influences out of the dressing room.
However, mindfulness should be the ultimate antidote to tetch. (I can't manage mindful to the end of a paragraph!)
As for Stevenage, what Dancing calls neanderthal I'd call planning. They'd thrashed us once - they knew they had physical advantages and they knew we were vulnerable both to conceding and being unable to score even when on top. Should they have said, "let's pass the ball around like them and make no progress"? Seems to me they have a smart young manager who is prepared to adapt in order to win. He knew how we'd play and used it. Might not have been nice to watch, but those three points made sure they'd have to have the worst run ever to go back to non-league football.
The trouble with now is it barely exists. If I type NOW now it is already then (or a new now) by the time I've done it. By the time you read it, it is already ancient history.
Certainly I can see how complete attention on the present moment relates to sport. Why do defenders under pressure in the last five minutes of a game so often concede, and do so by making an horrific and uncharacteristic mistake? Managers cry lack of concentration, but Jack and I would say that aren't focused on the moment, which is different. They are looking at five or ten minutes more of pressure, and crack ..... or thinking of the last time they were in this position and cracked. It is playing every ball when you are batting at cricket, not the one which just beat you, or the one you now fear. It is catching a cross without thinking of the one you just dropped, or the potentially disastrous consequences dropping this ball ........ n o w Just catch, ball down to chest, feel it safe, pat it, look to see who is free.
But it helps if the images you inevitably rehearse in your head, because no one manages to be in the now all the time, are those in which you succeeded ........ so that you never focus on those last five minutes in which you conceded two and the worst was that needless penalty ............
My thought, having inevitably studied a bit of this stuff - Jack would love Totnes, it is the mindfulness centre of the universe - is that NOW has to encompass the Cambridge game and nothing else, it is not because that game is particularly vital though it is, it is because maintaining total focus upon that now is everything. The game isn't tomorrow night, it has already started. So I reckon he's right to keep even unintentionally negative influences out of the dressing room.
However, mindfulness should be the ultimate antidote to tetch. (I can't manage mindful to the end of a paragraph!)