A winning mentality: why British tennis players should look to Spain for inspiration

Another TCS article. This was written as a companion to an article about the current 'golden age' of Spanish sport, hence all the Spain references! I think it still works as a stand-alone piece - the main point about the state of British tennis is certainly still valid. First published 28/10/10.

Kazakhstan. Not exactly a tennis powerhouse, you would imagine. And yet this country has three times as many men in the top 100 as Britain. Three, to be precise.

It’s much the same story in the women’s game. Russia is unsurprisingly ahead on numbers, producing  17 of the current top 100 women. Even somewhere like Romania, that giant of the game, can manage ­five. And what about Britain? How many of the top 100 women can we lay claim to? Yep, you guessed it – one.

So why don’t British players perform better? And what can be done to make sure they do?

Put simply, British players just aren’t very good at winning. Sounds pretty obvious, I know, but bear with me – what I mean is that Brits just aren’t as good as other players at coping with the high-pressure environment of professional tennis. It’s what I’ll call here a “winning mentality”, and it’s something that a lot of British players don’t seem to have. 

It isn’t lack of funding. British players aren’t exactly short of training facilities. Indeed, the LTA provides a £40 million state-of-the-art centre at Roehampton. Britain’s elite players also receive some of the most generous funding in the world, including £15 000 in travel expenses and around £16 000 in coaching, sports science and other bene­fits. Clearly, lack of ­ financial support isn’t the problem.

Neither is it lack of talent. Some of the current British senior players were among the world’s best as juniors, with Jamie Baker (current British number four and world number 293) reaching number six in the world junior rankings.

But all too often this doesn’t translate into success at a senior level. Somewhere along the line, something in the coaching setup must go wrong. So how can we put it right? To ­find out, we need to turn our attention to a country that no-one can accuse of lacking a winning mentality – Spain.

Spain have more men in the top 100 than any other nation, with a total of 14, half of whom are in the top 25. Of these seven, ­ five attended specialist tennis academies as children, including world number seven Fernando Verdasco who left school at 11 to move to an academy in Barcelona.

Of course, there are always exceptions – at 14 Rafael Nadal had his funding cut after his family refused to send him to Barcelona to continue his training. But then, not everyone’s lucky enough to have an uncle who’s not only an ex-pro, but happy to coach them for free.

So is this the solution – should promising young British players be packed off to Spanish academies? Well, it certainly seems to have worked for one Brit who has been notably absent from this discussion so far. In 2002, a 15-year-old Andy Murray left Scotland and moved to Barcelona, where he trained at the Sánchez-Casal Academy.

But this isn’t a sacri­fice that many parents would be willing or able to make. So what if institutions like these existed closer to home, so that players could enjoy their advantages without having to travel thousands of miles?

Having juniors training together and playing against each other regularly, rather than separately with their own coaches as now, could help to foster that competitive instinct, that winning mentality, that is so crucial when they make the step up to senior level.

Centralised, co-ordinated training like this could also help to create the culture of success that is currently so sadly lacking. Success is catching, but so is mediocrity, and it’s the latter that is currently prevalent in the British ranks. To reverse this trend, it’s clear that a serious shake-up of the current system is needed.

Sending young players to academies would essentially mean expecting them to behave like professionals. Isn’t this unfair? Shouldn’t they have a few years to enjoy their sport before they have to think about playing professionally?

Unfortunately the harsh truth is that tennis, like all professional sports, is a young person’s game. Most players turn pro between the ages of 16 and 18, and the early 30s is a typical retirement age. So in fact childhood years, and particularly the teens, are crucial in laying the foundations for future success.

Maybe academies aren’t the answer. But the current system clearly isn’t working, so perhaps looking to countries like Spain that are enjoying so much success is Britain’s best hope of sharing it.

A Premiership to be proud of: why the English league is up there with the best of them

This is another article I wrote for TCS - it's from October so apologies for any parts that are now out of date! First published 14/10/10.

With the Heineken Cup kicking off over the weekend, predictions are inevitably flying around about how English clubs will fare. But this competition isn’t just about picking a winner – it’s also a chance to compare the general standard of teams and leagues throughout Europe.

In the past England hasn’t come out of this well, with Premiership teams often accused of adopting a negative, defensive style. But there’s a chance that might be about to change. If the past few weeks are anything to go by, this season’s Premiership is set to be one of the most open and exciting in years. And if that’s true, maybe at last we can be proud of our Premiership.

First things first – after the débacle of the ELVs, isn’t it nice to be able to talk about some rule changes that have actually worked? Even the grumpiest of grumpy old men (i.e. the commentators) agree that the new directives relating to the breakdown area have led to a more open, more attacking style of rugby. Surely this can only be good for the game, and especially for the spectators. Given the choice between watching Saracens at the start of last season and London Irish at the start of this, I know which one I’d pick, and I’m pretty sure most neutrals would agree.

Of course, there are those who argue that these changes are biased towards teams who already played this way. Certainly London Irish might have struggled to reach the top of the table under the old rules. But then again, couldn’t that be because the old rules were biased towards teams who adopted a more negative approach?

Now, teams can’t just rely on the power of their defences to carry them to victory. Quicker ball at the breakdown gives defences less time to get set, and creates more gaps for attacking teams to exploit. It also provides an incentive to run the ball rather than crash it up through the forwards, since players aren’t faced with a solid wall of defenders. This has benefited Irish especially, whose back line has looked in scintillating form so far.

The Exiles’ flying start has certainly been one of the stories of the season so far. And it seems that being allowed to play their own game in the Premiership is also reaping rewards in Europe. The Exiles’ win over Munster at the weekend can only have strengthened their Heineken Cup credentials, especially against a team with so much experience in the competition.

Not that I’m suggesting English clubs will find it easy – that was demonstrated when Leicester struggled to beat Treviso and Saracens lost to Clermont. It’s likely that English fortunes will be, as always, mixed. Hopefully, though, we can at least look forward to some more entertaining performances along the way.

It’s not just Irish, though, that have started this season on a high. Before the season kicked off, the Exeter Chiefs were most people’s favourites for relegation. However, the newly-promoted side have been showing how much can be achieved by a team that’s prepared to throw the ball around. This positive approach helped them to a shock win against Gloucester, and came close to upsetting champions Leicester.

From top to bottom, the Premiership is more competitive than it’s been in years, and that can only help to push the standard even higher.

So what could all this mean for the national team? Don’t worry, this isn’t one of those starry-eyed ‘England can win the World Cup’ moments. It remains to be seen whether the promising glimpses shown against Australia are any more than one in a long series of false dawns. But for those England players who haven’t felt the lure of French clubs, getting used to playing a more expansive style of rugby can only be a good thing.

Hopefully, playing this way regularly in the Premiership will give them the confidence to play this way at an international level. I’m not making any predictions about the Autumn Internationals, or about the Heineken Cup. All I will say is that when it comes to domestic leagues, the Premiership is up there with the very best.

'Strap it up and carry on': the culture of playing injured

This was the first article I wrote for 'The Cambridge Student', a university newspaper of which I was joint Sports Editor at the time. First published 07/10/10.

Anyone who’s ever played sport knows how it feels – you pick up a knock, but you don’t want to come off, so you play through it. And it doesn’t just apply on the pitch. How many of us can honestly say that we followed the doctor’s advice to the letter, and weren’t even a little bit tempted to come back from injury earlier than we should?

This attitude can be summed up by a phrase I heard countless times during my two years of university sport – ‘just strap it up and carry on’. It’s no surprise that this trend is also prevalent among professional sportsmen and women – after all, sport is in a very real way their life. But there comes a point when every player has to accept that they’re not fit to carry on. Doesn’t there?

Let me explain. On 5th September I sat in front of my TV watching Leicester take on Northampton in the Aviva Premiership. Midway through the second half, Leicester prop Marcos Ayerza stood up from the bottom of a ruck, clearly concussed. As he staggered across the pitch, clearly with no idea of where he was or what was going on, the commentators heaped praise on his “bravery” and “dedication” for staying on the field . 

Surely I can’t be the only one who sees a problem here. We all admire players who shrug off  a knock for the good of their team. But this was an individual who, by staying on the pitch while clearly un­fit to play, was endangering himself and those around him. At times like this doesn’t common sense have to intervene, and the safety of players have to be protected, even from their own “dedication”?

This problem doesn’t begin and end with players, or with rugby. It is part of a prevailing culture in professional sport that values players more highly if they’re prepared to put themselves at risk, and that doesn’t regard injury as a legitimate excuse for non-participation. Can it be right that, even in a case like Ayerza’s, physios have no power to make a player leave the field? Or that players would rather be injected with cortisone than admit they’re in too much pain to play?

And fans are guilty too. After the 2006 World Cup, the decision to play an un­fit Wayne Rooney was widely criticised. But how much more criticism would there have been had Rooney not gone to the tournament at all, and his lack of ­ fitness been given as the reason? The same attitude can be seen week in, week out in the Premiership – fans expect to see their favourite players on the pitch, managers want their stars in the game, and players are keen to oblige.

Perhaps the most poignant example of this trend comes from athletics. In the run-up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics, 110m hurdler Liu Xiang was the host nation’s only real hope for athletics gold. Despite rumours of an injury, organisers insisted he would be ­fit to compete. In his heat, Liu visibly limped onto the track, only to pull out at the start of the race. The injury he was carrying would in fact rule him out for the next 13 months. The day after these dramatic events, Liu made a public apology to the Chinese media. The fact that he felt compelled to do so shows how ­firmly the culture of ‘strap it up and carry on’ has taken hold.

It’s easy to see why this trend has become so prevalent. Managers and coaches demand total commitment, fans demand to see stars giving it their all, and players don’t want to be left on the sidelines. But in this professional era, with schedules becoming increasingly gruelling and matches involving ever greater physical punishment, attitudes to injury need to become more professional too. Sport already takes enough of a physical and emotional toll. Players, and those responsible for their welfare, shouldn’t be making it worse.