The comeback Quins

Regular readers will know I am a keen rugby fan.  My team, the Harlequins, have had a difficult season.  Two years ago, they won the Aviva Premiership for the first time, last year they needed to prove it wasn’t a one-off and that they were genuine top four contenders.  They made it to the semi-finals and lost to Leicester, but they did win two other trophies.  This season we managed top four for a fair while, and certainly people were considering us a top team, but in the middle of the season we where hit with all manner of injuries and frankly we just weren’t playing awfully well; lots of silly mistakes and attempts at ‘forcing the game’ (in other words, just trying too hard.)  We were also hit hard by losing a number of our key players (Care, Brown, Robshaw, & Marler) to England during the 6 Nations.

However, in March, once they returned, we seemed to get our act together and there followed a series of narrow wins, but wins none-the-less.  The coach, Conor O’Shea, said that as we needed to win every single game in order to qualify for the play-offs, that we needed to play each game as if it were a cup final.  The first of these was a game against Sale, one place below us and another contender for top four; it was a ‘must win’ game.  We went there and, against all odds, beat them.  There followed a series on do-or-die games which we won till, the last one, against Bath, above us in the table but if we won, we qualified.  Astonishingly…. we did it!

The attitude and spirit of the players, their self belief and commitment enabled them to perform at a level that defied all pundits.  Being able to engage people in this way and evoking this kind of performance is what a real leader does.  He shows belief in them and encourages them to face their fears, and cast them aside and allows them to express themselves.

The story doesn’t end in a fairy tale way, as despite playing out of our skins for 40 minutes and going in at half time ahead, we succumbed to Saracens on Saturday, but it was still such a strong expression of passion and skill that no one can feel badly about it.

This entry was posted on Sunday, June 1st, 2014 at 07:00 and is filed under General, Leadership, Values & Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.