SIR CLIVE KNOWS HOW TO WIN BY FRACTIONS

ON Wednesday I visited St George’s Park for a workshop led by Sir Clive Woodward in partnership with FA Learning.

I have huge admiration for Sir Clive. His book ‘Winning’ is a massive source of inspiration to me. I love his obsession with winning; his attention to detail; his willingness to think differently.

Sir Clive held up Cristiano Ronaldo as a footballing equivalent to Johnny Wilkinson.

Sir Clive defines the key to success as having confidence and the key to confidence is having information and understanding. To improve performance, he asserts, you must access the right information and then understand it.

You only need to look at Sir Clive’s obsession with detail and the cost of that detail to understand the advantage of resources. At basic one per cent levels, he had sponsors for laptops, kit design, analysis technology and vision specialists; simple things that make a big difference.

I may appreciate the benefits of cryotherapy but at Stevenage we just cannot consider routine use of these support systems.

But any coach or manager should be searching for unique ways of adding value that he/she can afford to implement.

Mick Clegg, Man United’s power and development coach from 20002011, is quoted as saying that the ‘difference’ was the understanding and knowledge of how to become the best and that Ronaldo was above everyone else.

He searched for world class performance which is why he became world class.

If I took one thing away that I would encourage every player to consider it would be this; don’t practice until you get it right – practice until you can’t get it wrong.