HOW FERGIE AND FANS HELPED McGINLEY’S BID
I HAD the good fortune to attend the League Managers Association’s president’s dinner on Thursday evening.
Paul McGinley was a guest speaker and he gave tremendous insights into his managerial philosophy and how he achieved such a resounding European victory in last year’s Ryder Cup.
I think we all probably envied him in his ability to be able to work with Sir Alex Ferguson in the campaign. His thinking behind that was very simple and very clever. McGinley said that he had never been a ‘front-liner’. He was a 6-12 player in the ‘order’.
So although he knew the Ryder Cup and its pressures, he didn’t know it from a front-liner’s perspective.
Fergie was brought in to help him understand the top, top players’ thinking and how expectation needed to be managed in relation to them and the team.
He talked about building confidence from recent successes. Using the 55,000 home fans as an asset and not a pressure was key.
Learning to embrace the opportunity to thrill those people was a key part of the team’s thinking. The concept of players having the crowd as a power in their hands was central to team imagery.
It was interesting to hear his answer to a question on motivation. He talked extensively in answer; and the essence of what I heard him say was that the best people are self-motivated BUT capable of incredible things when properly inspired.
Inspiration is a genie-in-a-bottle type subject.Who can define what creates inspiration? The best definition of genius that I heard was that it is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration. The inspiration behind the victory? ‘We played the golf course not the Americans’. In other words, ‘We just got on with doing the job really well’. What a great idea. From a very likeable and very determined
man.