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I don’t want to be a party pooper. All week people have been saying how much Cronulla deserve to win this grand final after a barren half-century in the competition.
There’s no doubt that a victory for the Sharks would be a media fairytale. A team that’s come back from scandals and underperformance to win a long-awaited premiership. What a story!
It’s an emotional tale. It has the right ingredients for a back page yarn.
But fairytales and emotion don’t win grand finals. Emotion can often have the opposite effect for players and their performance when the game gets tight.
As we saw for the Rabbitohs in 2014, when they flew out to a lead there was no stopping them when emotion took over. They ran away with their first premiership in decades with a flogging of the Bulldogs.
That could well happen with Cronulla if they jump out to a lead on Sunday against the Storm.
They have a lot of reasons to play great football. Highly motivating stuff. It could work in their favour, or it could easily work against them.
Emotion can carry you through when you’re in the lead, or when the momentum of the game is with you. You get bigger, stronger and more confident. Unstoppable even.
It can be a tricky beast, though, as it takes your mind away from where it should be and what it should be thinking – in the moment, competing and executing. Lose focus on executing the plays and you lose your grip on the game.
Emotion is dangerous.
In the lead-up, it is natural for players to visualise how the game will go. They’ll think about different scenarios and how they’ll execute their plays. Every good player does it to some extent. You know, positive affirmation and all that jazz.
However, there is a fine line. If you start gritting your teeth and overplaying the game in your head, thinking too deeply about all the great things that you are going to be doing on the field, then you can end up prematurely wearing yourself out before you even get to the ground. Even worse, you may find yourself in a world of trouble once things don’t go according to plan on the field or aren’t the way you pictured them in your head.
Keeping your powder dry, having faith in the fact that all the hard work is done, that you have the right plan, and turning up with the mindset that you will compete 100% for every single one of those valuable minutes you have been afforded on the field will be key to success.
Take the emotion out of footy and you’re left with a series of contests. Whoever competes harder for each contest, executes better at every tackle, every play-the-ball, every pass, every collision, will win this game.
That’s what every single Melbourne player trains for. You can see it in their game.
That’s what Cronulla will have to do if they’re to win.
Johnathan Thurston is the ultimate example of this in the modern game. When Gus Gould says he’s a competitor, he doesn’t mean he puts on a brave face or tries hard some of the time. He’s not even talking about the miracle play he seems to deliver time and time again to win the game.
He means Thurston is there every time, trying to win every time he is anywhere near the ball, which is all the time. Whether it’s a kick into touch, an inside pass, a cover tackle, every little moment is a battle. Win more battles than your opponent and you’ve had a better game. Collectively, your team wins more battles than the other team then guess what.. chances are you’ll end up chanting the team song while spraying champagne everywhere with an incredibly heavy trophy under your wing. Living the dream.
Premiers aren’t thinking about the end result. Their mind is where it should be – in the present, competing at every opportunity.
There’s no fairytale in winning a grand final. It doesn’t matter how long it’s been between trophies, or how much people want you to the win. Cronulla doesn’t ‘deserve’ to win. It’s no team’s destiny to win a premiership. All that stuff is after the fact; a job for the journos, not the players.
There’s no team more experienced when it comes to focussing on the moment, focussing on the plays, focussing on the execution than the Melbourne Storm.
That’s the reason they excel in tight games. Their job is simplified and they only need to focus on one task at a time, the present one.
The Sharks have the skill, talent, fans and team to do it if they play it right. But so too do the Storm.
If it’s a close game, which is what we’re all hoping for and what I think it will be, there will inevitably be that moment that confronts all players. Are they caught in their dreams, watching them slowly turn into nightmares? Or are they living the moment winning one battle at a time? Winners won’t be thinking about how things are supposed to be or whether it’s their destiny.
Executing the play. Fulfilling their role.
Melbourne have great generals in Craig Bellamy, Cooper Cronk and Cameron Smith. The best. None of them are thinking about the fairytale finish.
They will be thinking that the result will take care of itself if they exhibit attention to detail.
Melbourne will do what they always do. Run the same plays over and over with precision, taking different options each time and working over defenders, letting the game plan wear out the opposition. Without the ball, they will never get bored with what they do in defence.
If Cronulla fail to compete as hard as Melbourne in some of those situations, the cumulative total of those little wins is the thing that will win Melbourne the game.
Cronulla have got the guys that can be brilliant, who can turn a game on its head – Ben Barba, Jack Bird, Andrew Fifita – but they need to be there for the whole 80 minutes. Then they have their seasoned competitors experienced in the big games like Paul Gallen, Mick Ennis, Jimmy Maloney and Lukey Lewis, but the rest of the team needs to play up to their standard, because the whole Melbourne Storm team trains with that attitude every single day.
Are the Sharks ready for a grand final? Melbourne will test that, and make Cronulla players ask that question of themselves.
The momentum is behind the Storm. They’ve been building with every game and have been as tough as they have been clinical. They have 17 players who hate to lose.
Cards on the table, I’m hoping Cronulla will win. Yes, I’m carrying the Sydney/NSW flag, and there are a few guys I know in the side.
My warning is this, and I’m not meaning to be a party pooper: everybody’s caught up with how much this would mean to Cronulla, but a victory means just as much as to the Melbourne Storm.