“If it doesn’t matter who wins or loses, then why do they keep score?” said American football coach Vince Lombardi.
“Whoever said, ‘It’s not whether you win or lose that counts,’ probably lost,” said tennis great Martina Navratilova.
In no other occupation is winning so coveted as in sport. To the winner goes the spoils and let’s be honest, there is a lot of spoils.
Winners earn more, they receive greater acclaim and media attention, they sell the most merchandise and they have the greatest endorsements. In sport the old adage it true: second place really is the first loser.
For example, consider the prize money at the Australian Open tennis tournament; the winner earns $2.4 million, while the runner-up receives a still impressive but comparatively paltry $1.2 million.
The difference between being best or second best may be no greater than the difference between second and third best or third and fourth best but the financial implications are massive. Tennis is not isolated in this regard as large pay differentials exist in almost all professional sports.
The same cannot be said of most other occupations. Perform slightly better than your colleagues in the workplace and you might get a small bonus, something to be proud of but not twice the earnings of your next best colleague. Trust me, I know.
What does this all mean? Simply that winning is a lot more important to sportspeople than it is for people in most other occupations. With so much on the line, there are huge incentives for sports stars and teams to do whatever it takes to be victorious.
In February Australia’s sporting landscape was rocked to its core over the drug scandals at the Essendon football club and Cronulla rugby league club.
It was shocking at the time but the nature of these scandals should not be surprising and they are, in fact, the natural evolution of the constant push by clubs to develop a competitive edge.
In the 1970s and 1980s an AFL player gained a competitive edge by cutting out the cigarettes during the season; in the 1990s avoiding alcohol was regarded as highly professional. But any competitive edge is a short-term advantage; any improvement will be adopted and perfected by other teams eventually.
So players started to eat better, training became more sophisticated and so did recovery. Players were micro-managed with regards to all aspects of their life. The interchange bench became a carousel that never slowed, with players constantly going on and off the field to manage their workload.
Eventually Collingwood began to send players to Arizona for high-altitude training, not because it provided a significant benefit but because it might grant a modest advantage that other teams could not afford.
It was extravagant, it was unnecessary, but spending excessively had become the new way to find a competitive edge. Naturally other teams followed suit.
The race for players to reach their potential became increasingly reliant on sports science of both the legitimate and eccentric variety. It became an arms race, with clubs spending more and more on sports science, coaching, development and recruitment.
But what happens when the greatest gains are already made? What happens when the competitive edge becomes smaller and smaller? What happens when working harder, longer and smarter is no longer enough to win?
Drugs and supplements were the natural evolution of the competitive arms race that began so long ago. Supplements allowed players to inch that little bit closer to becoming the best player they could possibly be, to get a little bit closer than they could by traditional means.
But the line between supplements and performance enhancement was so fuzzy and difficult to define that it was inevitable that some clubs would go too far. As we have recently witnessed the ASADA code is complicated enough for experts let alone football clubs that just want to do whatever it takes to win.
The drug scandal came as a shock to many and has arguably done irreparable damage to the AFL, NRL and the clubs involved. But we should all be glad that the scandal was uncovered now before other teams headed down the same road.
It is important that these failures of governance are identified and addressed so that this situation can never arise again.
When the dust settles hopefully the AFL and NRL will have the political will to implement stringent regulation of sports science, with sufficient checks and balances to ensure that this situation can never happen again.
Perhaps then football clubs can focus more time and money on improving recruitment and development of players. Surely identifying the best player at draft time is more beneficial than making a mistake and trying to rectify it with supplements and peptides?
Regardless of the outcome of the drugs scandal the search for a competitive advantage will continue. It has to because winning is everything. But at least with appropriate regulation the focus will not be on improving players by artificial means.
In my opinion the next evolution of competitive advantage will be driven by a club’s statistical capacities and psychology.
Advanced statistics are the best way to determine which players are the most productive and contribute the most to winning football games.
A few questions that immediately came to mind: what is a player’s optimal number of possessions? Is there a possession / efficiency trade-off in the AFL? How do you achieve the maximise output per kilometre run? There is no shortage of questions that, if answered, could provide a competitive edge.
The psychology angle is one that has been pursued in the past but will become increasingly relevant. At its core it comes down to making the correct decision at the correct time. I believe there is the potential for a significant competitive advantage from making smarter decisions more consistently.
Recent events continue to indicate that winning has never been more important to players and coaches in our leading football codes. However, some clubs lost their way and the notion of winning being everything was taken too far.
Regardless of the final outcome, the drug saga has damaged both the AFL and NRL and shattered our collective innocence and naivety.
Australian sport sits on the precipice of a new era. Hopefully our major sporting codes and their administrations will be up to the task of ensuring that drugs and shady sports science will never be a factor ever again.
Who’s in your ultimate team? Pick the best team and compete with other fans for daily prizes on Draftstars. For the best odds on the game try out Aussie bookmaker PlayUp. Think. Is this a bet you really want to place? Set a deposit limit.
Not a single Swan acknowledged Sam Wicks' second goal against Hawthorn on Sunday, with the apparent snub coming after he was left out of…
Former Adelaide captain Rory Sloane has been forced into immediate retirement by the threat of further eye damage. Sloane, 34, had a second bout…
"You can't push forward with Zac Williams in the short-term... you've got to set standards."
Kane Cornes has hit back at suggestions Aliir Aliir had some responsibility in being concussed in Jack Higgins' dangerous tackle, which saw the Saint…
The MRO handed the Bulldogs player a one-game suspension for rough conduct after his shepherd on Fremantle opponent Brandon Walker.
With the national competition, the premiership-winning coach says some games it was hard to feel the occasion such as ANZAC Round - and it's…
