Latest Blog Post

John Ward was a genius, at least in my eyes, when I was growing up but even more so now I’m grown up. More about that lower down.

I rode my bike today in the freezing cold. It was a Saturday and I set off about 8:15am to meet my coach Simon and as I was flogging myself to death through a freezing cold Southerly wind a group of cyclists passed me. I jumped onto the back of the group and tried to hold on to get some respite from the wind and be dragged along. Didn’t they know who I was? Didn’t they know what I did last year? I led the bloody Outlaw for 40 minutes and I completed a Haute Route in the Dolomites in September! But I’m not hot now.

They spat me out the back and I got back to my pedestrian pace like I was an 85-year-old trying to ride a bike for the first time.

It just goes like that doesn’t it? Maybe in September when I was at my best the guys that went past me weren’t or maybe they’re better than me this year or maybe I was better than them in 2015. Or maybe I’ve never been better than them… does that really matter?

Sometimes you’re hot and sometimes you’re not but the way you conduct yourself when you’re hot is what sets you apart from other people who can’t seem to control themselves.

So back to John Ward the genius. John Ward was the Assistant Head Teacher of my secondary school and a PE teacher but he was a basketball coach.

No, he was a coach.

There were two significant rules in John Ward’s teams (and they were some of the most successful Scottish basketball teams that ever there were)

1. You talk back to the referee, in any form, regardless of who you are, regardless of the position in the match, regardless of the importance of the match and you’re off. You only have to hold that rule for a short while before none of the team talk back to a referee.
2. It’s fine for you to gloat when you’re winning as long as you’re happy to gloat when you’re losing.

What those rules created was an ethos within the teams - fair play, respect but most importantly humility.

Under the care of John Ward, the team I captained won two games 92 – 2 and 104 – 4 but never did we do anything to humiliate the opposing team. It was like he was preparing us for what was to come.

We lost the national cup final by two points. I lost my first international to Ireland by three points.

These have become the two most important things to the little football team I coach and it’s why we won a fair play award towards the end of last year. We won one game 10 – 0 and another 8 – 1 and never, ever did the boys gloat or rub it in to the opposition.

Interestingly, the parents on the side lines get quieter when we’re winning like that, not louder and that’s the example that’s been set by their boys and not the other way around.

Unfortunately, in the times we live in social media has provided us with a megaphone to gloat when we’re winning, when we’re ‘hot right now’.

Unfortunately though, for the people who choose to use that tool, that weapon, the fall from grace can be dizzying and catastrophic.

Live by the sword, die by the sword.

The best advice you can give to young people in boy’s football teams or starting a dental career or probably anywhere else for that matter, is the advice of what to do when you’re hot.

Mend your roof while the sun is shining and pay it forward because like as not, there’s a time coming (usually not so far away) where you’re going to need some help, and humility in times of success buys you that.

Blog Post Number: 1895