The Campbell Academy Blog (56)

On the benefits of losing (in advance)

Yesterday, on the 17th of December, it was the West Bridgford Colts Mustangs league decider football match.

For regular consumers of these pages, you'll know I coach a football team on a Sunday (and now a Saturday). Still, since the lads were about seven years old, I've coached them on a Sunday, and we're now all grown up under 16s and playing 11-a-side football like proper senior football.

This year, we started in Division Three (previously, we were a Division Two team, but it's a bit complicated).

We thought that Division Three would give us a chance to have a really good go at a season, potentially win the league, get a lot of confidence and integrate some new players into the team, but as we turned up on the first day of the season, we realised that the Derby division one champions had been put in our league after they'd moved to the Nottingham side and so that was going to be a tall order.

We had an epic game with them on the first day of the season, which was horrible in all sorts of ways, and we got battered in the first half, being down 1-0 at halftime (which was hugely flattering for us) only to come back in the second half and have an astonishing performance to draw 1-1.

And so, from a long way out, the return match on the 17th of December against these guys from Derby was on my radar from a football coaching point of view.

I'm all about the development of the lads in football and having fun and just going through the teenage years in a team knowing that they're never going to make a living playing football, but I have to say that in my own mind (and hopefully not externally) I put a lot of sway on the match yesterday and the outcome of the match.

We had already dropped two points to a team that we shouldn't have done, and the Mickleover team from Derby will probably not lose a game all season.

And so we had to beat them yesterday to turn things around, put ourselves a point ahead in the league, and then win every game for the rest of the season (which was possible) to win the league.

The thing about setting these things up and doing anything like this in your life is it's always best to lose in advance so that you're prepared should the worst happen.

I had been through all the scenarios that could happen in this game, but in the end, it's potentially true that I care about the football team, perhaps more than one or two of the 15/16-year-olds I have in the team because of the level at which we sit.

When I was playing sports as a youngster, it was quite a high level, and I was totally committed, it's wrong for me to think that everybody will be committed on the same level that I would.

In the end, we went 1-0 down to Mickleover to a bit of a scrappy goal, and then one of my guys (Billy) scored an out-of-this-world equaliser, and we were 1-1.

The game was finally poised for a long time, and then our level dropped, and we lost 2-1

We never disgraced ourselves at all, and it was a good performance, but we had to factor into the fact that three of the boys were hungover (yes, I know there are only 16), and we were also missing two of our key players who were somewhere else.

I was really quite relaxed at the end of the game, delighted that we've given it a good go and happy to move on to the next thing.

I was happy to continue with the football team and try and win every game to the end of the season, knowing that we wouldn't win the league, probably because I was prepared for this in advance, understanding what would happen if we didn't lose.

Nowadays, everybody thinks they have a right to win all the time.

Maybe one of the best things about coaching boys' football or any sport is introducing people to the concept of not winning every time.