In the Arena - Video Series

Know your role. Accept your role. Play your role.

In Australian football, the teams enter the arena separately, given a few minutes of clear air with their supporters as their theme song rings through the stadium.

The vision of the captain leading his team up the player race is one of the timeless images. For over a century and a half, the best of their generation have worn some version of the jumper that hundreds have worn before them. All are at or near their physical summit, never fitter, never stronger, gladiators called up as a consequence of a highly specialised proficiency that had its time and place and set them apart for a brief period of their lives.

They make their way onto the ground, with their peers, their friends, facial expressions and body language communicating individual responses to having fought and won for their club and each other, and they are about to do it all again.

They enter the arena.

The captain has three expectations of his teammates, and they of him, as do the coaches who now largely have little control of the outcome beyond this moment, but often struggle to concede their helplessness, and frustrated coaches in coaches boxes or on the sidelines make for good television. Their best work should have been done, in the years, months, weeks and days leading to this moment, if not, they are not long for this role.

The three expectations are:

• Know your role

• Accept your role

• Play your role

Simple expectations, yet incredibly challenging, complex and layers of ambiguity.

Those outside of elite team sport think of it as club vs club, or team vs team. Those inside it, think of it as system vs system, and there are plenty of them in action, forming a labyrinth of systems complexity, understood by few, but executed by many.

In this series, I explore many of these ideas.

Enjoy.